GregAz wrote:BigO wrote:When the lineup you have out there includes Prince (pretty much a statue) and Kuzma (consistently inefficient), the ball is going to end up in Giannis or Dame's hand. You can't take turns spreading the floor and taking shots when you have have mediocre guys in your lineup.
There are things I think should be done that aren't being done on offense:
1) Stop using Brook solely as a statue 30 feet from the basket or as a pick and roll guy. Post him up down low (especially in certain matchups) and spread the floor. It's malpractice not to use his skills there and his ability to draw fouls.
2) Don't have Prince and Kuzma in the lineup at the same time.
3) Start varying your lineups depending on the matchups. Spoelstra has a changing lineup game to game. Unfortunately, it is uncommon for coaches to use their brain and think about those things. 90% of coaches are slow to change and Doc is certainly one of them.
While post ups would be slightly beneficial for our offense with brook, it creates a huge defensive liability as it creates more court for him to recover on defense. Brook just can't get up and down the court like that. Brook is one of my favorite Bucks of all time, but the reality is at this point in his career, he would be ideally used a lot more situationally than he is.
I kind of agree with you on number two, but more in the sense that I don't think Kuzma should be on the court with Giannis for any extended minutes, while Prince should only be on the court while Giannis is playing.
Kuzma is probably our third best overall player, but his minutes with Giannis just clog the lane too much. No one is respecting Kuzma as a shooter, and his defender just sags off close to the lane.
A lot of the focus here has been on getting Prince out of the starting lineup, but I think the bigger problem is Kuzma. His defense has been pretty good, but he is not a fit on offense when Giannis is playing. Prince's biggest defensive problems is that he's being asked to defend guards, which would be remedied if we put Trent in as our starting guard and brought Kuzma off the bench. Every minute that Giannis is not on the floor, I would play Kuzma, and only overlap the two of them for short 1-2minute bursts.
The problem of playing Kuzma when Giannis is off the court is that he can't be your main scorer. He's shooting 43% and 29% on threes.
Or to put it another way, if Kuzma is your third best player, you're in trouble.
