Calinks wrote:I'm not freaking out because I just don't think we are good enough, particularly with starters out, to beat the top two teams in the west. They are just better times by a significant magnitude. We could get a win here and there against them but 7/10 times they will win. I think that is fine, we are not a final product. Looking at the long game here and we are building up to truly compete with those teams in the near future.
I wouldn't be too down on KAT here either, he was amazing in that Golden State game but didn't get much help at all. As for last night, yea he wasn't as good, players will have off nights, but again, the team was pretty bad at points too. We just don't have the horse right now to consistently take on these amazing teams. If we shot like the Suns and Warriors did, we would have won those games, they are far better at executing than we are, that's something they have built up over recent seasons, we aren't there yet but we are making progress.
More time together, some roster moves, we are on our way to being better.
I mostly agree. What frustrates me is our inability to adapt our offense or defense based on other teams game plans. Finch’s high wall was innovative and mostly successful to start the season, but teams caught on to it and figured out how to beat it. The last five games we have seen an enormous number of uncontested 3s by our opponents, and that will be the case for the next five unless Finch adapts. I don’t know why anyone thinks a run out is a good defensive answer to an open 3 point shooter (especially in the corner,) but it just isn’t. More often then not the shot will not be blocked, deflected, or altered by the run out. Likewise, when the defense doesn’t collapse to guard the roller the roller gets an easy bucket. The system is broken.
On offense teams have figured out quickly the way to beat us is to force us to take 3s. It isn’t a coincidence we shoot such a high volume, opponents guard the paint. Organized chaos was scary when I first heard it and now it is just plain disappointing. We have a found a lot of success with PNR but without Dlo we cannot really run it. Finch needs to encourage more off ball screens and offensive sets to make our offense less predictable.
Finally, and I cannot stress this enough, our players must start boxing out. We lose games when opponents get 2 or more shots in key moments. We had a comeback cooking down 4 midway through the 4th. We gave up a couple of bad second chance looks and suddenly we were down 10. This kind of nonsense cannot continue, and it can only be fixed by teaching the fundamentals, then demanding them of the players.
I like Finch, and I am nowhere near ready to turn on him. But he needs to be responsive to what is happening and less stuck on his existing schemes.
