In order to be Crawford or Smith you have to make shots, not just shoot all whilly nilly.
And they were TERRIBLE fouls. Including one with 0.4 seconds left in the 3rd quarter with the Babcats 90 feet away from the basket. Gave them two free throws.
You just can't play him. Not when he fouls like this. He kills your team because it puts the opponent in the bonus early in quarters and now teams are getting free points all quarter long.
I love the guys skill set, but the fouls outweigh everything positive he does. Such a shame.
Ive read that article, it was good but that hasn't been the case to start this season. Evans has taken too many bad jumpshots, played out of flow with the offense and hogged the ball late in games and it has cost us. MM also mentioned the danger of the possibility of Evans falling in love with going for jumpers after he has been working on his shot and frankly there has been some truth to that. Lots of bad contested jumpshots on his part these first few games. And several examples of him closing to go for a contested jumpshot over driving to the lane.
Feel free to show me the stats on how many Evans misses inside have been converted this season. But I would also like to see how many of those inside shots were with 2 or 3 defenders drapped on him and he had open shooters around him. His decision making has been a problem this season. Take the play where Ryno hit a 3 off an offensive rebound. The play that led to that was a highly contested mid-range shot by Evans when he had both Ryno and Jimmer open at 3. By luck that offensive board from rivers allowed Ryno to hit a 3 but that was not a smart play. Then you have later on when Evans forced a layup with 3 defenders on him when Davis was open behind him and on fire.
Or when Evans took a bad mid ranger and luckily hit so he then follows that up by a bad contested three pointer and then shortly after that he had a catch and shoot opportunity at three and he hesitated, dribbled his defender and then took a contested three early in the shot clock. He has had a horrible tendency of making a lot of poor decisions in bunches and late in games. While hogging the ball.
I love Evans but if this team wants longterm success he needs to play smarter basketball. End of story.
"He has more fouls than shot attempts" I believe was the follow up to that end of 3rd quarter foul. I laughed, and cried.
Good game all around from the team. I'm proud of Monty for sticking with Rivers' hot hand over Gordon! Signs of growth from the coach.
What I'm most excited for is how our offense is going to look when we start hitting more of our 3s!
He's bad to have on the court. Period. I believe we are way worse when he's on the court. Even against bench players. All I'm saying is if he keeps this up then start rivers and limit minutes or DNP. You have to really send him a message because his ego is huge.
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Man I just looked at the box score and if I'm Benson I would be calling the feds on Gordon, he is scamming us like his last name is Madoff.:mad:
I think he probably is. However, as impressed as I was watching him against Orlando, I was that "unimpressed" watching him play defense against Dallas. He was a very lazy defender and failed to even raise his arms when smaller players came in the lane. It was frustrating watching Barea drive on him and he not even challenge. Maybe he was still getting into basketball shape having to chase Chandler around.
Regarding his jumpers, he's actually shooting "well" compared to our other guards (especially EG). Exactly whom would you prefer be taking these shots? I'll agree that he shouldn't be taking as many shots as AD or playing "hero" ball but that's about as far as I'll go in agreeing with you. Many of his "problems" are magnified by poor shooting by our so-called spacers and should be smoothed out as the season goes on (assuming of course that Ryno, Babbitt, and AR manage to shoot respectably from the 3 point line). End of Story.
He came into the game tonight shooting 36% on jumpers, so I wouldn't say he is shooting them well.
I had two premises in my article last year:
1.) He will take more shots around the rim than on the perimeter, so why not work on that more? Conditioning, explosiveness, post game, etc.
2.) Practicing jumpers will make him want to take more of them. So far that is true. 43% of his shots so far this year have been jump shots. That number was 28% last year.
Thankfully, he is hitting three's so far at a higher rate, so it isn't killing the team. Also, everyone else is shooting so bad, that it appears fine. But long term, I want him attacking more and I want him to actually finish better when he attacks. After tonight, he is shooting less than 40% on layups this year. That is insane. Work on THAT.
He shouldn't be taking highly contested jumpers period. He is starting the season much less efficiently then last year.
This season he is at around 36% from mid range and only 38% at the rim. Compare that number to the godlike 60% at-the-rim average he had during the last two months of last season.
In the 4th quarter this season Evans has taken 10 shots near the rim and 10 jumpshots; 2-10 on jump shots, 1-6 on 3PA, 7-20 overall(35%). That tells me three things, he is falling in love with the jumper and 3 pointer in the fourth and doing it poorly, he isn't playing to his strengths in crunch time and he isn't being an efficient player for us in the 4th.
Evans has taken 20 shots in the 4th while Davis has taken 11. He has taken the most shots in the 4th and done so at 35% while Davis is at 64% with 55% less touches then Evans.
His play is hurting our team down the stretch.
Now it's only been 4 games so its hardly like i am saying this is dogma but it is a troubling trend.
In all honesty, the way the offense is being ran, this is how it will be for the foreseeable future. There are still way too many possessions where the ball does not swing to the other side of the court, only 1 or 2 players ever touch the ball, and the screens are just the poor, useless and ineffective variety. This is why we have so many plays where Tyreke, Ryno, AD, Jrue, Eric, and Austin end up just having to beat their man 1 on 1. This is why Jimmer rarely gets clean 3 point attempts (if any) and why it is possible for AD to not even see the ball in late in the 4th.
Time will tell if its just the players not doing what they are told or if it's the scheme. But right now, this team has no chance at beating top tier Western opponents where ball movement and scoring are high priority.
I don't think there is a fanbase out there that thinks the coach doesn't sub the right guys at the right time. We need to realize that being a coach in the NBA is an extremely hard job and making adjustments on the fly is incredibly difficult especially when your roster is young. Early in the season how could he know what lineups work and which ones don't until he tries them? Ajinca didn't play at all the first 2 games and everyone screams for him. He then plays him and Ajinca proves why he can't be played. people scream for Babbitt then he plays and is terrible. This team is a work in progress and we need to learn to just enjoy the process.
After i did my little breakdown of every one of Gordons possessions from game two I don't think thats fully true.
Gordon for instance was wide open at 3 a ridiculous number of times in the second half and I can remember at least 3 times tonight where AD was open at mid range after Jrue or Evans drew in the defense and they opted for a contested shot over kicking it out.
When Monty seemingly pressures our players to feed AD like he obviously did at halftime we somehow miraculously find ways to get him the ball. But every fourth quarter, led mostly by Evans, the offense begins to get away from getting Davis involved and it starts to look like Evans is trying to take over.
Let me put it another way. Davis has had 11 attempts in the 4th quarter across 4 games. 22 attempts in the 3rd, 18 in the 2nd and 19 in the first. There is no reason he shouldn't have similar attempts in the 4th even though it should be more TBH.
I think Monty has started this season better then any other season with regards to how he has been handling the roster.
The things we are all pointing out are things that we hope Monty sees as well. And to his credit it seems like some of the things in previous games that concerned people Monty seems to have seen as well and has tried different things.
I haven't criticized Monty for much yet except for giving Salmons minutes. Specifically because I understand this is a growing point for the team and so far Monty has shown a willingness to mess with his lineups more so then past years where his day one roster and rotations barring injury seemed to be pretty set.
Though if in a couple weeks I am still seeing Davis average less then 3 attempts in the 4th quarter and Evans is still playing with such low efficiency and with such high volume in the 4th I will begin to criticize Monty for not recognizing problems and attempting to fix them.
Yes you will find instances where plays are run to get a player an open look, but it is far from consistent and is not the usual. This is why I believe part of this may just be on the players. However, if you drill into your players to swing the ball, set effective screens, and look for uncontested shots, this is what they will do. Even if they end up having to go 1 on 1, at least attempt to pass the ball around a few times. Players like Jimmer Fredette and Eric Gordon should NOT be standing still so often and not laying a finger on the ball for long stretches at a time. They shouldn't be waiting for someone else to suck in a defense. They should be running through multiple, well spaced screens like Richard Hamilton or Manu Ginobilli.
Ryno, for all his catch and shoot ability, works much harder for his shots than Dirk does. Dirk would suffer in this offense because he no longer has those "put the ball on the floor and work for your shot" skills.
This is mainly from what I observed tonight and even though the won the game, it kind of dampened my hopes long term if this is how it's going to be.
Rarely does an early season win feel so sweet, but this one certainly does. It was satisfying to see the Pels finally bring some offensive intensity at the start of the game, and outpace their opposition the rest of the way.
As for the Slobcats---SUCK SLUDGE, POSERS!!! HA HA HA!!!
Soooo...if the players play well, hit the shots, get open shots, pass the ball they're good player oh man look, they're jelling, they're playing up to their potential, they're some helluva ******** good players, amazing, they've been getting better all the time
If players don't play so well...
Wtf is the coach doing, coach can't do ****, why didn't the coach tell him to shoot, no, pass, no, do a pirouette, can't the coach walk on the parquet and tell them look, free throw is this arm on the side of the ball and this arm doing the middle finger to the opponents etc etc
Ah...i mean, is this the normal forma mentis for all fan bases? Just curious, i don't go on other nba teams' fanboards
I wouldn't exactly say we were gelling from this game. and there has been a lot of flak aimed more at the playing group than monty (not to say there has been none for him).