MrDollarBills wrote:spree8 wrote:MrDollarBills wrote:
It was refreshing to hear JB give everyone the vote of confidence.
Unless Thibs figures something out though I can't justify playing Karl and him together defensively though.
Maybe we need to look at how Malone managed to win with Murray and Joker. How did they cover for the lack of D?
Joker may not be the most vertical defender or quickest lateral defender (most bigs aren’t), but he’s got an incredibly high IQ which he uses on defense too. He’s got quick and active hands, can read what the opponent is trying to do, and has very good anticipation that allows him to break up plays. That’s why he can roam.
KAT on the other hand, has horrible IQ so he’s often lost when trying to do anything more than cover 1 man. That’s why I always push switching on defense… it simplifies things for him. Same with Jalen.
Thibs finally realized that, but still had these guys revert back to drop coverage and fighting over screens the next game after the switch heavy defense worked. I just don’t get it.
I don't understand it either. Every time we find something that works we revert back to what gets our asses kicked. It's baffling
katz on KFS gave some valuable perspective on the state and impact of team culture. that's not to be on some "it's on the players." but it was helpful in my processing to hear about the challenges that every team of players has to overcome internally as part of it.
i feel like katz did that on the heels of the release of his writing used in what he thought to be a hit piece. really, really interesting stuff.
my takeaways were that a lot of inconsistencies are coming from the players genuinely struggling to interact with each other on several levels, and that we may have underestimated how some of the moving pieces impacted the parts of that which were a big strength of last year's group.
i thought it explained a lot of the inconsistency. it also explains why we hear "communication" and "execution" so much in player interviews. like, they really saying it. it's not just canned spam.
edit: also part of that was that they like and believe in each other, but just haven't figured out how to do their part on the court.