pacers70 wrote:Here are some of my takes for the game and series so far.
Matthews and Evans both suck. 2 weeks ago I thought I would never say this but...I would rather see CoJo get the bulk of minutes at SG than either of those guys.
I don't understand why we don't run Bogey off of screens more, like we did with Reggie. Bogey in ISO is just not a very good play, in my opinion.
Over the past few weeks, Bogey has played himself back into the Cap Hold. There was a time when I thought Bogey could get $20-22 million next year. I think he has played himself back to the $15-18 million range. Whether the Pacers should re-sign him or not depends on how Free Agency and trade go this summer.
Sabonis and Turner have played themselves off of the "protected list". I think prior to the playoffs, it would have taken an unbelievable offer for KP to think about trading either of them. I don't think KP will shop them but if a good trade comes along and we have to include one of them, I don't think he will hesitate.
I hope we can win 1 game and keep the others respectable, but I am not very optimistic. I think we are going to have a 26-8 or 31-12 type quarter every game. We can't win when we do that.
I agree with some of the general sentiment of this post. I think Matthews role should really be as first guard off the bench, 6th man type of thing. He's really been trying his best to overplay that and fill in for Oladipo, but he never could fill in for Oladipo. No one on our roster could, and only a few guys in the league could.
Also, agree in that ISO Bogey is a bad play, and I really hold it against Nate for playing that last night and clearly asking everyone to defer to Bogey. I think Bogey plays best as part of a team system that free flows. I saw entirely too many times last night that guys passed up wide open shots to try to immediately pass the ball to Bogey and either be unable to, or give it to Bogey in a bad spot. NO, I don't hold this against Bogey, but the game plan. Only 8 attempts overall for Myles and Dom? That seems unconscionable. Unless we could net a clear upgrade like a Kawhi (highly unlikely), I still think our best avenue for success is to re-sign Bogey up to the early bird rights and draft a long-term successor to bring along slowly.
As for Myles/Dom. Well, I still think they have a ton of untapped potential. As for Myles, a couple quotes from a recent article by Scott Agness in The Athletic stand out:
The conversations with Turner began at the end of last season during his exit interview and the message was consistent: We need you to be that defensive guy.
He heard it from everyone from within the Pacers’ organization, from McMillan to defensive coordinator Dan Burke, big man coach Popeye Jones and the front office. Now it was about acting on it.
[snip]
“Listen, I’m gonna be real,” he began. “If you look at Myles and the type of player he can be, it’s almost scary. He’s long, he can roll to the basket, he can pop from midrange, he can pop from for a 3-point (shot) and he can play defense. Most bigs can just play offense or just play defense, or they can just roll to the basket. Myles has every tool that a big in this league needs at some point during the game.
“With him, it’s just about him putting it together and with young players, you got to be extremely patient. You look at Vic in his first six years, some players it just takes longer to get it. I think you’re starting to see him turn that corner because he’s actually talking during the games more, he’s actually being more vocal. Before we’re going out to the huddle, he’s actually talking.
