Sessions as 6th Man?

[Edrees]

Bench rotations will be shortened for playoffs. Harden wont have as much time to crush our bench becauseo ur bench wont be playing very long anyway. I think the more important thing is to take care of business versus denver, get a lot of rest, hope dallas and okc goes to 7 games, and play our starter monster minutes in the series vs OKC.

[Mamba Venom]

I'm not sure if I want to experiment in the playoffs.

Wrong time for a change.

I don't like Brown's rotations. Gasol and Bynum are more effective together. Gasol won't increase his FGA w/ the 2nd unit. Let's keep our guys fresh and playing together where they have chemistry.

[Kilroy]

I think Slava has it -- Sessions off the bench makes the most sense in theory, but in practice it hasn't shown to work.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Our bench looked GREAT the first 4 games after we acquired him, so it's not even a theory.

And when he started for us, he was an absolute beast and looked unstoppable until Brown had him reign it in and play more within his 'system'...

Sessions needs to start for us... All the guards that Fisher got destroyed by are starters. We need Sessions' speed on D with the starting unit.

There's also the psychological factor of benching a guy for the playoffs, who earned a starting role, for Blake of all people...

Sessions is great with the second unit, but he's better than Blake with the starting unit too. He's the best guy for that role and he's earned it.

[Dr Aki]

what we need is a 2nd ramon sessions

1 for the starters, 1 for the bench

[DoctaJ]

Good to see you posting, Miles!

I think it's a nice option we have going forward. If the bench dies down we can throw Sessions there but if the bench with Blake is working alright then keep Sessions with the start, I guess.

I'm with SS though with that Blake plays better with the starters. Give him his minutes with the starters and give Sessions the bench and obviously some time with the starters, also.

[milesfides]

As well as Blake, Barnes, and Hill played yesterday, our bench was still outscored by 20 points.

This isn't a problem against Denver, because our starters crushed Denver's.

The problem is when we play San Antonio or OKC.

What happens when their starters play ours evenly? Our outperform ours?

Then guys like GInobili and Harden decide the game.

You can try pushing the starters for a game or two, but over a 7-game series? Starters get tired. Bigs don't come out on pick-and-rolls. Kobe's legs start to shorten his late game shots. We lose the 50/50 balls. Our team starts to mentally break down and rely on Kobe to bail us out. This pattern emerges so often, I can see this happen as early as the first half.

This Denver series is a perfect opportunity to start implementing these rotations. No offense to Denver, but we shouldn't lose one game to them. I almost wish we could drop one or two games to them so we could practice rotations against OKC and SA (and take some games off Ron's suspension).

Again, there's little adjustment for Sessions. Mentally, he should be used to coming off the bench - he's done that half his career. Second, his actual lineups wouldn't change that much, just the timing of it (he won't start the game, and he'll get more burn with the 2nd unit). Lastly, his stats would actually improve, he'll get more FGA, and he'll be in rhythm more.

We need a bench that will attack the opponent's. Sessions is really the only guy. Barnes, bless his soul, will never be a consistent scorer because he cannot create, his shot is inconsistent, and his ability to finish isn't remarkable. But his heart and effort on both ends of the floor is unquestionable, so he's very valuable to us.

But we HAVE NO BENCH SCORER. And that matters. Really, it does. Against teams that have starting lineups that can go toe-to-toe with ours. Then our bench has to play "please stop the bleeding" against Ginobili and Harden.

In a close playoff series, 2-3 possessions that hurt us can lose us the quarter, which loses us the game. A couple of those costs us the series.

I know what you guys are saying. Why mess with our rotations? Because we've gotten our asses handed to us, quite frankly, by this pattern.

You don't think Ginobili and Harden wouldn't make San Antonio's and OKC's starting lineup stronger? Of course they would. But they did the math, and those players coming off the bench have proven statistically to increase their winning percentage.

And Ginobili and Harden are two of the top 5 shooting guards in the NBA. They are MUCH, MUCH better than Ramon Sessions.

But Ramon would help offset the damage they'd do, because it's a fact that our bench will be outplayed. The question is, how badly, and the hope is, not enough to get us swept like last year.

Status quo will not cut it...not sure what you guys saw this year, but we weren't really that good against healthy top teams.

Benching Sessions wouldn't change his game much except his getting more shots, against worse players.

[billy_21]

what do you all think of going after nash this offseason as either the backup PG or our starting PG. I know that alot of you will think that nash is heading towards the end of his career but he wants a 3 year deal with kobes window for a title closing why not get nash to join the purple and gold which would make sense for his family to stay on the west coast.

personally i dont have a problem with him starting for us, cause really he is a upgrade over fish which we kept long past his due by date. If we moved sessions to the backup he would have more time to develop and backup nash by bringing more bench production that we need without odom on the roster!

also while on the topic of 6th man, LO has come out to say he wants to focus on basketball and only basketball.. do we go after him and bring him back ?? i say yes for the min...