Rocky5000 wrote:ryaningf wrote:Why can't you play Rondo and TA together? They have great chemistry together (combing on two end-of-the quarter buckets against the 76ers) and can be a terror defensively. If you play up tempo basketball and pressure defense in the backcourt, these two are a potentially dangerous combination. As long as you have at least two other shooters on the floor, you're fine (such as KG and Paul Pierce).
Humblebum has a great read on the TA situation, but I'd also like to add that putting TA with a quality PG would do a lot to help him reach consistency. Sure, TA can dribble penetrate and create on occasion, but by playing him with House, he's asked to do it way more than he should be. House went on an absolute terror when he was moved off-the-ball and Pruitt was able to play point. I imagine a similar thing would happen to TA if House went down for 10 games too.
To me, it's all a question of chemistry and who plays well with whom on that 2nd unit. TA and House don't seem to have any chemistry. On the other hand, Ray/House/Pruitt work really well together, as do Rondo/TA/Paul. If I were Doc, I'd tweak rotations so those combinations were on the court, avoiding, if at all possible, any TA/House backcourt pairings, which to my mind just hide what those two can do best, while exposing what those two do worst. From comments in the paper today, Doc seems to think a TA/House backcourt CAN work, and he specifically called on TA to bring the ball up the court and do more of the playmaking....in my mind, that's just asking TA to fail...we'll see, I guess.
Awesome points. I have seen TA and House play well together before though. The difference was that it was Tony doing the ball handling and House playing shooting guard. I actually believe that Tony makes a better point guard than Eddie, because he has the ability to cause the defense to collapse on him, which gives Eddie, Leon, and Big Baby open looks. When Eddie's in the game most of the trips he hands the ball off to another player in an Isolation situation, and then starts to play like a shooting guard. The problem with that is that it takes a lot of time off from the clock and if the first option doesn't work, House comes back to the ball, retrieves it and tries to set someone up again, taking even more time off. The frustrating part is that although Tony is a better playmaker than House, but he looses control of his dribble way too often. If he can control the ball, he would be a better fit at point guard.
TA is the better point guard, it's just that he's playing out of position. What he needs is a stable role which plays to his strength...he's a pure 2 and I'd like to see him play there for awhile, get his confidence, and THEN, maybe, you flirt with putting him at point for stretches.
Another thing to remember is that for the month of November, TA was averaging about 10 points a game, handling the ball well, and basically being the defacto point guard. Then the ankle sprain and the next two months were lost in terms of effectiveness.... Now that's he's had some time to heal, it seems he's back to that November form. TA, unfortunately, needs to be almost completely healthy to play to his ability. I just hope he can stay healthy the rest of the year. If so, the TA debate goes back on the back burner where it belongs.
Rocky5000 wrote:Not surprisingly Leon plays much better with Tony than he does with either Eddie or Pruitt, which I think may have been why Leon was having such a rough stretch with Tony out.
Yeah, that's an underrated point. When TA was playing well back in November before the ankle sprain, Powe was the other bench player who was playing well (House and Baby were playing below their ability in that month--House was shooting 20% from 3 I think). TA goes down in December, loses his effectiveness for a month, gets another sprain in January, sits out 11 games, and meanwhile Powe starts to really suck. They do compliment each other well, especially on pick and rolls.
The leaks are real...the news is fake.
I'm just here for the memes.
