Road to a Championship start here, 2022 Draft.

[Whole Truth]

U seeing the fruits of Monte complaining about the officiating. Suns up 1 but r in trouble. NO's have not played well & r right there.

[Whole Truth]

Paul kicked his leg sideways & tripped Zion. They better get this right.

[Whole Truth]

This game should have never made OT, I will leave it at that.

10 games over 500

[Duke4life831]

CJ played well, Zion is a legit MVP candidate and now a full 1 game lead as the #1 seed. Just kudos all around.

[Whole Truth]

CJ played well, Zion is a legit MVP candidate and now a full 1 game lead as the #1 seed. Just kudos all around.

i can criticize, I can credit. Give jack his jacket, CJ played well in both Suns matchups.. which is great to see.

Still waiting though to see how this plays out when BI returns ... & CJ has to play 3rd, not 2nd option.

[Duke4life831]

CJ played well, Zion is a legit MVP candidate and now a full 1 game lead as the #1 seed. Just kudos all around.

i can criticize, I can credit. Give jack his jacket, CJ played well in both Suns matchups.. which is great to see.

Still waiting though to see how this plays out when BI returns ... & CJ has to play 3rd, not 2nd option.

Ya that is going to be the question moving forward. Because even yesterday CJ had 94 touches and a 6.4 Time Per Possession. Still fits in with what weve been saying is its situations like that where that is the type of games CJ is used to getting and getting a rhythm with those kinds of touches and time with the ball in his hands.

Because the thing is, this month Zion has been in the 75-80 touches (#1 on the team) and a 5 Time Per Possession. To me that is perfection for Zion. Even with BI returning, those numbers shouldnt see much change for Zion. Those are ideal Zion numbers. I think the big question is, can BI slide in and get 70-75 touches and 4.5 Time Per Possession (that can easily be done without effecting Zion's numbers) and then have CJ come in and pickup the left overs. But if youre going to have 2 guys with that amount of touches and time with the ball in their hands, those leftovers are going to be pretty sparse and can CJ find a legit consistent rhythm in that role. We have yet to see that.

I also want to be clear again, the offense is going to work no matter what because there is just so much talent there. Really the discussion is, what lineup can the offense be maximized and at its highest consistency.

[Whole Truth]

Ya that is going to be the question moving forward. Because even yesterday CJ had 94 touches and a 6.4 Time Per Possession. Still fits in with what weve been saying is its situations like that where that is the type of games CJ is used to getting and getting a rhythm with those kinds of touches and time with the ball in his hands.

Because the thing is, this month Zion has been in the 75-80 touches (#1 on the team) and a 5 Time Per Possession. To me that is perfection for Zion. Even with BI returning, those numbers shouldnt see much change for Zion. Those are ideal Zion numbers. I think the big question is, can BI slide in and get 70-75 touches and 4.5 Time Per Possession (that can easily be done without effecting Zion's numbers) and then have CJ come in and pickup the left overs. But if youre going to have 2 guys with that amount of touches and time with the ball in their hands, those leftovers are going to be pretty sparse and can CJ find a legit consistent rhythm in that role. We have yet to see that.

I also want to be clear again, the offense is going to work no matter what because there is just so much talent there. Really the discussion is, what lineup can the offense be maximized and at its highest consistency.

This is not unlike the Raptors situation with Gay, Derozn & Lowry ...Lowry at the time was & should have been the #1 option but took a back seat to Gay & Derozan's usage.

Gay was the vet of a young team being used as it's star & #1 option where he played in volume inefficiency much like CJ was early in the yr.. That team struggled out the gate & Masai traded Gay to blow the team up... Lowry was on deck but his trade to NY got nixed by Dolan.

As a result of not being able to trade Lowry, post trade, He moved to the front of the pekcing order to be showcased for trade & Derozan took off without Gay's usage & high volume inefficiency & Raptors never looked back on their way to a title..

Here's the thing... they didn't need to trade Gay for that to happen. It was corrected pecking order & usage that was the issue. If & when BI returns ..

What can't be missed whether it's Zion sitting, BI sitting or CJ sitting.. This team has played it's best ball this season.. with one of the big 3 sitting & Zion moving into a more prominant offensive role as u point out where CJ was that early in the yr. So Green is figuring out the pecking order... The next question is, is the usage & incorporation for all 3.

[Whole Truth]

Pels let a bad whistle throw them off their game.

[Whole Truth]

Tell me something.. Is that the same bald headed POS ref that keot giving the Suns the ball & if it is, What's his name ?.

[Funcrusher]

CJ is so bad man. Especially when he gives you 1 good game every week and gets your hopes up, just to play like homeless JR Smith the rest of the way. Like I legit feel defeated, this sucks. No amount of "culture" is worth this.

[Whole Truth]

I see people putting the blame of this loss on Jonas, LMAO

CJ -22
Zion - 15
Murphy - -14
Herb -12

Jonas -6 / Nance -21

Nance despite being -21 wasn't the issue either,, Pels shot 39% from the field & were outrebounded by 10.
Their rythym & shooting thrown off in part due to a bad whistle, Zion having to sit first hald with 3 early is where Utah turned the game.. Pels called for 3 weak moving screens, while Utah's moving screens were ignored. Those 3 subjective calls alone is an 18pt swing & if u look closely each call given when NO's were looking to make a run = momentum shift & Disrupted flow = part reason NO's shot 39% from the field.

It's games like these that will help the young team down the road, learn to play through this league's BS.

[Whole Truth]

Saw this conversation on a next forum & want to address it.

When he is on the court the Pelicans post a defensive rating of 111.9 per PBP Stats. That's nothing special but it would be good for 16th in the league. Nothing insane, but hardly enough to label him a defensive liability.

Another way of saying this is that he starts for a team that has the third best defensive rating in the league and single-handedly drags them down 13 places in that stat when he’s on the floor. Sounds like a defensive liability to me!

I'll start by stating the obvious, Nance is a better defender & pnr defender than Jonas.

This is also the 3rd team Jonas has been a part of that has reached top 5 in defensive rating, simplistically explain that away ..lol

The claim that Jonas is the sole reason that the defense slips 11 spots needs context. Jonas plays all or most of his minutes against starters & was pointed out by the OP's post in that topic, Jonas impact defensively is with efficiency & rebounding. Something that takes a hit with CJ struggling early with 30% efficicecny on the 20 shots he was averaging. Notice the climb in defense has also come with Zion's rise in efficiency & CJ's decrease in attempts..

People talk of Jonas ability to defend the high pmr but none talk about CJ's part in this.. In every instance that NO's attempted to compliment Jonas with Dyson or Jose he's bee better defensively, where most of his minutes are tied to playing with CJ... Whereas CJ benefits by getting to play with a better defensive compliment in Nance, Jonas doesn't get the same luxury defensively with being paired with CJ over Daniels.

His offensive efficiecny plays into his defense but his attempts are down mostly due to CJ's touches for obvious reasons & as I have mentioned earlier in this post... the defense on the whole has climbed because the team is now running through ZIon's efficicency ...

Nance was -21 vs Utah because NO's struggled that game to put the ball though the hole, that's how compimenting skillsets & balance works... It doesn't mean Nance played bad defensively.. Jonas was -6 because when the refs wweren't trying to cheaply foul him out, the offense flowed better in that matchup. 2 cheap moving screens, 1 travel, 1 wrong call on a rebound he gathered to foul him out is the refs swinging the game a potential 24pts with him on court where he ended with a -6.

As I pointed out in my post above, refs convieniently forgot what a moving screen was when Utah was blatantly using them & they effectively fouled out both Jonas & Zion in the first half where Utah took the game over with Zion on the bench... The game was controlled which allowed only one team to find am offensive rythym & the other to get cheap calls in theirs.

[Whole Truth]

Checked back to see how the discussion was going --lol

The last poster, who said this

"Well said. Instead of trying to upgrade over JV or Larry, we should be looking at how to upgrade over Hayes".

IS one of the smarter posts in the topic other than the OP.

You plug holes, not create them.. If the person u replace Hayes with can eventually upgrade the position, you're in the game..

More to the point. Jonas at 15m has more court value than trade value. Hayes should have been the player to potentially unseat Jonas but they might have to explore the draft or trade for that option with Hayes drawing DNP's.

In the offseason, I had Poeltl as a target considering he's expiring & the Spurs current situation but maybe Magic would sell on Bamba with this upcoming draft. Poeltl is one of the better deenders 6' in & he can defend the perimeter, pnr & block shots while not being a rebounding liability... He's younger & if extended could be a potential long term replacement or place holder to one drafted..

Unless NO's fully believe trading Jonas is the final nail to a contender. They have the pick capital & depth to wait for a more ideal target & replacement, that's also considering the cap sitatuation.. This upcoming draft alone with the Lakers pick has a wide array of options at the position from the #1 pick out... u never know...

Imagine trading Jonas with draft capital for an expensive upgrade with the team bumping the tax & then NO's get lucky in the draft. lol

In short - don't be impatient & stupid. Opportunity with NO's draft capital will eventually present itself, there's no reason to force an issue that doesn't currently exist. In the 2 short yrs Jonas has been here as a starter, NO's are currently tied for 1st in the division.. he obviously not the sole reason but it's not like it was before him with NO's missing the PO's..

Ya understand...

[Whole Truth]

Memphis bitch slappin the Bucks .. up 25 half way through the 2nd Q.

[Whole Truth]

LMAO, JV didn't even touch him, bricked off balanced layup missed, 2 FT's.

[Whole Truth]

If Zebra's insist on these weak foul calls, NO's need to give them something to call.

[Whole Truth]

Looky looky, they called one of Utah's many moving screens, good to see.

[Whole Truth]

Graham outplaying CJ

[Whole Truth]

Nice step in 3 for CJ, hopefully he's heating up. The spacing has been poor.

[Whole Truth]

Nice 3 by CJ to end the half but that 8-0 Utah run was ignited by his poor shot selection.