PG - this is the opposite of fun

[Jeff Van Gully]

What is he supposed to do at this point though? Bench the whole starting 5? We are a disappointing team for a lot of reasons but players own their effort IMO, especially the starters.

this is the part we don't know about but stake our argument claims (usually in harmful absolutes) on a message board.

i mean... this is what i wish i could understand behind closed doors. but we're just left the entertainment product to evaluate when we see it.

Yup, only they know the full extent of what is going on and only they can fix it.

Here are things that most aren't taking into account:

1. Jalen is clearly compromised and came into the game that way
2. KAT's knee might not be fully recovered
3. Mitch was clearly ill before last night
4. General exhaustion from OG, Hart, Mikal, etc...

Now these aren't excuses because I'm sure DET is dealing with their own stuff on the other side but these guys aren't 2k avatars whose health bar refills after every game.

At the same time, issues of focus are popping up. DET isn't better. They are barely executing their own offense. They are a hell of a lot more focused though.

and gully AF. would love watching this if it weren't us on the other end.

[Fury]

Sometimes the truth is boring.

So none of the players are culpable at all ? It’s all just coaching. Cmon guys lol

We over rate our players historically, and we also love just ignoring their defense and overall effort.

KAT, Brunson and OG when healthy are above average starters. But not number 1 player on title team types. They will cost us 80% of our cap. There is no easy way out. There's no short cut home.

There's no easy, no easy, no easy way out

[mpharris36]

Read on Twitter

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i often genuinely wonder what people think johnnie does/did to assume he would be a better HC. like, what insight did we get and what do we know about his coaching other than him being young and not thibs?

real question.

our offense flowed significantly better last year (especially in the playoffs) with far less talent and especially with our injuries later in the playoffs. I can't specifically say that is directly correlated with Bryant leaving...but the Cavs offense also sky rocketed as well. That could be all Kenny Atkinson as well. But I'm willing to take a chance on a young guy that seems to be valued in every spot he has been (utah, knicks, and now cavs). All he has done has been a winner.

[Jeff Van Gully]

Read on Twitter

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i often genuinely wonder what people think johnnie does/did to assume he would be a better HC. like, what insight did we get and what do we know about his coaching other than him being young and not thibs?

real question.

Same for me. He's never been the architect of anything. He's just been around.

Now the fact that success has followed him is noteworthy, but that doesn't necessarily mean you are ready for the big chair.

yeah. i see he's in a new situation and the team is thriving. but the team thrived here with him too.

his new team is a whole different situation: players, strategy, etc. surely he plays some role in it, but what?

the only thing i know firmly about johnnie is that he works well with guard development and is really close with donovan mitchell, which i imagine strongly influenced his decision to work there.

[mpharris36]

defense from Game 5:



defense from the series updated:



clearly the Pistons are just trying to isolate brunson onto the ball.

as they should. that's what i would do.

their defense as a whole does a great job of trapping the ball and closing off most if not all passing lanes. they deserve a lot of credit for the execution on that end. because even when we want to move the ball we can't sometimes.

Its not that hard to defend us though JVG. So much stagnation. Not enough player and body movement. Walking the ball up the court and wasting valuable time to get into our sets (even it we are running sets). No sense of urgency when even running a set. If the first option is taken away we have no counters...we have no adjustments its just results in a bail out last second shot and hope and pray it goes in.'

Players need to be accountable when a set is run to execute...but are we really talking about execution this late into the year...that ultimately falls on the HC...

[GONYK]

what I can't reconcile is everyone is saying this isn't as tough as a team and that is why we aren't separating ourselves from last years team.

Our defense isn't the issue this series...outside of Brunson everyone is defending either on par with the skill set or better (outside of maybe Deuce who looks like a shell of himself on both ends).

We didn't even lose the rebound battle. This has nothing to do with "toughness"

It's the offense that is losing us these games and execution. We are 11th in the NBA in OFF Net Rating in the playoffs.

We have more offensive talent this year than last and we are struggling. And our defense is far better this year than last playoffs.

I know its year one with a lot of new bodies but the fact we didn't work out a lot of the same issues of offense/execution from early in the year is troublesome. We got off to that amazing offensive start when teams would just play there center on KAT....we were nearly breaking records for how good our offense was playing. And now that teams have adjusted we haveven't made a single adjustment to that when teams have been playing us this way since like December. Zero excuse for this ****.

There's really only one adjustment that matters, but the players on the floor won't do it.

SHOOT THE F*CKIN 3

Boston had more 3PAs midway through the 3rd than we had all game. They were shooting 15% and it didn't matter to them. You have to stretch the defense given them more to think about than packing the paint.

[nedleeds]

It's not like when we go into ISO chuck mode there are complex actions that happen off ball Warriors style. Also you can't even design those because the ISO chucking might take 8 seconds of spinning faking ducking and other BIG3 ****.

[HopelessKnick]

this is the part we don't know about but stake our argument claims (usually in harmful absolutes) on a message board.

i mean... this is what i wish i could understand behind closed doors. but we're just left the entertainment product to evaluate when we see it.

Yup, only they know the full extent of what is going on and only they can fix it.

Here are things that most aren't taking into account:

1. Jalen is clearly compromised and came into the game that way
2. KAT's knee might not be fully recovered
3. Mitch was clearly ill before last night
4. General exhaustion from OG, Hart, Mikal, etc...

Now these aren't excuses because I'm sure DET is dealing with their own stuff on the other side but these guys aren't 2k avatars whose health bar refills after every game.

At the same time, issues of focus are popping up. DET isn't better. They are barely executing their own offense. They are a hell of a lot more focused though.

and gully AF. would love watching this if it weren't us on the other end.

Imagine playing the clearly less talented team 9 times this season and losing 5 out of 9. Actually 6 out of 9 if we are honest. And imagine now that less talented team being without their second best player and best frontcourt defender the entire series and THEN imagine someone saying:

KAT's knee is not 100% recovered. And general exhaustion from OG, Mikal, Hart (I wonder why)......

[Jeff Van Gully]

defense from Game 5:



defense from the series updated:



clearly the Pistons are just trying to isolate brunson onto the ball.

as they should. that's what i would do.

their defense as a whole does a great job of trapping the ball and closing off most if not all passing lanes. they deserve a lot of credit for the execution on that end. because even when we want to move the ball we can't sometimes.

Its not that hard to defend us though JVG. So much stagnation. Not enough player and body movement. Walking the ball up the court and wasting valuable time to get into our sets (even it we are running sets). No sense of urgency when even running a set. If the first option is taken away we have no counters...we have no adjustments its just results in a bail out last second shot and hope and pray it goes in.'

Players need to be accountable when a set is run to execute...but are we really talking about execution this late into the year...that ultimately falls on the HC...

heard. and great point. some of the more aggressive pre-determined actions we see other teams use on offense put a different kind of pressure on the defense than a philosophy that is more reactive to what's being given.

but i think all of those things exist on more of a continuum than we sometimes give credit for. i don't necessarily see those things as an either/or proposition but more of a sliding scale that probably needs to be more in the other direction from where we are.

i love watching the way kenny makes cleveland move on offense. detroit would have a much harder time with that. we play into their strengths a lot. and if we're going to do that, then we have to be the team with the bigger metal bat.

[Jeff Van Gully]

Read on Twitter

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i often genuinely wonder what people think johnnie does/did to assume he would be a better HC. like, what insight did we get and what do we know about his coaching other than him being young and not thibs?

real question.

our offense flowed significantly better last year (especially in the playoffs) with far less talent and especially with our injuries later in the playoffs. I can't specifically say that is directly correlated with Bryant leaving...but the Cavs offense also sky rocketed as well. That could be all Kenny Atkinson as well. But I'm willing to take a chance on a young guy that seems to be valued in every spot he has been (utah, knicks, and now cavs). All he has done has been a winner.

heard. my question isn't a knock on johnnie. i too would be happy to see him in our chair if that's the direction we wanted to go.

[Jeff Van Gully]

Read on Twitter

?s=46&t=W09F6FrMDfp5_y1gKYgF1g

i often genuinely wonder what people think johnnie does/did to assume he would be a better HC. like, what insight did we get and what do we know about his coaching other than him being young and not thibs?

real question.

Same for me. He's never been the architect of anything. He's just been around.

Now the fact that success has followed him is noteworthy, but that doesn't necessarily mean you are ready for the big chair.

i mean... he could be. how tf would we know?

[NoDopeOnSundays]

The funniest thing about defending Thibs in this series is that the Pistons are clearly less talented, have 1 guy that can dribble & create when Schroder isn't in there, and they run better offensive sets than we do while playing 2 non shooters and 1 creator.

[nedleeds]

So none of the players are culpable at all ? It’s all just coaching. Cmon guys lol

We over rate our players historically, and we also love just ignoring their defense and overall effort.

KAT, Brunson and OG when healthy are above average starters. But not number 1 player on title team types. They will cost us 80% of our cap. There is no easy way out. There's no short cut home.

There's no easy, no easy, no easy way out

My man.

Watch on YouTube

[Jeff Van Gully]

what I can't reconcile is everyone is saying this isn't as tough as a team and that is why we aren't separating ourselves from last years team.

Our defense isn't the issue this series...outside of Brunson everyone is defending either on par with the skill set or better (outside of maybe Deuce who looks like a shell of himself on both ends).

We didn't even lose the rebound battle. This has nothing to do with "toughness"

It's the offense that is losing us these games and execution. We are 11th in the NBA in OFF Net Rating in the playoffs.

We have more offensive talent this year than last and we are struggling. And our defense is far better this year than last playoffs.

I know its year one with a lot of new bodies but the fact we didn't work out a lot of the same issues of offense/execution from early in the year is troublesome. We got off to that amazing offensive start when teams would just play there center on KAT....we were nearly breaking records for how good our offense was playing. And now that teams have adjusted we haveven't made a single adjustment to that when teams have been playing us this way since like December. Zero excuse for this ****.

There's really only one adjustment that matters, but the players on the floor won't do it.

SHOOT THE F*CKIN 3

Boston had more 3PAs midway through the 3rd than we had all game. They were shooting 15% and it didn't matter to them. You have to stretch the defense given them more to think about than packing the paint.

we need to be taking way more threes, but they look scared. another thing thibs openly asks for but we don't see.

on one hand, better execution leads to better shots in better rhythm. got that argument.

never passing on the open ones requires a confidence i fear our guys don't have. even hart needs to be taking them, even if he's going to miss. it puts a different pressure on the defense and makes them have to adjust.

but the caveat is they eat bigly off the misses, as we do on the other side. so it's not as easy for the human decision makers on the court to deal with that.

and i understand what thibs detractors are getting at in that he is inherently putting too much pressure on the players by not supporting them with... making more static decisions for them. i think that's a very fair discussion.

[mpharris36]

as they should. that's what i would do.

their defense as a whole does a great job of trapping the ball and closing off most if not all passing lanes. they deserve a lot of credit for the execution on that end. because even when we want to move the ball we can't sometimes.

Its not that hard to defend us though JVG. So much stagnation. Not enough player and body movement. Walking the ball up the court and wasting valuable time to get into our sets (even it we are running sets). No sense of urgency when even running a set. If the first option is taken away we have no counters...we have no adjustments its just results in a bail out last second shot and hope and pray it goes in.'

Players need to be accountable when a set is run to execute...but are we really talking about execution this late into the year...that ultimately falls on the HC...

heard. and great point. some of the more aggressive pre-determined actions we see other teams use on offense put a different kind of pressure on the defense than a philosophy that is more reactive to what's being given.

but i think all of those things exist on more of a continuum than we sometimes give credit for. i don't necessarily see those things as an either/or proposition but more of a sliding scale that probably needs to be more in the other direction from where we are.

i love watching the way kenny makes cleveland move on offense. detroit would have a much harder time with that. we play into their strengths a lot. and if we're going to do that, then we have to be the team with the bigger metal bat.

Don't want to take away anything from DET they have played well this series...they have played hard and physical and the refs have allowed so why wouldn't you continue to do it.

I just know we could not stand Tim Hardaway Jr here (being picked on defensively)...we know Tobias isn't a good defender. Ausar is a really good defender but who else on that team is a really good defender especially with Stewart out right now.

So why are we having so much trouble seeking out there bad defenders? They do everything in there power to involve brunson and try to get him on Cade...I feel like we do no such thing to get THjr or Harris and get them on the perimeter vs Brunson. We do no pre-screening to get Ausar off Brunson...instead we just let Brunson battle life and death bringing the ball up for a young hungry defender like Ausar all game....makes zero sense to me.

[K_ick_God]

It’s unreal … doesn’t call TO and wastes a shot we couldn’t afford to waste

If he used the timeout for the sub he wouldn't have had anything in the case of disaster. They needed to stop the play.

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Serious? They’re down to a remote chance to win and need JB in.

[The KnicksFix]

This is why we lose. This is why we are frustrated with Thibs

1. Thibs was successful when he has one or two bucket getters, and 3 guys who crash. See d rose and jimmy , with 3 crashers in Noah, boozer and deng. Same thing with jb, and divo with 3 crashers in hart, Ihart and og. But that offense doesn’t win you a ring. Today’s championship offensive sets have ball and player movement. Screens. Back cuts. Screen for the screener. We do none of that. And that’s why the offense runs down to 6-7 on the shot clock.

2. Why did we get KAT if we don’t spam pick and roll with him and Brunson? The problem is he’s not a good pick setter, but to remedy this, insert Mitch into the lineup and bench Hart. This leads me to my second point. Thibs’ mind numbing RIGIDITY. He hasn’t a clue for the game or understanding of how to make teams adjust to HIM.

3. And finally, our defense is horrid. Championship teams have multiple defensive sets to run. Box and 1. 2,3 zone, 3,2 zone. Instead we just run with an elite rim protector and rely on the supernova abilities of 2 wings. Again, see Noah with boozer and deng.

This is why we will never ever win with Thibs. The absolute best thing to do is to replace him with a modern coach. HE is the rate limiting factor and the sole reason a championship is not on our horizon until he is fired.

Are we not seeing that Mitch can't catch anything and isbgetting dislodged all the time? He isn't ready yet.

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Think bigger picture than just nitpicking at one sentence. You can replace Mitch with whoever, the point is Thibs is rigid and plays the same players no matter the situation.

[Jalen Bluntson]

He's also probably first in USG. Being near the top in assist doesn't mean you get your teammates involved. It means u have the ball alot

It means he gets his team involved. Don't be ridiculous.

It means he dribbles the air out of the ball and when the defense collapses he makes the right play. Getting your teammates involved means setting up the offense and putting players in the right position, I.e running pick and pop with Kat and actually giving him the ball on the pop

We don't run an offense bro. It's a free for all out there with no structure outside of ISO Brunson. He still manages to get plenty of assists out of that mess every night. Most nights when his team can't get it done he takes over and wins games for us. That's the entire offense. The game tells you what to do.

Dude dropped 39/17 for us this season. Is that him pounding the air out of the ball? Stop it. Jalen does what he can with the n limited options he has. This team doesn't even run basic plays on any level.

[HopelessKnick]

I told you guys! I told you guys!

[GONYK]

i often genuinely wonder what people think johnnie does/did to assume he would be a better HC. like, what insight did we get and what do we know about his coaching other than him being young and not thibs?

real question.

Same for me. He's never been the architect of anything. He's just been around.

Now the fact that success has followed him is noteworthy, but that doesn't necessarily mean you are ready for the big chair.

i mean... he could be. how tf would we know?

Everyone and they mama knew Thibs was the architect of Boston's championship defense