Post#47 » by conleyorbust » Mon Jan 28, 2008 7:33 pm
I think that kb and josh are making some valid points. I have been an advocate of finding a starting caliber point guard for some time, hence my screen name. Still, I have been pleasantly suprised by our team's ability to push the pace without one. Specific to last night's game (but can be applied to all games where we have a large lead before the fourth - Denver, Chicago, Seattle), we imposed our will on the Blazers in the first half. We did that by not taking our foot off the throttle. In the second half, if you watched, we don't try to do that. Instead of pushing at every opportunity, we slowed the pace down to protect a lead.
KB, look at it empirically. Go to where we began to build a lead in the first and look at the amount of time that goes off the shot clock between the beginning of our possessions and the end of them. Then go to the fourth and look at the same thing in that situation. In the fourth, too many of our possessions lasted 19 or more seconds culminating with a shotclock violation with 9 seconds left. Now I'll admit that there are reasons to play clock-ball, good reasons. However this team has shown that it cannot let off the gas and when it does we lose.
As far as having one player who can execute and score in the half court? I'll agree with you to an extent but again, you are completely ignoring the empirical evidence from last season. When we had Joe, we won 38% of our games, without Joe? 36%. Why is that? Did we switch to a more uptempto style to take advantage of the Joshes' and Marv's athleticism? No, we gave the ball the Smith and let him attack. He did it with the same effectiveness Joe had had all season.
There is a reason we never blow teams out. We don't play for the win, we play to protect the loss but it is obvious that a certain style of play works for this team and every time we are winning we get away from it. I blame the players for their problems in the half court: Marv and Joe's lack of a killer instict, Josh's propensity for turnover, the suckiness of our bench; but I blame the coach for telling the players during a time-out, "alright guys, we have to protect this lead... lets limit the amount of possessions they can get by using up the clock." If we are going to do that, I think Marv and Smith should get the ball more often because on a per-possession basis they are more likely to draw a foul.
As far as us not being able to run in the second: Do you think the players don't want to run? Of course they do, they love it. Do you think Nate McMillan said he didn't mind it if the Hawks controlled the tempo and built a 15 point lead in the first because he knew his team could slow it down in the second? Of course not, he was probably thrilled by the predictability of our offense down the stretch. Look at the game logs for almost any game where we had a big lead before the fourth. In almost every case we win by an uncomfortable margin, go look at the shot-clock we waste in the fourth.
