bondom34 wrote:Just finally got to catch up and read this article.......it shows nothing, sorry. According to this the best offense should be the Spurs, followed by none other than CHARLOTTE! Passing in and of itself isn't good, it's just passing. It's like saying dribbling is bad so teams that dribble a lot are bad.
Noone here, myself included, is saying Brooks takes no blame. I've been vocal about wanting an offensive assistant to put in some new stuff, but some fans seem to do nothing but blame him every time the team loses no matter what. The guy is clearly better than many NBA coaches now and guys who are out of jobs. Sloan's teams certainly didn't lack for talent, nor did Karl's. Brooks has developed young talent better than Brown, shown more on offense than Brown, and about as much on defense. Some fans just don't want to do 1 of 2 things: First, admit the other team is better. Second, blame the players. Is it possible maybe that the Spurs are a little better? After KD, Russ, and Ibaka, that their 4-10 were just better than OKC's 4-10? Is it possible that maybe just maybe KD wasn't very good in the playoffs, Ibaka missed time, Thabo disappearred entirely, noone on the bench could buy a basket, Russ was on and off, and Ibaka hurt? NOPE! FIUR BROOKS!
Sorry, but blaming the coach is an age old NBA tradition, and it's senseless. I get the guy isn't perfect, that's fine. But clearly the players want to ride with him, he's done well to this point, and sometimes, that says as much as I can possibly say.
You're reading it in a wrong perspective. The arcticle never meant to quantify scoring, or how good an offense is. The project the arcticle is based on, is on a counting of how much successful passes and movements on the ball are made on a possession/possession lenght basis. This is a way to quantify how much ball movement (and involvement of the whole lineup on building up plays). This was never an attempt to rank the best offenses, because each offense is build on very different players. For example, a team can execute a play or possession very well, but have really bad finishers and scorers, thus, it'll not score well. And this is why most of the teams can't have high scoring numbers despite having a well structured team.
This is an arcticle that directly applies to the argument that says that there is more good coaching/team play in the league than there are top teams in the league. Thunder ranks bad on team play, but ranks the highest on scoring talent. You should check again the insight on Grizzlies vs Thunder. One team operated the ball movement really well, executed a well-run offense, but hit the barrier of lack of scoring optins, while the other had poorly executed the ball, but had two of the league's best individual scorers. But the outcome is simple: Grizzlies had a good defensive team and the outcome was roughly the same, as they nullified our individual scoring, the result of that was a much closer series than it should be. Would it be the same if we had a Bobcats-like offense scheme, except for better scorers/finishers in Durant/Westbrook/Ibaka? That's the true questioning the arcticle brought up.
Sometimes the score sheet doesn't make justice to the offensive scheme. Thunder is one of them. Bulls are one of them. Wizards are one of them. And the list goes on, Hawks, Grizzlies, Warriors (on the the uglier aspect), Denver (on the uglier aspect). the teams that balance both, reach true excellence on offense, like Spurs, Mavs, Miami, Portland. I say balance, not excellence, because there's an interesting aspect on this analysis: teams with the worse scorers, tend to pass more, because there's no one that "knows how to put in the basket", or the "finisher", or the matador, but if you are over reliant on the matador, you shouldn't just go straight to him and wait something happen, like the Thunder does, because that makes the offense too predictable, and leads to few clean looks to the stars - which is why the Thunder's offense underperformed heavily in the last two playoffs. Lack of ball movement makes your star, Durant, take the ball on the worst positions possible to score, which is horrible to do in the playoffs, since game plans are stronger.
Also, more ball movement, less skilled players, more turnovers. Which is why I'm a huge advocate for a big time pass-oriented (or development of passing skills) bigs. Passing bigs helps the ball movement so much, and makes the offense much more unpredictable. This is why the Thunder used to be so dominant with a healthy Collison - check his ORAPM (6th among PFs last season, in his arguably worst season in the past years). Ball movement makes this offense explode in a qualitative and quantitative approach.
This is the best chance for Brooks to win the championship, with the everlasting Spurs possibly unmotivated with the ring, and Miami's fall. If he doesn't win this year, Thunder might never win under this poor orchestrated team.
