madmaxmedia wrote:nickhx2 wrote:btw i would wanna note that when you have a situation where the number of "ifs" required to make it work are beyond count
that's not a good thing
There are definitely basketball pros and cons here, and I agree with others concerns about how Ty is gonna use him. But TBH does Bones Hyland propel us to the conference finals this year? (as much as I want to see him play.)
One thing I’m fairly confident of is that Russ is not going disrupt our locker room. He needs this to work even more than we do, if he wants to find a decent situation next year.
if people were out here saying "oh no, it's all over because bones isn't gonna get the burn he deserves" then you know, i suppose you could make that argument.
but i haven't seen it and i'm certainly not saying that myself. moreover, presented that way, that argument relies on a few things
a: bones doesn't contribute in just enough of a way to help us contend for WCF+
b: we didn't have the pieces before the westbrook addition to contend for WCF+
c: the addition is a straight up static VORP equation of a player's value added to the team that doesn't greatly impair other dynamics going on with the team.
so...
A - i mean, we don't know. like sure i'll go with not likely, and i'm sure most would agree. but maybe it coulda been enough? we can't really know. what we do know is that the second unit looks transformed, and that alone may have been enough to push the team over the top. and bones may have been just enough of a contributor to that that you can count him as an impact player in that regard.
B - i guess again, we don't really know. but that argument of bones vs westbrook still relies on that premise, and that's proving my point. and again, i'd point to the overall improvements over the past 3 games to say "well, sure looks like we fixed some of our biggest issues, and this team with few weaknesses is absolutely a contender." if you asked me, i'd say we were pretty much set and ready to go for the rest of the season.
C - honestly pretty exhausted going over all this stuff ad nauseum, not necessarily with you, just over the past couple weeks in general. but here i go again anyway. dumb turnovers. dumb shots in critical moments. stagnant offenses. players dorking around on defense. lue playing russell westbrook 35 MPG and mann his customary role-player 15mpg : why? "BECAUSE F*** ROBERT COVINGTON, AND NOW F*** TERANCE MANN, TOO, THAT'S WHY" - says ty lue. i could go on but, eh. i mean we fixed the thing, and then now we're re-introducing a worse version of reggie jackson to unfix the thing. adding westbrook spins all kinds of gears at once, a couple in an ok direction, but many others in the opposite.
like, sure it's only 3 games, but this was a totally different team in those three games. and now it's gonna be totally different again. and we have what, 21 games left? with a coach who's spent two years overplaying the wrong guys based off of namesake?
all of this is my idea of a bad time. it's one thing to take a gamble because you didn't have much choice anyway. and maybe before the trade deadline, i think we are at that point. but it's another to take a gamble when you're already doing well enough that if you simply don't mess with the program, you're in great shape. i think we clearly distanced ourselves from the former to be in the latter, and going backwards is just the absolute worst.
