bigfoot wrote:Ghost of Kleine wrote:bigfoot wrote:
Old guys that don’t move the needle. The bench needs guys that can create and score. Neither of them fit that mold. I’d be more excited getting Hayward.
Between Monte and Hayward I’d believe our bench would have a chance of scoring.
I want Covington and Thiess for their defensive versatility, size, etc
in addition to the fact that both can reliably also space the floor when needed too. And we don't need more scoring in the starting lineup with three elite offensive super weapons in Bal, Booker, and KD that any of those three can go off for 50+ points on a given night man. Also you're saying the bench needs scoring more than defensive versatility, but in adding Covington and Theiss, our bench would have:
Morris- 42% from three. And 5 points average.
Allen- 46% from three. And 13 points average.
O'neale- 37% from three. And 8 points average.
Theiss- 37% from three. and 6 points average.
Plumlee- 0% from three and 5 points average.
37 points 2nd rotation.
Gillespie- 39% from three. And 3 points.
D Lee- 37% from three. And 8 points.
Dunn- 20% from three. And 8 points.
Bol- 42% from three. And 5 points.
Ighodaro- 0% from there. And 13 points.
37 points 3rd rotation.
So really even at their baselines and without potential improvements, you're still getting upwards of
74 points from the bench. And possibly more at times if the chemistry for our starters is better than last season. Now I do respect your concerns over scoring from the bench, but scoring wasn't what eliminated us from the playoffs in the first round in an embarrassing sweep by a younger upstart team! We got handled in large part due to our overall lack of size, physicality, passivity, and inability to stop opposing teams' runs or even slow their star players/ other scorers down much if at all. This indirectly forced our big three to have to play heavier minutes in order to try to rebuild/ Sustain our leads in games which also wore them out earlier in games, reducing their overall efficiency in those 3rd and 4th quarters.
The other part of your argument is that we also got beat by teams beating us by the sheer volume of threes that they put up against us cumulatively outshooting our midrange-loving star trio. But that can easily be mitigated by simply having our big three shoot more threes instead of twos, adding better perimeter defenders/ switch defenders, POA defenders to limit kick outs (which we already have done), and bringing back quality point shooters. And our bench as I'm suggesting under these very conditions would now have no less than 6 very solid to elite three-point shooters just mixed on our bench. So our bench scoring should really be fine man. Moving Allen and O'neeale to the bench would give our bench that scoring boost.
Now I'm a fan of Hayward too and love that Idea for his scoring, playmaking, and vet presence. But Hayward is very much a one-way player at this point, and would at best be a defensive neutral to negative for us. So we'd be pretty much repeating the same mistakes as before in adding one-way players that can score at times but would give up as many points as they'd contribute on the other end. And as far as moving the needle, how much did Okogie and Roddy really move the needle for us if comparing them to Covington and Theiss as potential vet min options? Boston and Minnesota gave us a solid blueprint/ template for success. The Celtics won the championship on the premise of solid two-way player depth and three-point shooting. What I'm suggesting allows us to promote both of those criteria.
Of those ten bench players you listed exactly one can get their own shot and create for others. Shutdown Monte and the bench falters. Sure one of Booker, Beal, or Durant can be on the floor with Monte but ... isn't Monte just replacing Eric Gordon who was the only reliable scorer off the bench? The goal of the game is be able to put the ball in bucket. Last season our bench was the lowest scoring in the league. Adding defenders who can shoot the three ball but can't create and score doesn't fix the problem.
But then neither does adding players who can't really defend and give up just as many points to the opposition as they might score. And these same players when they have nights wherein they struggle shooting which does happen because no one shoots great all the time only further exacerbate the issue of needing our big three to have to come back in just to try and rebuild the very leads that these one-way players you're coveting give up whenever our big three go to the bench because again, these players can't really defend well enough to stop runs from opposing teams. So when our big three builds a big lead in the first and 2nd quarter, they go to sit down and try to get rest, but absent of these players having outlier shooting nights to sustain our leads with our big three on the bench, which they obviously DON'T CONSISTENTLY DO otherwise they wouldn't be available to us for the minimum anyways, as soon as our big three try and rest, they have to come right back in to try and get our leads back because these offensive players can't always carry the offense as needed.
The opposing teams just go on quick runs getting easy buckets and getting their offense going at our expense, building offensive confidence then our stars have to come back in early and play heavy minutes instead of resting to stay fresh for the 3rd and 4th quarters of games, and the heavy minutes clearly take their toll, and our players end up tired, and become less efficient, even careless at times just because they're already fatigued and trying to just keep us in front of other teams till the clock expires rather than being able to close the game strong. Their constant basic mistakes are a clear indicator of fatigue man. And the whole lowest bench scoring in the league is misleading because we lacked depth in multiple areas! Sure we needed more scorers, but we also got easily outscored by opposing benches because our defense sucked and we just couldn't stop anyone (including opposing benches from getting easy high-percentage shots. Our perimeter defense sucked and our rim protection and switch defense also sucked allowing the team's benches to get hot and go on heaters from three against us.
This is directly why a prominent discussion topic around our team last year was that our big three had to have exceptional scoring nights in order to beat most teams because quite simply, we couldn't hold leads or even slow down or prevent opposing teams from constantly going on runs against us, and opposing teams frequently outscored us because we didn't have any top-level defenders to slow down/stop other benches, etc from going on repeated runs against us, getting easy shots against us at the rim, building confidence from that and then getting wide open threes against us because our defensive rotations were always late too, and we'd give up too many wide open threes. Then other teams' scorers go on heaters against us and have career nights. The Suns themselves finally recognized this correlative pattern and targeted strong/ switchable defenders in the draft when they could've just as easily targeted offensive scorers who were still on the board in our range. Why do you suppose that is man? Why do you suppose they targeted Plumlee? Was it for his scoring prowess? Of course, more scoring helps, and yes, the object of the game is to put the ball in the basket. HOWEVER, that premise really only works when you can always outscore the opposition for the entirety of the game ending up with the higher score. Our offensively elite team was built on that very premise that you're promoting now.
Remind me exactly how that worked out for us last season in the record, postseason outcome, and our big threes' overall efficiency in the late stages of games. Also, how did the Timberwolves get/ hold the top seed in the league even though they were clearly younger, more inexperienced, and didn't have nearly the talent that we had offensively? How were they so dominant last season? or really the Celtics for that matter? How did the Celtics dominate the Mavs offensive juggernaut with the consensus best backcourt in NBA history of Doncic and Irving? Did they just outscore them mostly, or did they limit BOTH DEFENSIVELY, forcing the lesser non-star Mavs players to try and beat them? Why is the popular saying "Offense wins games, but defense wins championships" apparently still hold true? Offense is great to have, and sure, you can never really have too much! BUT again, that only works if you can outscore the opposition more consistently than other teams you're competing against. Because IF you can't consistently outshoot those other teams, because you're repeatedly giving up easy runs throughout games and then needing to have key players log heavy minutes throughout games rather than resting to be optimally rested to close games, just so you can rebuild leads that you gave up too easily, and letting other teams benches also go on runs, then you're not really doing anything more than spinning your wheels and repeating a cycle of futility and mediocrity.
IF this wasn't so, then our outcome in both the regular season and postseason would've yielded much better results. The bottom line is that we built an offensive juggernaut that got dominated by a strong defensive team in the Wolves, The team that won the championship was just built on offensive dominance but quality depth of two-way players that could stop or slow down other teams' offensive players. And in being able to stop and slow down opposing teams' best offensive players/ offensive schemes, and with their physical defense, they held leads and limited the opposition's ability to make effective runs giving them a cushion to be able to launch a ton of threes only further adding to their dominance. Our team focused heavily on your offensive premise over defense and finished as a 6th seed and then got embarrassed in the first round of the playoffs. The other two strong defensive teams (their respective schemes) in Minnesota dominated us handily, and Boston also dominated the league, and then went on to win the NBA championship by again shutting down/limiting Doncics' and Irvings' scoring abilities. And then when their teammates also got shut down and became frustrated defensively, that opened the door for Boston to start reigning threes because they knew the opposition couldn't go on consistent runs against them. Are you seeing a pattern here yet man?
