This team desperately needs a third scorer ...

[nate33]

Scoring isn't the issue. The issue is how this team goes about doing it. Ball movement vs. ISO.

I disagree. Ball movement doesn't necessarily correlate to better offense. Miami never moved the ball well during the big 3 era and it worked out for them (they averaged as many assists back then as they do now), as has been the case for countless teams with high level players (Even the spurs back in the day). The entire league as a whole still relies on ISO significantly more than any league in the world.

I don't see how this roster benefits from it. Satoransky isn't the kind of guy who is going to start letting it fly. Oubre can only stroke it when his confidence is high, and outside of straight line drives, doesn't bring much else to the table. He was a complete dumpster fire after the all-star break. None of our bigs can adequately put the ball on the floor and drive. If you're going to run an egalitarian style, you need these things. You need a guy like Danny Green or a Fred VanVleet who can do multiple things at an above average level and actually take advantage of working in an unpredictable offense that generates opportunities like that. We don't have that. We just have complimentary players around Wall, which is Ernie's mo. It's actually crazy how uncanny it's been, some guys produced a paper at Sloan a couple of years back during the Wittman era that pegged us as having the most "complementary" roster in the league at the time.

I know a lot of people want to talk about 4th quarter production, but that's an issue for multiple teams that run very different styles. Philly runs a spursian system and only managed an offensive rating of 102 in 4th quarters during the regular season. There's too much variance there at the end of games.

To me the bigger issue is the defense. I don't see this team dropping below top 10 in offensive efficiency when healthy, but I don't see how they be anything more than a mediocre defense without adequate frontcourt help.

While I agree with your point that ball movement doesn't necessarily correlate with offensive efficiency, I disagree with much of the rest of your post. I think our team is composed of players who actually would benefit quite a bit from a ball movement offense.

First of all, we lack isolation scorers altogether. Outside of Wall (when his midrange shot is fallilng), we've got nobody who can consistently generate their own shot in isolation, and certainly not with an acceptable level of efficiency. We don't have Harden, Lebron, Durant, Westbrook, Davis, Giannis, Derozan, Kyrie, etc. We don't even have Lou Williams or Jeff Teague.

Secondly, what we do have are a bunch of multi-tool players who are modestly above-average for their position in terms of passing, dribbling and court awareness. Morris is a better handler and passer than many PF's. He's no Lebron or Giannis, but he's better than, say, Ibaka, or Taj Gibson. Gortat is better than most centers at making the 4 on 3 pass as the roll man in the pick and roll. Porter played point-forward in college and could certainly be trusted to be more than just a catch-and-shoot player. Beal is an above-average passer at SG who can run the secondary pick-and-roll. Sato has a PG's court awareness in the body of a SG/SF. Among our core players, only Oubre needs work at this, but that's to expected of a young player. (And, obviously, Mahinmi is horrible at anything involving offensive decision-making.)

If anything, a ball-movement oriented offense is likely to help this roster more than most specifically because we lack isolation scorers and we have good decision-makers with court awareness at multiple positions.

[Sluggerface]

Scoring isn't the issue. The issue is how this team goes about doing it. Ball movement vs. ISO.

I disagree. Ball movement doesn't necessarily correlate to better offense. Miami never moved the ball well during the big 3 era and it worked out for them (they averaged as many assists back then as they do now), as has been the case for countless teams with high level players (Even the spurs back in the day). The entire league as a whole still relies on ISO significantly more than any league in the world.

I don't see how this roster benefits from it. Satoransky isn't the kind of guy who is going to start letting it fly. Oubre can only stroke it when his confidence is high, and outside of straight line drives, doesn't bring much else to the table. He was a complete dumpster fire after the all-star break. None of our bigs can adequately put the ball on the floor and drive. If you're going to run an egalitarian style, you need these things. You need a guy like Danny Green or a Fred VanVleet who can do multiple things at an above average level and actually take advantage of working in an unpredictable offense that generates opportunities like that. We don't have that. We just have complimentary players around Wall, which is Ernie's mo. It's actually crazy how uncanny it's been, some guys produced a paper at Sloan a couple of years back during the Wittman era that pegged us as having the most "complementary" roster in the league at the time.

I know a lot of people want to talk about 4th quarter production, but that's an issue for multiple teams that run very different styles. Philly runs a spursian system and only managed an offensive rating of 102 in 4th quarters during the regular season. There's too much variance there at the end of games.

To me the bigger issue is the defense. I don't see this team dropping below top 10 in offensive efficiency when healthy, but I don't see how they be anything more than a mediocre defense without adequate frontcourt help.

While I agree with your point that ball movement doesn't necessarily correlate with offensive efficiency, I disagree with much of the rest of your post. I think our team is composed of players who actually would benefit quite a bit from a ball movement offense.

First of all, we lack isolation scorers altogether. Outside of Wall (when his midrange shot is fallilng), we've got nobody who can consistently generate their own shot in isolation, and certainly not with an acceptable level of efficiency. We don't have Harden, Lebron, Durant, Westbrook, Davis, Giannis, Derozan, Kyrie, etc. We don't even have Lou Williams or Jeff Teague.

Secondly, what we do have are a bunch of multi-tool players who are modestly above-average for their position in terms of passing, dribbling and court awareness. Morris is a better handler and passer than many PF's. He's no Lebron or Giannis, but he's better than, say, Ibaka, or Taj Gibson. Gortat is better than most centers at making the 4 on 3 pass as the roll man in the pick and roll. Porter played point-forward in college and could certainly be trusted to be more than just a catch-and-shoot player. Beal is an above-average passer at SG who can run the secondary pick-and-roll. Sato has a PG's court awareness in the body of a SG/SF. Among our core players, only Oubre needs work at this, but that's to expected of a young player. (And, obviously, Mahinmi is horrible at anything involving offensive decision-making.)

If anything, a ball-movement oriented offense is likely to help this roster more than most specifically because we lack isolation scorers and we have good decision-makers with court awareness at multiple positions.

I just have higher expectations. I'm not disagreeing with your assessment, I'm not saying everyone is totally one-dimensional. I just don't see the value there for them as high-tier multi-dimensional players, the kind you see that make egalitarian systems produce at a high level. (I'm mainly focusing on guys outside of the core of Wall/Beal/Porter who would be seeing the most out of this.)

Morris does have the skill-set, but IMO has never fully realized it, and that's been a huge criticism of his game going back to Phoenix. I see no reason why he can't be better than a guy like Kyle O'Quinn who gets more done with less possessions, and yet Morris is still struggling to produce more assists than he does turnovers. I'd like to sit here and say it's because he doesn't get enough possessions, but he's using 19-20% of the team's when he's on the court. If it comes down to choosing between throwing up a mid-range jumper or kicking and driving, he going the take the jumper the majority of the time. At this point, he's just a richman's version of Andray Blatche to me.

Satoransky doesn't get the ball up enough for my liking as a lead guard off the bench. Other guys in his position (Green, VanVleet, Rozier) are taking 3 times as many threes and being productive. That's a massive difference. I love Sato's game, but I don't see him putting it up 9 times per 100 in a spurs like offense to actually warrant teams defending him differently.

The thing with Oubre for me is that falling off a complete cliff like he did this season for such a long period of time is a huge red flag to me. It's cool if he ends up being like a J.R. Smith. It's whatever, but offenses need to be designed around consistency IMO. If he's out of it when he has an integral role, the entire team is really going to feel it.

That's pretty much where i'm at after watching these playoffs.