Post#51 » by nate33 » Wed Nov 22, 2023 1:32 pm
I watched the game last night.
I actually thought Deni played really well. The poor guy had to take turns guarding Giannis and Lillard, and then when Middleton starting torching Poole and Shamet, they put Deni on him. All 3 of those guys fared much worse with Deni on them. Offensively, the ball didn't find Deni much, but on a night when Kuzma and Poole were hitting shots, that's okay. Deni has always been a guy who scores in the flow or on the break. I don't expect him to try and take over a game offensively. He actually did a nice job as point guard for the second unit, setting up a bunch of guys for good looks. I don't know how he ended up with just 2 assists. I do know he got robbed of a steal that ended up being credited to Bilal when Deni was the guy who knocked the ball out of Middleton's hands.
The second unit fared poorly because Portis and Middleton hit all their midrange fadeaways, and Gallinari was ineffective as a second defender to double Giannis (or to grab the defensive board).
Honestly, the primary reason we lost the game was the lack of defensive rebounding. They had 16 offensive rebounds to our 5. You can't beat a good team with numbers like that. One real problem with our team is that not only do our diminutive guards play lousy defense, but they're ineffective in gobbling up loose balls off the defensive glass. Poole averages just 2.9 boards per 36, and Tyus just 3.5. With bigger, more active guards, guys like Kuzma and Avdija could focus more on boxing out so that our guards can swoop in and grab the board (like Westbrook used to do). But since our guards don't do that, our forwards think more about going to the glass and grabbing the board themselves and less about boxing out. Against a guy like Giannis (or Lopez; or Randle and Robinson from the Knicks) that's not going to work. Those guys will go over the back of our smaller forwards. The issue is compounded by our emphasis on transition offense. Perhaps it's time to give up the strategy of leaking out on the break and focus more on securing the defensive glass.
Despite the score, I thought the defense looked about the best it had looked all season. The rotations and overall communication was much better. There were much fewer mistakes defending the pick-and-roll than in recent games. To some degree, it's just a pick-your-poison situation with the Bucks. We have nobody capable of guarding Giannis one-on-one, and if you bring help, they get good looks from 3-point range. They hit their 3's down the stretch, going 5 for 8 in the 4th quarter.
