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Better or worse than last year? How good/bad do you think they'll be?

I think the fact that we finally have a respectable nba bench makes the offense a little better than last year.

Better. Fournier getting solid minutes at the 2 will shore that position up. He can shoot 3s at an elite level and finish at the rim. We didn't have that consistently last year.

We really had nothing at SF last year since Fournier bounced around there and Harris was playing a lot of 4. I am high on Gordon at the 3, but more importantly we have depth there with Mario and Green sliding over.

PF - for sure. Ibaka can stretch the floor and can easily give a team 15 points a game.

C - Vuc is still here and he is our top scorer. I believe there is a drop off because we got rid of Smith and brought in Biz. But we needed offense around the C, not focused there.

PG - upgrade with Augustine. He spreads the floor and can knock down shots on teams who sag off him. I also think Elfrid will be a better shooter this season.

Main reason I like our offense better this year besides our bench being a lot better at shooting is how we will create buckets - defense. We will have a lot of fast breaks and transition points this season.

Our offense last year was pretty bad. It was very inconsistent night to night and lacked a go to scorer. While we still lack that go to guy, we should see a lot more consistency and better shooting.

It'll be better. I'm hoping for less long jump shots. Remember, people thought the team was going to be worse with AG and Dedmon in the lineup because they were replacing better offensively skilled players in Tobias and Vucevic* but we suffered in other areas more. We improved way more defensively than offensively over the offseason, but with the right mix of players we can easily be better than last year. It's not like we were anything special so this isn't a huge leap of faith.

I struggle to see how our offense is better without Oladipo and Harris. Fournier has a ton of pressure on him now. Before he thrived with several offensive threats around him. He'll be targeted on defense now. Vucevic has the potential to score more since teams can't double team him with Ibaka being a capable offensive threat. If your counting on Elfrid, remember this guy regressed under a better coach than he had in his rookie season. I'm less concerned about Payton's shot than his decision making, which was abysmal last season. He was a turnover machine in crunch time all last season. But that shot needs to improve, no guarantees there. Same with Mario.

Gordon has to average 15ppg this season for us to go anywhere. I do think this is possible, but I won't say likely. His time as a starter last season was encouraging.

I do agree that our bench could definitely make a huge difference, with Mario, Augustine and Jeff Green all being offensively competent.

In the end I can't say the offense will be better. We'll miss Harris and Dipo, but if some guys have marked improvement and this team develops chemistry it's not out of the realm of possibility. With 7 new players it'll be hard to predict.


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Max Power wrote:I struggle to see how our offense is better without Oladipo and Harris. Fournier has a ton of pressure on him now. Before he thrived with several offensive threats around him. He'll be targeted on defense now. Vucevic has the potential to score more since teams can't double team him with Ibaka being a capable offensive threat. If your counting on Elfrid, remember this guy regressed under a better coach than he had in his rookie season. I'm less concerned about Payton's shot than his decision making, which was abysmal last season. He was a turnover machine in crunch time all last season. But that shot needs to improve, no guarantees there. Same with Mario.

Gordon has to average 15ppg this season for us to go anywhere. I do think this is possible, but I won't say likely. His time as a starter last season was encouraging.

I do agree that our bench could definitely make a huge difference, with Mario, Augustine and Jeff Green all being offensively competent.

In the end I can't say the offense will be better. We'll miss Harris and Dipo, but if some guys have marked improvement and this team develops chemistry it's not out of the realm of possibility. With 7 new players it'll be hard to predict.


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Harris and Oladipo won't be missed due to the inefficient offense they provided (even though Oladipo's energy and defense will be missed), I think we'll be better off due to other guys getting an opportunity who have higher upsides in AG, Fournier and EP with our new additions this summer!

This team has an identity now no more excuses!

Max Power wrote:I struggle to see how our offense is better without Oladipo and Harris. Fournier has a ton of pressure on him now. Before he thrived with several offensive threats around him. He'll be targeted on defense now. Vucevic has the potential to score more since teams can't double team him with Ibaka being a capable offensive threat. If your counting on Elfrid, remember this guy regressed under a better coach than he had in his rookie season. I'm less concerned about Payton's shot than his decision making, which was abysmal last season. He was a turnover machine in crunch time all last season. But that shot needs to improve, no guarantees there. Same with Mario.

Gordon has to average 15ppg this season for us to go anywhere. I do think this is possible, but I won't say likely. His time as a starter last season was encouraging.

I do agree that our bench could definitely make a huge difference, with Mario, Augustine and Jeff Green all being offensively competent.

In the end I can't say the offense will be better. We'll miss Harris and Dipo, but if some guys have marked improvement and this team develops chemistry it's not out of the realm of possibility. With 7 new players it'll be hard to predict.


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It's fair to dispute how much better this offense is as a whole based on increased roles of Payton and Gordon, but replacing Oladipo and Harris with Fournier and Ibaka should be an upgrade in efficiency and spacing; the absence of both Oladipo and Harris won't contribute to a faltering offense as much as having a point guard who can't shoot and can't hit free throws, a coach who hasn't seen a league average offense in 5 years, and not having a go-to scorer.

When EP and Gordon were on the U19 team they used a swarming defense to create offense. With the rim protection we have now we could push the issue and take chances on defense.

Vogel is a completely different coach than even a SVG, I've heard him in the huddle saying lets get some steals and deflections. Most coaches don't like to take chances on defense or even go for an offensive rebound.

Hard to say. But it will be a positive to have the ball in Payton's hands a lot more with Oladipo gone. Them 2 sharing ball handling duties while on the floor together was stupid, considering Oladipo wasn't vey good at it and Payton is, and we didn't really do anything to make Payton any kind of threat when he was off ball.

hard to say but i'd say better, especially if we're running up and down like coach says we will

Just give the ball to Vuc and get out the way....

Probably the same to a little worse... While the team is more balanced per say, they don't have many reliable players that came put the ball in the hoop consistently.

MagicStarwipe wrote:Hard to say. But it will be a positive to have the ball in Payton's hands a lot more with Oladipo gone. Them 2 sharing ball handling duties while on the floor together was stupid, considering Oladipo wasn't vey good at it and Payton is, and we didn't really do anything to make Payton any kind of threat when he was off ball.

This is a hard point to make when Payton has both a worse TS% and a worse turnover rate.

I'm pretty sure our offense will be bottom 5 but I think our defense has potential to be top 5, once we bench vucevic.

Orlwillbeback wrote:

MagicStarwipe wrote:Hard to say. But it will be a positive to have the ball in Payton's hands a lot more with Oladipo gone. Them 2 sharing ball handling duties while on the floor together was stupid, considering Oladipo wasn't vey good at it and Payton is, and we didn't really do anything to make Payton any kind of threat when he was off ball.

This is a hard point to make when Payton has both a worse TS% and a worse turnover rate.

Those stats don't illustrate what I'm talking about. But how about look at assist to turnover ratio. Oladipo's turnover rate is lower because he's passing the ball to the rim lol. Elfrid is by far a better playmaker than Oladipo. The more the ball was in Oladipo's hands, the worse our offense ran.

Orlwillbeback wrote:

MagicStarwipe wrote:Hard to say. But it will be a positive to have the ball in Payton's hands a lot more with Oladipo gone. Them 2 sharing ball handling duties while on the floor together was stupid, considering Oladipo wasn't vey good at it and Payton is, and we didn't really do anything to make Payton any kind of threat when he was off ball.

This is a hard point to make when Payton has both a worse TS% and a worse turnover rate.

Payton doesn't even have a very high turnover rate for a PG, and it's very clear he is way better than Oladipo at being a point guard. Had .3 more turnovers but 2.4 more assists... feel like he could be an 8-9 assist type of player next year.

SOUL wrote:

Orlwillbeback wrote:

MagicStarwipe wrote:Hard to say. But it will be a positive to have the ball in Payton's hands a lot more with Oladipo gone. Them 2 sharing ball handling duties while on the floor together was stupid, considering Oladipo wasn't vey good at it and Payton is, and we didn't really do anything to make Payton any kind of threat when he was off ball.

This is a hard point to make when Payton has both a worse TS% and a worse turnover rate.

Payton doesn't even have a very high turnover rate for a PG, and it's very clear he is way better than Oladipo at being a point guard. Had .3 more turnovers but 2.4 more assists... feel like he could be an 8-9 assist type of player next year.

Payton is a better playmaker sure, but his inept scoring ability still made him less effective than Oladipo.

Cant be worse than last year. Better defense should mean more scoring opportunities.

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SOUL wrote:It'll be better.

[...]

with the right mix of players we can easily be better than last year. It's not like we were anything special so this isn't a huge leap of faith.

Optimus_Steel wrote:Cant be worse than last year. Better defense should mean more scoring opportunities.

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So because the offense was bad last year, it can't possibly get worse? Even if the team sheds 2 of its top scorers and most of the floor-spacing bigs?