LAC(4-2) vs PedoBears(3-4) game #7

[nickhx2]

this is why its such a retaded strategy . mem SUXS at 3 ball. 2 3's whole game... and we doing this ?
force them to make a 3. if they do so be it

eh, no. it's tactically superior to force them into a 2 pointer when they NEED a 3 to tie. it's on the team to get the rebound there.

[Angel strike1]

this is why its such a retaded strategy . mem SUXS at 3 ball. 2 3's whole game... and we doing this ?
force them to make a 3. if they do so be it

eh, no. it's tactically superior to force them into a 2 pointer when they NEED a 3 to tie. it's on the team to get the rebound there.

normally great idea.
but this is mem. THEY sux at 3

[Ranma]

No offense to Memphis, but we should have won this game going away but that can be said about a lot of our games. This team keeps making mistakes and playing lackadaisically without focus. We keep tempting fate, which is why we habitually blow leads. The little things like hitting a free throw, grabbing a rebound, and not fouling keep eluding us.

Oh, I almost forgot. Almost getting a technical for not having enough players on the floor is embarrassingly sloppy. Nevermind killer instinct, where is our common sense?

[tweet]https://twitter.com/FredKatz/status/663964943633395713[/tweet]

[nickhx2]

doesn't matter, though. they wouldn't suck enough for it not to be a good strategy. they literally have almost no chance to win if they are not allowed to make a three.

[thanumba2clippersfan]

We escaped with a 2 point win. I can't believe the refs called that foul and Barnes shot 3 free throws. Crazy finish and JJ was clutch. I got to watchbthe final minutes thanks to NBATV.

[nickhx2]

Not really a fun game to watch tonight

Good things
- Blake's really good
- JJ solid even though he was guarded heavily by tony allen
- Austin was good, too
- Doc maybe learning to stagger his starters? really hard to tell, because cp3 was playing limited minutes anyway. We'll see come next game. I highly doubt it, though.

Bad
- Pierce and crawford were abysmal. That flagrant was on pierce but crawford was halfway responsible. He wasn't ready for the handoff which is why it got stolen by green.
- Doc was just as abysmal as these guys. They couldn't defend anyone or hit any shots, yet lance and mostly wes were glued to the bench. When you have stars, they can make plays for you. Doc doesn't seem to know this, though, which is why he had pierce/crawford trying to make plays instead.
- If you are gonna have guys like pierce/crawford on your bench and play them, you need to be able to bench them for the entirety of the game if they don't immediately heat up. Instead, doc chose to play both at the same time.
- At one point the team had a lineup of smith at the 5, pierce at 4, crawford at the 3, rivers at 2, and cp3 at the 1. Memphis, meanwhile had randolph/gasol in the game. Seriously, how ridiculous is this guy when it comes this smallball obsession? Smallball doesn't even freaking work when your team can't outscore the other team, and on a night like this pierce/crawford weren't outscoring anyone.
- We really need to find a way to get smith playing effective basketball. He's too important to our success to not have him play a bigger role.

I know i harp on doc/crawford more than anyone else. But tonight's game was really hard to draw positives from. Doc really simply does not get it. For years he's kept trying to add offense to more offense and right when we thought he changed his philosophy, what do you know? When the game was tight, he kept doing the same. All the pieces are there for him to use for any situation, yet he doesn't seem to know how. I am extremely uncomfortable with our team's outlook given all of that.

[Ranma]

You call that progress, Doc?

[tweet]https://twitter.com/DanWoikeSports/status/663970599874621440[/tweet]

[Ranma]

this is why its such a retaded strategy . mem SUXS at 3 ball. 2 3's whole game... and we doing this ?
force them to make a 3. if they do so be it

[tweet]https://twitter.com/DanWoikeSports/status/663971068810366976[/tweet]

[LACtdom]

I saw a stat showing how Lance has only played a total of one 4th quarter minute all season long. Was Pierce/Jamal really that much better?

[Wammy Giveaway]

No offense to Memphis, but we should have won this game going away but that can be said about a lot of our games. This team keeps making mistakes and playing lackadaisically without focus. We keep tempting fate, which is why we habitually blow leads. The little things like hitting a free throw, grabbing a rebound, and not fouling keep eluding us.

Oh, I almost forgot. Almost getting a technical for not having enough players on the floor is embarrassingly sloppy. Never mind killer instinct, where is our common sense?

I really think Doc was desperately trying to get a 3-game losing streak going. However, he's afraid that if he loses three games in a row, something bad will happen. For example, last season, the Clippers lost to the Nets, Cavaliers and Raptors. Then, the Clippers lost Blake Griffin to a staph infection. Doc thinks the 3-game losing streak contributed to Griffin's injury. Tonight's game was a crossroad between wanting to lose and avoiding to lose. You could see it in his substitution patterns.

And here's the kicker: using Paul Pierce. Doc thinks that being reuniting with Pierce makes everything okay. The shots will automatically go in, they'll win 60 games instantly, they'll make the Western Conference Finals. He really believes that the history of his 2007-08 Celtics season would repeat itself. He can't go on like this. He doesn't understand that when history repeats itself, only the essence of its history is repeatable, not the participants. He doesn't have Leon Powe, P.J. Brown, Eddie House, Gabe Pruitt, James Posey or his other Celtics around. Danny Ainge is still in Boston. Tom Thibodeau doesn't have a job right now. The Clippers are not His Celtics. The Clippers are the Clippers (and I'm using it in name only, not as a derogatory term).

Doc was doing more than just tempting fate. He was goading at it, taunting "Nah, na-na-nah, nah," making raspberries, even doing a Jim Carrey impression (make up your own Carrey joke here).

I'm just... ah!

[QRich3]

I don't get all this new found hate on Doc round these parts. Yeah he's got his faults and he's a stubborn dude, but he's done way more good than bad with this team, he's a clearly above average coach (I'd say even more than that, but let's leave it there), and focusing on minuscule things like how he manages rotations in crunch time (in November!!), or how much he plays my favorite/hated player, is way too silly. It's the sort of stuff fans always think they can do better, because you don't need to know a lot about strategy to have an opinion on rotations.

We don't get out of the 1st round last year with an average coach, not the year before that. You guys are getting obsessed with foolish things like rotations in freaking November, but just brush out the overall strategy of the team and development of our stars, like he had nothing to do with it. Does Gentry still get all the credit for our elite offense or what??

I fully agree with him that we're trending the right way, and games at the start of the season are more about team development, working on strategy and chemistry, and finding the right combinations for each situation. The fact that we're winning on top of it is great news. If we lose a game or two here and there because of a wrong line up, well that's why we play the regular season, to see what works and what doesn't. I just don't get all the gratuitous criticism.

Anyway, ugly game till the very end, glad we were able to find a way to win. We now have a b2b on the road which I'll be glad if we split, then Detroit on Saturday and 4 days of rest before we receive the Warriors. Should be a fun week

[nickhx2]

I don't get all this new found hate on Doc round these parts. Yeah he's got his faults and he's a stubborn dude, but he's done way more good than bad with this team, he's a clearly above average coach (I'd say even more than that, but let's leave it there), and focusing on minuscule things like how he manages rotations in crunch time (in November!!), or how much he plays my favorite/hated player, is way too silly. It's the sort of stuff fans always think they can do better, because you don't need to know a lot about strategy to have an opinion on rotations.

We don't get out of the 1st round last year with an average coach, not the year before that. You guys are getting obsessed with foolish things like rotations in freaking November, but just brush out the overall strategy of the team and development of our stars, like he had nothing to do with it. Does Gentry still get all the credit for our elite offense or what??

I fully agree with him that we're trending the right way, and games at the start of the season are more about team development, working on strategy and chemistry, and finding the right combinations for each situation. The fact that we're winning on top of it is great news. If we lose a game or two here and there because of a wrong line up, well that's why we play the regular season, to see what works and what doesn't. I just don't get all the gratuitous criticism.

Anyway, ugly game till the very end, glad we were able to find a way to win. We now have a b2b on the road which I'll be glad if we split, then Detroit on Saturday and 4 days of rest before we receive the Warriors. Should be a fun week

In my own defense I've always thought him to be a good coach, just overrated. A lot of times you can see the offensive sets and they are a sight to behold. And honestly I think the defense is fine, except for the times the wrong guys are out there. I think you're right and that he's done a lot more for the team than most others could. He definitely took us past a point where someone like VDN ever could have.

Also, I agree that managing a rotation in a november game is minuscule, but only if it's in a vacuum. Looking at his track record and how he's consistently used the wrong personnel in the wrong spots, then going back to his lack of staggering starters, then going even further back to how he played favorites in boston... It's the overall of it that bothers me mostly, not that he does it in one game. Because what if we're in a game 5 against memphis and he's trotting out crawford on a defensive possession instead of lance/wes/luc? And the fact of the matter is that over time, these things are gonna take a game off of us here and there. I think for all his x's and o's, his rotation management is pretty trash because never at any point have I seen him improve upon that over the course of a regular season. To me that's a big deal.

If I knew for a fact that he was just using the RS as a way to feel the 2nd unit out properly, then great. But we know that is not what he does, at least not with the names he currently has on the bench. Trust me when I say this, I literally could not care less if we are the 8th seed if doc uses the RS to experiment with the lineups and try different dudes and see who actually has game. But when you keep playing the same guys the same minutes over and over, and then marginalize the impact of actual dudes who CAN help (lance/wes/pierce to an extent), then where is that process? To me that team development is not there.


Anyway, you agree with him that you see us trending forward. I respect your opinion and I often wonder if the things I say are too heavily influenced by my distaste for his flaws. But after watching the ugliest game of the season and one in which I didn't see a whole lot go right I honestly cannot see progress right now. And to me, that's on doc. You say it's newfound hate, but my misgivings have existed for a long while now.

[QRich3]

Hey, I've been the first guy to point to an excess of Jamal Crawford as the main reason for both of our last two playoff exits, even when the games were going on. That's on him as much as Jamal, I'm not gonna deny that.

Now that's the bad, let's look at the good too. Where do we stand against the Spurs if he doesn't spam the high double screen as soon as he realised the Spurs couldn't ever stop it? Where are we if he didn't recognize he had to go at Baynes time after time for easy buckets? Do we even get to game 6? You say he doesn't improve his rotations over the course of the season, but look at the Spurs series again, how much time did we play the all-bench unit we used to sport during the season? All of 5 garbage time minutes in the whole series, according to NBA.com/stats none according to my memory. Now let's look at how the team did when the bench came in. Except for the times the Crawford shared time with Redick or Austin, which they hemorrhaged points as expected, you see that most of the time he staggered their time with either Paul or Blake, and that those units actually did quite well. Does that happen if he hadn't built up their confidence in the RS? or he hadn't tried ways to make them effective? we'll never know, but my inclination is no it doesn't.

That's not to talk about our 1st round series against the Warriors 2 years ago. He took the trap-Steph trick out his sleeve and he was killed for it in the media and here after the 1st game. His stubborn nature made him stick with it, and not only did it pay off and we sent them home, a lot of teams in the league have been copying him on how to defend the Warriors after that series. This is the sort of stuff I like in a coach, even if it comes with some hard-headed questionable decisions.

Some times being hard headed means he plays Jamal more than I think he should, some other times it means he makes an adjustment no one but him saw coming, and sticks with it until it works. That's what elite coaches do. There's examples of every good coach overusing the players he trusts in, from Phil to Pop to Carlisle, that's a common trait of good coaches, but that's not what separates a good coach from a bad one. Fans tend to exaggerate that sort of stuff. Like they did in Boston because apparently he didn't play Avery Bradley enough and instead stuck with Allen for too long. A few years after that, Bradley is trash and Allen helped Miami win a chip. Fans just complain without having a clue (myself included). I trust him more than us generally.

[Ranma]

We can preface criticism of Doc Rivers with praise all the live long day. Nobody is really questioning Doc's play-calling and motivational abilities, but his stubborn tendencies have clearly been holding the team back. I'm really not in the mood to go into an in-depth argument about Doc's shortcomings as we've been there and done that. I'll just point out a few things after saying that despite having an elite starting core of players along with finally the missing depth for the bench, he still can't seem to address the relatively little things that are an impediment to actual progress despite handling the more complicated aspects of our offense capably.

We all understand that the early portion of the season is for developing chemistry and acclimatization for a newcomers, but again, results are not the issue at hand but the approach taken.

Why do we continue to play Jamal Crawford extended minutes at the expense of other players in need of time? It's not like he's been consistent or efficient. He's shooting 35.9% from the field for the season and 20% from beyond the arc. He's consistently a negative player in +/- rating and doesn't play defense. He's not a long-term investment given that he's on an expiring deal nor has he proven to be a playoff performer at all. Quite the opposite, actually. There's no excuse, rhyme, or reason for Crawford to get so much playing over Wesley Johnson and Lance Stephenson.

Everyone knows that defense is a big key to winning championships, yet Doc continues to be slow in fixing that. For all the praise and recognition that Doc gets for being a better coach than Vinny Del Negro (deservedly so) he still has not improved upon VDN's accomplishments significantly where it matters outside of offense. As I've said before, we haven't progressed beyond the 2nd round in the playoffs, which is as far as My Coach Vinny got us. A big reason for that is because we continue to be middle of the pack in defense. We're the only "elite" team to be outside of the top 10 in team defense.

Case in point: during VDN's 1st year as coach, the Clippers ranked 20th in opponent points allowed in 2010-11. In 2011-12, we moved up to 13th and in 2012-13, we shot up to 4th. Meanwhile, in Doc's 1st year as coach, the Clippers ranked 14th in opponent points allowed in 2013-14. During 2014-15, we moved down to 16th and now in the early part of the 2015-16 season, we're currently ranking 18th. Del Negro was able to improve the team defense in every year during his tenure as coach while Doc, on the other hand, has us going backwards so far season over season.

Yeah, it's early and we're a work in progress, but the concern is that we're not taking the right approach to addressing the defense. We continue to have people operate from the perimeter including 6'9" Josh Smith playing the role of wannabe PG. Our small-ball lineups has its advantages at times, but not defensively. Therein lies the problem. Doc continues to emphasize offense over defense when that is really not our problem, admittedly thanks to him. However, timely offense and execution during key moments is another issue...but I digress.

Just like Doc was slow to address our lacking bench depth, he has been slow to fix our defense because he's not using the proper personnel nor is he employing them in the right roles. He's even acknowledged improvement in defense is necessary by changing his defensive scheme. The most effective way to improve a defense is by utilizing capable defenders. Playing Wesley Johnson and Lance Stephenson early on not only helps their individual improvements but also the team's since it's easier to mix in bad defenders when the team as a whole is able to pick up the slack. It is utter nonsense for Crawford to be playing right now when we're in a state of developmental flux when, like I said, he brings nothing to the table defensively, isn't even performing offensive, not even in our long-term plans, and has proven to be a playoff no-show throughout his career. We're not even talking about Branden Dawson or C.J. Wilcox here. Johnson and Stephenson each offer more defensively while respectively provide balance on offense and upside for more offensive production.

Doc's so-called "stubbornness" seems more like a blindspot or addiction to shot-creation even at the expense of efficiency. Even with a hobbled Paul, a continually evolving Griffin keeps us near the top of the team rankings on offense, so such concern or emphasis on offense over defense is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive as well.

Look we've seen glimpses of great ball-movement and team basketball on both offense and defense, but what is troubling is that we seem to be regressing back to bad habits and a lot of it has to do with not playing the right players at the right time or in the right role. This goes beyond Crawford, even as he is the primary culprit, but also extends to Josh Smith and, at times last night, even Paul Pierce.

Geez. I didn't expect to expound this much.

[QRich3]

We can preface criticism of Doc Rivers with praise all the live long day. Nobody is really questioning Doc's play-calling and motivational abilities, but his stubborn tendencies have clearly been holding the team back.

I really think he doesn't.

Putting the defensive problems on him is as shortsighted as M2V's rants on Woodson f*cking up the offense last year. The problem with defense is the personnel, not his system or his rotations. Suggesting Vinny's teams were better defensively because they had a better Regular Season DRtg is equally false, as proven in every post season we've been in this decade.

Would you rather be above average on both offense and defense, or would you be the best offense in basketball with an average defense that has a chance to take it a notch up when it matters? If your answer is the former, maybe your answer is to trade Blake and DJ for more defense first guys. But say good bye to your elite offense. If not, tinkering with Josh Smith and Lance Stephenson's playing time in November is meaningless.

Basically, you're obsessing with petty little things that don't let you see the big picture of what he's doing here, imo.

PS- I'm not talking motivational abilities or any shallow stuff like that, I mean X's and O's.

[madmaxmedia]

I am fine with Doc as head coach, I think we'd be worse off for sure with VDN.

He hasn't been great with draft and young player development, but on a veteran playoff team picking at the bottom of the draft every year, that honestly the last of my concerns.I think he did a great job in the offseason as well, considering we don't have that many options to improve the team due to cap, etc.

I'm not sure about his rotations right now and Crawford's playing time though. I think he has a certain comfort level with Crawford that is less and less deserved with every passing year. Crawford was good when our bench was thin and he could carry a second unit himself (sometimes), but with a deeper bench we can do better now, or should be trying to establish a better offensive strategy. Maybe we are still in the process, so Doc is leaning on him more for the time being.

[nickhx2]

Hey, I've been the first guy to point to an excess of Jamal Crawford as the main reason for both of our last two playoff exits, even when the games were going on. That's on him as much as Jamal, I'm not gonna deny that.

Now that's the bad, let's look at the good too. Where do we stand against the Spurs if he doesn't spam the high double screen as soon as he realised the Spurs couldn't ever stop it? Where are we if he didn't recognize he had to go at Baynes time after time for easy buckets? Do we even get to game 6? You say he doesn't improve his rotations over the course of the season, but look at the Spurs series again, how much time did we play the all-bench unit we used to sport during the season? All of 5 garbage time minutes in the whole series, according to NBA.com/stats none according to my memory. Now let's look at how the team did when the bench came in. Except for the times the Crawford shared time with Redick or Austin, which they hemorrhaged points as expected, you see that most of the time he staggered their time with either Paul or Blake, and that those units actually did quite well. Does that happen if he hadn't built up their confidence in the RS? or he hadn't tried ways to make them effective? we'll never know, but my inclination is no it doesn't.

As I tried to say before he definitely does a lot of good things which we wouldn't have gotten with other middle of the road coaches. But I have to contend with your claim that he does improve his rotations, as I don't feel he does. At least I don't feel the spurs series is indicative proof of that, because almost unilaterally, most playoff teams shorten their rotations. So was doc using just crawford/austin/davis a product of him evolving his 2nd unit? Or was it a playoff thing that was bound to happen, as most coaches stick to their top 8 anyway? I'm a lot more inclined to pick the latter as I wouldn't say that it necessarily is an indicator of evolving his team's rotations. Regardless, most coaches generally go with whom they feel are their most reliable players toward the EOS anyway.

I can see that you think it goes both ways. Maybe you are right, in that if doc never swapped jamal out for barnes in certain lineups last year, that they'd look uncomfortable together towards the EOS/PS. By the end it's not like the team had many other options. But also towards the end, crawford was pretty wretched. How do we know for sure that it didn't hold the team back for the sake of trying to get crawford comfortable? There were several occasions where we needed to just play our best team on both offense and defense, and we'd get jamal crawford instead of jj redick. To me that is a glaring mismanagement, rather than an attempt to solve things. Because mostly, once you know what your best team is, you know. And if every game and possession gets tighter toward the end the way it did where one game could have made the difference, that is a pretty reckless gamble.

Furthermore, I can see the reasoning of doing that for a guy like austin. He needed to have some kind of burn to figure out any type of role as he was a midseason addition. But crawford was hampered by an injury that sapped away almost all of his effectiveness. Maybe i'm repeating myself but he's a known quantity at that point, so seeing what kind of magic recipes you can make with a jamal/starters lineup doesn't reveal anything new, or anything the team need to solve.

Last year, doc probably didn't feel as if he had many options to work with, and I can see why he pigeonholed himself into using certain guys. Whether one agrees with him dog housing spencer hawes or not, he did make a change based on hawes's play. But this year he has plenty of options but he's not benching our worst offenders. Crawford was trash last year and he is even more trash this year. Yet he's not receiving reduced playtime and the other options are either being restricted (lance) or barely seeing daylight (wes, or pierce in previous games where with 5 mins to go he only came in as a last minute shooter). Basically, hawes was crap last year, and he was zoned out even though we couldn't really replace him. Jamal is even worse than last year yet he's still getting substantial minutes in some critical times, and sometimes when we are in defense mode. Where is doc's rotation improvement there?

That's not to talk about our 1st round series against the Warriors 2 years ago. He took the trap-Steph trick out his sleeve and he was killed for it in the media and here after the 1st game. His stubborn nature made him stick with it, and not only did it pay off and we sent them home, a lot of teams in the league have been copying him on how to defend the Warriors after that series. This is the sort of stuff I like in a coach, even if it comes with some hard-headed questionable decisions.

These kinds of tactical decisions I actually agree with. If I said anything different then it was misstated or misinterpreted. If you have a plan you think that works, you execute it to the best of your ability to see if it works or not. To me that's how you beat teams in a 7 game series where both sides are constantly adjusting. I like this kind of gamble. But not the kind of personnel gambles that doc has been sticking to.


Anyway, it hurts my head to talk about these guys so much. My hope is that you are right and he is at some point in the very near future going to start perfecting his rotations. But I don't see it and I'm guessing by the end of the season when jamal's still shooting 25% from 3, he'll still be getting his 15 minutes a game.

[nickhx2]

p.s. i know he's shooting 20% from 3, but even i'll give him a little credit and say that will spike upward at some point.

[Ranma]

I really think he doesn't.

Putting the defensive problems on him is as shortsighted as M2V's rants on Woodson f*cking up the offense last year. The problem with defense is the personnel, not his system or his rotations. Suggesting Vinny's teams were better defensively because they had a better Regular Season DRtg is equally false, as proven in every post season we've been in this decade.

Would you rather be above average on both offense and defense, or would you be the best offense in basketball with an average defense that has a chance to take it a notch up when it matters? If your answer is the former, maybe your answer is to trade Blake and DJ for more defense first guys. But say good bye to your elite offense. If not, tinkering with Josh Smith and Lance Stephenson's playing time in November is meaningless.

Basically, you're obsessing with petty little things that don't let you see the big picture of what he's doing here, imo.

PS- I'm not talking motivational abilities or any shallow stuff like that, I mean X's and O's.

While it may be unpopular around here, I agree with a lot of MartinToVaught's criticisms even if I don't share the sentiment with which he vociferously delivers the message sometimes. Having said that, you seem to be under the illusion that it is an Either/Or supposition. We can't have a good offense without a mediocre defense? We can't have the benefits of Doc as coach without the detriments of him as GM?

I thought I made it clear that I have no problem with his x's and o's when I said there is no questioning his play-calling. Offense is not the problem as I've previously said before that I'm willing to sacrifice our standing as the best offense team in the league for better defense while also stating that I don't anticipate us dropping below top-3 in offense no matter what we do to improve the offense. As long as we have Blake, Chris, J.J., and D.J., our offense will be just fine. However, our defense should be fine as well, but it's not.

The problem is with defense, especially from our bench. You say this is due to a lack of personnel. Well, Doc should complain to the GM then. Oh, wait...he put the roster together himself. I've also previously said that I'd be more inclined to fire Doc before I'd trade Griffin or even D.J. For better or worse, Doc is our coach (and GM) this season, but that doesn't mean we can't hold him accountable or criticize his continued shortcomings.

Offense was never the problem, but during his 3 seasons here, he's still not able to put together a good defensive team. Your continued excuses on his behalf is exactly what enables his incompetence in that regard as Ballmer is letting him get away with this. Everyone has been criticizing him for not staggering his lineups or the lack of depth from the bench and he's only recently started to address this issues due to the complaints getting louder, yet you're still patient with his lack of progress.

Last season, I was all over his lack of defense and depth and the enabling voices on this board said, "Don't worry. Doc will figure it out by the time the playoffs roll around." How did that turn out, by the way? Patience has to be earned and not handed over blindly. The problem has been that he's been handed responsibilities blindly in our overzealous desire to get a championship with this core.

You say tinkering with the playing time of Smith, Stephenson, and presumably Johnson is meaningless right now, which makes no sense. The whole point of the regular season is to prepare for the playoffs and you do that by playing the best players in the best roles to get them acclimated and conditioned to perform at an optimal level. Another thing, I didn't necessarily state that VDN's teams were better defensively than Doc's since DJ didn't play that much for Vinny's teams, but despite that, he made marked improvement with the teams he had while Doc with a better consistent core has been going backwards. Simple as that.

The bottom line is our defense needs work and Doc has not made notable progress in 2+ seasons despite the core roster he inherited. I've already said that I think Doc can get us to a championship with this roster, but that doesn't mean I like or approve of his current development. You can buy into his "trending upwards" BS but the team has not been making actual progress.

Quite frankly, I continue to wonder why you keep giving Doc the benefit of the doubt in areas he's shown to be slow to address. Just the other day, he said that he's going to foul before opponent 3-point shots only because he's been burned by them too many times before. He's changed his defensive scheme implying that he hasn't had a handle in finding one for our personnel. You can blame the personnel all you want but Doc is ultimately responsible for that as coach and GM. He used to be unconcerned with hack-a-DJ but is now starting to take him out in those situations. He used to make 5-man unit substitutions but is now staggering subs. Seems to me that he's been slow to implement maneuvers that would be considered common knowledge practice, yet he continues his stubborn trial-and-error practice of playing guys on the perimeter and giving Crawford minutes in all situations despite that they would be what most people consider to be highly ill-advised, if not perplexing, moves.

We're trying to win a championship here and there's a reason the cliche "defense wins championships" is ubiquitous, so I'm going to focus on the one necessary thing that needs to improve and hasn't for us to reach that goal given the urgency of our closing window with this core.

[LACtdom]

The problem with defense is the personnel, not his system or his rotations.

You're saying that it's Josh Smith's fault that he can't defend at center and not Doc's fault for putting an above average defender out of position?

Would you rather be above average on both offense and defense, or would you be the best offense in basketball with an average defense that has a chance to take it a notch up when it matters? If your answer is the former, maybe your answer is to trade Blake and DJ for more defense first guys. But say good bye to your elite offense. If not, tinkering with Josh Smith and Lance Stephenson's playing time in November is meaningless.

Only an idiot would trade Blake (two way player) and DJ (possible DPOY) to improve defense. Why does our offense have to suffer to improve our defense? Would losing Jamal really hurt our offense that much? Is the combined effort of CP3 and Doc not enough to figure out a way to get a player like Lance or Johnson easy points? If so then we should get rid of both Doc and CP3 because both the Pacers and Lakers could with much cheaper coaches & point guards.

Basically, you're obsessing with petty little things that don't let you see the big picture of what he's doing here, imo.

I'm sure if you asked Pop, he would say (if he said more than two words) that the little things definitely matter when winning a championship. Also what is Doc actually doing? We've seen that what he says and what he does are two different things so I'm starting to question whether even he knows what he's doing.