February 5th - New Orleans Pelicans @ Indiana Pacers - 8-12

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Originally Posted by luckyman

If my math is correct Zion only had 3 field goal attempts in the 2nd half. That madness has to stop.

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Yeah it's really frustrating. Hurts him and his rhythm, but it also hurts the team offense.

When he's on court, he's our most consistently efficient offensive player. He produces extremely high quality looks at an extremely high rate, and he passes well too which means he creates very good looks for others.

If he's on the floor and you don't show any interest in getting him involved in the offense at all, you're doing it wrong. That doesn't mean he has to be taking every shot, but as you say, 3 FGAs in an entire half is just unacceptable. There's no reason he should ever be taking fewer than 15 shots in a game unless something very weird is going on.

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Originally Posted by ragincaucasian

DAE is usually 4 pages by himself.

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FR

Really good team win. Glad they did not fold when the Holidays, er, Pacers came roaring back. Ball and BI were fantastic. Bledsoe was dog crap and that is an insult to dog crap. His defense was bad. He airballed a floater and followed it up with a floater off the top of the back board the next trip. A little while later he had a wide open Adams for a lob and overthrew it off the back board. SVG stayed with the backups way too long in the 3rd quarter. NAW was terrible on offense and could not handle McConnell's pressure. Would have liked to see Kira's speed against McConnell for a bit. Good revenge win.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Just my initial thoughts and comments. Good game, sucks to see it so close at the end but Indiana is a good team and they shot the hell out of the ball at one point so I can't complain too much.

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Like you, I didn't think the improved play at the back-up 5 position was noteworthy either. LOL

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Yeah it's really frustrating. Hurts him and his rhythm, but it also hurts the team offense.

When he's on court, he's our most consistently efficient offensive player. He produces extremely high quality looks at an extremely high rate, and he passes well too which means he creates very good looks for others.

If he's on the floor and you don't show any interest in getting him involved in the offense at all, you're doing it wrong. That doesn't mean he has to be taking every shot, but as you say, 3 FGAs in an entire half is just unacceptable. There's no reason he should ever be taking fewer than 15 shots in a game unless something very weird is going on.

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I don't know how many touches he had in the second half, but I guarantee it belies your analysis. Too, there were untallied shots that he took which put him on the free throw line. But, hey, what do I know? LOL

Just watched the game a second time....

Zion's Fourth Quarter Offensively

In @ 7:31 (4 Fouls)

1/1 - Free Throws Zion 2/2
1/0 - Turn Over
1/1 - Pacer Foul - Loose Ball
1/0 - 3 Lonzo
1/0 - 2 BI
1/1 - Steal on Pass to Zion From Lonzo
1/1 - 3 Lonzo
1/0 - Free Throws Lonzo 1/2
1/1 - Free Throws Zion 2/2
1/0 - Turn Over
1/1 - 3 Lonzo
1/0 - Miss BI
1/1 - Miss Zion Top in by Adams
1/0 - 2 BI

Out @ 42.6
In @ 24.7

1/0 - Missed FG - BI

Out @ 13.7

So he was in for 15 possessions and Zion touched the ball on 7 of them; 4 possessions where he didn't touch the ball resulted in points. So there were only 4 possessions where Zion didn't touch the ball and we didn't score.

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Originally Posted by As I See It

Like you, I didn't think the improved play at the back-up 5 position was noteworthy either. LOL

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If you are truly looking for noteworthy play from a backup center, you should probably look elsewhere....

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Originally Posted by ramsters60

If you are truly looking for noteworthy play from a backup center, you should probably look elsewhere....

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Is that what he was saying? lmao

I have him on ignore so I only check to see what his comments actually say about 10% of the time and usually it's just him frothing at the mouth at something I've said. Apparently this time my sin is not including endless praise for Willy Hernangomez in my short end-game recap :hihi:

Great stuff

That pick 4 trade gets worse by the day

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Is that what he was saying? lmao

I have him on ignore so I only check to see what his comments actually say about 10% of the time and usually it's just him frothing at the mouth at something I've said. Apparently this time my sin is not including endless praise for Willy Hernangomez in my short end-game recap

Great stuff

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I guess this comment qualified under your 10% Rule; but please notice anyway that I agreed with your omission.

Also, I sure do wish Zion could touch the ball more, too, regardless of what the outcome might be. Playing Point Forward just isn't enough. It should be all Zion, all the time.

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Originally Posted by AusPel

That pick 4 trade gets worse by the day

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I'm about to jump on the train,

8 just isn't cutting it, and 17 barely has his head above water.

8 will probably get another chance tonight because they will probably be very judicious with Adams' minutes on a back to back. We'll see what dae has to say in his preview.

I was never concerned about Zion favoring the right hand. He went right a number of times at Duke. It's just...why avoid it? It's like left handed guys are known to only go left...but don't most right handed guys go right? We just accept that as normal because right handedness is more common.

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Originally Posted by Eman5805

I was never concerned about Zion favoring the right hand. He went right a number of times at Duke. It's just...why avoid it? It's like left handed guys are known to only go left...but don't most right handed guys go right? We just accept that as normal because right handedness is more common.

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Oh no, I absolutely agree. I have no concern about Zion going left 95% of the time, for exactly the reason you point out. The vast majority of players heavily favour one side, it's just never commented upon unless it's a lefty because then it's visually unusual which draws attention.

That said, it's nice to have the ambidexterity available. Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it.

Yikes... looking back on this thread I was a bit demonstrative and over the top, apologies everyone.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Okay so, my initial post-game thoughts after finishing up the game:

- We desperately need to run more point-Zion, especially early in the game. It opens up so much for the team when he's getting that defensive attention on ball, and they often start with guarding him with bigs that simply can't guard him. Make them treat him like a ballhandler and see how that opens up your guards and wing players.
- Zion with a drive and finish using his right hand early, nice to see after that right hand hammer last game. Diversifying the finish is always good.
- Zion's passing has really taken off recently. Great drive spin and skip over the defense early. Lonzo had a nice early bounce pass into Zion on the roll to start that off, which was nice to see him hitting early when the window was still big.
- Redick going 3/3 from deep after going 2/5 from deep last game is encouraging. If his shot can come back to him, he helps this offense a lot.
- Kind of unnoticed by the stat sheet but Lonzo was following up a lot of moves to the basket tonight as if he was going after the board. Kind of odd in our setup when we're playing Zion and Adams together and the paint is already busy but I like the idea.
- 3 FGAs in the entire second half for Zion is frankly just not good enough. This team has a legit problem with this. He'll get 6 or 7 quick shots in succession and then not touch the ball for 4.5 minutes of in-game time. It's infuriating, and it also lets the other team off easy. Part of it is a technique issue, where guys just can't get the ball to him, but sometimes it looks like they don't even consider it and that's alarming.
- Obviously Lonzo hit some big shots late, and while I do appreciate those shots they're not a real focus to me - shots sometimes go, sometimes they don't, I'm glad that they went this time but they themselves aren't the focus for me. I'm much more happy to see Lonzo back to playing legit quality defense for the entire game. He did this at times last year, and did it occasionally this year so far but was inconsistent. Seeing it show up for his entire game tonight is huge for his on-court play; even when he was having trouble scoring early, he was still justifying his presence on the floor with the D.
- Bledsoe was just pants, man. Just really not good.
- Really nice balanced offense from Ingram tonight. He drove a few times to the rim, particularly off the catch, which I liked seeing from him. The defense wasn't as good for him tonight as it was last game, but it was still not terrible.
- Adams had 12 boards tonight: he has now had 12 boards in 4 of his last 5 games.

Just my initial thoughts and comments. Good game, sucks to see it so close at the end but Indiana is a good team and they shot the hell out of the ball at one point so I can't complain too much.

Dont look now, but the Pels are 9-12 and have won 4 of their last 6. Memphis incoming.

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Part of my beef with him offensively though, even in this game is that he sucks at creating shot opportunities for our best players (Zion/Ingram) and takes enough shots that he even actively takes away shots from them.

Obviously Ingram went off, but there's no reason on planet earth for Zion to not have 20 FGA in this game, and to trail Lonzo by one no less. Bled/Zo do a terrible job of consistently looking for him (something that I don't even think should be that hard for lead guards) and ZO in particular is such a non threat at anything other than spot up shooting that he doesn't provide any gravity to generate easy looks for Zion.

Defensively he was good, but there was a stretch with him and the starters (or most of them at least) late where the offense just went stagnant, and I'm just screaming at the tv for them to do the simplest thing in the world and feed Z the ball. Obviously that's not entirely on them (coaching, Zion not being quite aggressive as he should be), but it's still disconcerting to say the least.

Also, very happy to see JJ finally start to hit his stride. If he can continue to round into form he becomes a much more valuable asset to our team and as a trade chip.

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Originally Posted by Funcrusher

Part of my beef with him offensively though, even in this game is that he sucks at creating shot opportunities for our best players (Zion/Ingram) and takes enough shots that he even actively takes away shots from them.

Obviously in this game Ingram went off, but there's no reason on planet earth for Zion to not have 20 FGA in this game, and to trail Lonzo by one no less. Bled/Zo do a terrible job of consistently looking for him (something that I don't even think should be that hard for lead guards) and ZO in particular is such a non threat at anything other than spot up shooting that he doesn't provide any gravity to generate easy looks for Zion.

Defensively he was good, but there was a stretch with him and the starters (or most of them at least) late where the offense just went stagnant, and I'm just screaming at the tv for them to do the simplest thing in the world and feed Z the ball. Obviously that's not entirely on them (coaching, Zion not being quite aggressive as he should be), but it's still disconcerting to say the least.

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Oh I absolutely agree. I've said time and time and time again that Lonzo is not a halfcourt point guard, and I know that the majority of the board agrees with that statement. He just cannot pressure a defense in the ways that a point guard today needs to; he's not a real threat to drive, he has no in between game to speak of, and he's not a particularly dangerous shooter off the dribble. If the ball is in his hands, he has no significant gravity to draw defenders in and create those opportunities.

He's at his best when he's doing what he did this game, which is essentially playing 3&D. He's good at that because he can, when he really puts his mind to it, play legitimately very good defense. The issue is that the shooting is wildly inconsistent for him: remember, he's shooting well over the last couple of games but he shot sub-30% from 3 for the first dozen games or so of the year, and that's not an unusual cold stretch for him. He just does that sometimes. Hard to really stake heavy offensive load into a guy who is so all-or-nothing on offense.

And yes, I agree. I frankly think Zion should be our leading shot-taker most nights because he's just so much better at creating the single most efficient shots in basketball than everyone else. That's made clear by the fact that despite taking only the third most shots per 100 on the team, he's scoring clearly the most per 100. He's shooting better from 2 than Adams this year (59.9% to 59.8% lmao) despite Adams taking almost exclusively garbage man buckets and being 5 inches taller. Just give that man the rock, for god's sake.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

Is that what he was saying? lmao

I have him on ignore so I only check to see what his comments actually say about 10% of the time and usually it's just him frothing at the mouth at something I've said. Apparently this time my sin is not including endless praise for Willy Hernangomez in my short end-game recap :hihi:

Great stuff

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It's not that Willy is that good, it's that he's competent and just plays within the scheme. Imagine just being average and you are 10 levels above your predecessor.

Sounds like another analogy, but i won't get into politics here lol

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Originally Posted by AusPel

That pick 4 trade gets worse by the day

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It's why I'm never of a fan to trade back. Regardless how lucky you are... You always picker lesser talent.

Grant the smartest move was to trade for future picks and eat Hill's contract

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Originally Posted by Taker597

It's why I'm never of a fan to trade back. Regardless how lucky you are... You always picker lesser talent.

Grant the smartest move was to trade for future picks and eat Hill's contract

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I mean, not necessarily. If you had done the exact same trade but instead of picking Hayes and NAW, you picked Tyler Herro and Matisse Thybulle, both of whom were still on the board at those picks, would anyone be saying it was a bad move to trade back? Nope.

The problem is that people are mistaking the process for the result. The process (trading back from 4 when there's an opportunity to get the guy you want at a lower number to accrue more picks) is exactly the right thing to do. That's one discrete decision; it was the right one, imo. Who you then pick at those spots is a new decision that is separate from the previous one. That's the one that is under dispute, and even then we don't yet know if it failed: for all we know, Jax is a season away from another 15lbs and being Clint Capela and all of a sudden that's a perfectly reasonable pick to make at #8. Granted, some might argue that's an unlikely scenario, but with hundreds of players in the NBA unlikely things happen all the time. We don't know for certain until we know, and by then it's too late.

A good win but definitely a lucky one

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

I mean, not necessarily. If you had done the exact same trade but instead of picking Hayes and NAW, you picked Tyler Herro and Matisse Thybulle, both of whom were still on the board at those picks, would anyone be saying it was a bad move to trade back? Nope.

The problem is that people are mistaking the process for the result. The process (trading back from 4 when there's an opportunity to get the guy you want at a lower number to accrue more picks) is exactly the right thing to do. That's one discrete decision; it was the right one, imo. Who you then pick at those spots is a new decision that is separate from the previous one. That's the one that is under dispute, and even then we don't yet know if it failed: for all we know, Jax is a season away from another 15lbs and being Clint Capela and all of a sudden that's a perfectly reasonable pick to make at #8. Granted, some might argue that's an unlikely scenario, but with hundreds of players in the NBA unlikely things happen all the time. We don't know for certain until we know, and by then it's too late.

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You're using hindsight in regards to a selection of pick they would of gotten at 8 and 17 instead seeing the floor at the 4th pick.

You can't say what if they pick Herro because they didn't. You can see who they could of picked at 4th. It immediately would of been the better move.

The best move is still to trade for future picks and keep Hill contract, because what we did with the Hill cap saving was a complete blunder.

The Pelicans in the short term made the worst move in regards to the 4th pick. More picks =/= better value. Picking players is the key and Pelicans still seem to thrive on very high selection easy home run picks. They didn’t have a reputation to drafting well even before Demps

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Originally Posted by Taker597

You're using hindsight in regards to a selection of pick they would of gotten at 8 and 17 instead seeing the floor at the 4th pick.

You can't say what if they pick Herro because they didn't. You can see who they could of picked at 4th. It immediately would of been the better move.

The best move is still to trade for future picks and keep Hill contract, because what we did with the Hill cap saving was a complete blunder.

The Pelicans in the short term made the worst move in regards to the 4th pick. More picks =/= better value. Picking players is the key and Pelicans still seem to thrive on very high selection easy home run picks. They didn’t have a reputation to drafting well even before Demps

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No I'm not lmao

If you are Griff and you trade for number 8 from number 4, then you can, yes, compare who they could have picked at number 4. But you can also compare the pick they made at 8 to all the available picks they could have made at number 8.

They did pick Hayes. But they could have picked anyone who was still on the board at 8. So it's entirely fair to say ''they could have picked Herro instead of Hayes'' because Herro was actually still an option. It would have been entirely possible for them to pick him, had they wanted to.

This is what teams do. They have their boards, they know who they like, and they also have a rough idea of what other teams might be thinking. If you have your eye on a guy but you also have good reason to believe nobody else really does, why pick him at 4 when you can trade down to 8 knowing that you have a very real chance of still getting the guy you want and also adding another pick later in the draft?

I absolutely can say ''what if they had picked Herro'' because they could have picked Herro and they chose not to. I can see who they could have picked at 4 and I can also see who they could have picked at 8, because I was there watching on draft night when the time came for them to make the pick and if I could still see who was left so could they.

More picks does mean better value if you still get the guy you want anyway.

And your penultimate sentence about picking players being the key is exactly what I was saying in the post you're responding to. So not really sure where the disagreement is there.

Most had us taking Hunter at 4 if we stayed. A big whiff.

Seems like we all agree to an extent here that Hayes was picked way too high.

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

I mean, not necessarily. If you had done the exact same trade but instead of picking Hayes and NAW, you picked Tyler Herro and Matisse Thybulle, both of whom were still on the board at those picks, would anyone be saying it was a bad move to trade back? Nope.

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Like you, I love the if game.....

If you and all your fancy graphs were right, Brandon Ingram would today be the second coming of Josh Jackson (who?).

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Originally Posted by Fedupfan

Seems like we all agree to an extent here that Hayes was picked way too high.

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I dont. Most educated people (when it comes to basketball) say you can't judge a draft/draft pick until 3 - 4 years after. For most there will be swings in play until they start to settle in to their roles.

Yet here we are casting major judgements on a player just 1.3 years into their career.

In year 1.3, CJ McCollum and JJ Redick were looked upon as wasted, garbage picks. That makes sense.

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Originally Posted by luckyman

I dont. Most educated people (when it comes to basketball) say you can't judge a draft/draft pick until 3 - 4 years after. For most there will be swings in play until they start to settle in to their roles.

Yet here we are casting major judgements on a player just 1.3 years into their career.

In year 1.3, CJ McCollum and JJ Redick were looked upon as wasted, garbage picks. That makes sense.

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I mean I agree but Hayes looks to be about 5 years away. I see Hayes on the Whiteside path. Maybe Alex Len at best. You don?t be as bad as him and just figure it out all of a sudden. He plays like he has no idea where to be on both ends.

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Originally Posted by Fedupfan

You don't be as bad as him and just figure it out all of a sudden. He plays like he has no idea where to be on both ends.

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Hence dae's favorite nickname.....

"Flash or Crash"!! (candidly, mostly 'Crash' as of late)

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Originally Posted by Pelicanidae

No I'm not lmao

If you are Griff and you trade for number 8 from number 4, then you can, yes, compare who they could have picked at number 4. But you can also compare the pick they made at 8 to all the available picks they could have made at number 8.

They did pick Hayes. But they could have picked anyone who was still on the board at 8. So it's entirely fair to say ''they could have picked Herro instead of Hayes'' because Herro was actually still an option. It would have been entirely possible for them to pick him, had they wanted to.

This is what teams do. They have their boards, they know who they like, and they also have a rough idea of what other teams might be thinking. If you have your eye on a guy but you also have good reason to believe nobody else really does, why pick him at 4 when you can trade down to 8 knowing that you have a very real chance of still getting the guy you want and also adding another pick later in the draft?

I absolutely can say ''what if they had picked Herro'' because they could have picked Herro and they chose not to. I can see who they could have picked at 4 and I can also see who they could have picked at 8, because I was there watching on draft night when the time came for them to make the pick and if I could still see who was left so could they.

More picks does mean better value if you still get the guy you want anyway.

And your penultimate sentence about picking players being the key is exactly what I was saying in the post you're responding to. So not really sure where the disagreement is there.

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I'm not disagreing with you, but expressing the caveat that talemt evaluation with a historical bad draft team... Is still bad.
Especially, when your your President took part in drafting the biggest bust of the 2000s Era.

Trading back is trust in your talent evaluation. We don't have proven talent evaluation to justify a move.

Regardless... If we took the best player on the board.... Garland. We would be have a better player in the short term. You seem to ignore the short term and long term aspect if player production. You chalk it up as a way things be, because Pelicans don't draft wall outside of the top 10.