I love JV, but he doesn't fit the rest of this team. He's too slow for what this team wants to do and this team wants to run especially when Zion comes back.
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04-09-2023, 06:33 PMHorneyTexan
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04-09-2023, 06:37 PMPelicanidaeThis is not a ''run and gun'' team. We're 15th in pace this year, we were 21st last year, and Green has been vocal about preferring 2s over 3s. He's not just trying to replicate pace and space - even if we think he should.Quote:
Originally Posted by HorneyTexan
When JV is on the floor, this team is just better than when he isn't, in a number of ways. The problem is that Green seems stuck between wanting to play small-ball, and wanting to play-bruising, rebounding, slow ball. He can't have both and he so clearly wants it. So we end up with stupid situations like playing small-ball lineups that refuse to take 3s.
He needs to pick a philosophy and commit to it. If he is committed to small ball, then we need to trade JV and Green needs to integrate more 3s into the gameplan. If he is committed to 2>3, then he needs to ditch the small-ball stuff and integrate JV more into the offence.
Green is trying to have his cake and eat it too, and the incoherence is costing us. -
04-09-2023, 06:52 PMHorneyTexan
Truthfully, I think that growth in pace from 21 to 15 is going to continue, but NBA teams have to be able to have "multiple personalities". There's no reason we can't be a half-court team when needed and then a pace and space team when we want. This team has young pieces and "mature" pieces. I think it's only going to get better as the young kids continue to evolve but it sure would be nice to have a 5 who could run, adjust shots, and have a short jumper.
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04-09-2023, 06:57 PMPelicanidaeYou have to be able to handle different looks but a team that is built to maximise pace and space is simply built out of different pieces than a team that is designed for crushing interior offense. You can't have a team that is world-class at both, because you'd need two different rosters. It's just not possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by HorneyTexan
You have to have an identity as a team. We don't, right now. -
04-09-2023, 06:57 PMmsusousaphone
It's important to note that CJ is playing with a hurt thumb and it's clearly impacting his game. He probably wouldn't be trying so hard if Jose and Zion were in.....and he was overcompensating because Trey and Herb weren't ready for playoff intensity. Even the officiating is different in the playoffs. That's not a knock on Trey and Herb. They're sophomores. They'll get there. But Minnesota adjusted better to playoff intensity basketball than we did and it put more pressure on CJ to perform when his thumb is throwing him off.
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04-09-2023, 07:03 PM6warddude
"It was a tough game to continue to go with JV once they went small" - Willie Green about why he closed with Herb at the 5
smdh....i just cant believe willie green said that smdh.... -
04-09-2023, 07:08 PMPelicanidae
DRTG with Jonas on the court: 104.3
— Shamit Dua (@FearTheBrown) April 9, 2023
DRTG with Larry on the court tonight: 125.7.
One of them was treated as a liability
I know fans hate JV but we’ve lost a handful of games this year literally bc Willie wouldn’t play him in the 4th bc Nance provides nothing
— KEV. (@bucklezzzman) April 9, 2023
KARL ANTHONY TOWNS NOTORIOUSLY SMALL HUMAN
— Shamit Dua (@FearTheBrown) April 9, 2023
Agree with pretty much all of this -
04-09-2023, 07:27 PMJaxpel
Can someone explain to me why down 3 with less than 10 seconds to play, CJ went for a layup rather than kicking it out for 3. That sorta hit me as a guy either blanking out in the clutch or a selfish player trying to pad stats.
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04-09-2023, 08:01 PMPELICANSFAN
Nance was terrible today. I cannot understand why Willie did not put JV back in. Also, when will we ever run plays and screens to get TM3 open?
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04-09-2023, 08:11 PMPelicanidaeWillie doesn't trust JV in clutch moments and also, no. That's when, no.Quote:
Originally Posted by PELICANSFAN
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04-09-2023, 08:16 PM6warddude
the sun is just shining on the lakers butt right now....they should blow the wolves out tuesday...and will face a memphis team with good players who are hurt....
if AD show up in that series then the lakers will knock memphis out in the 1st round..... -
04-10-2023, 01:49 AMPelicanidae
It's an indictment to your whole offensive process if opponents feel they can hide Steph Curry or Towns with 5 fouls on Trey because they know the team won't really work to get him shots
— Shamit Dua (@FearTheBrown) April 10, 2023 -
04-10-2023, 07:57 AMAD-AT
Didn't get to catch the game because of Easter, which sounds like a good thing from these posts.
Looking at the lines we only made 3 triples all night, which is horrific, but points to a bad shooting night instead of a total implosion. Looks like a classic playoff CJ line. 0-5 from deep and 5-8 FT seems like he must have been putting up terrible shots off the dribble again. Looks like BI and JV cleaned up the glass big time. Next two were CJ and Richardson with 5 each.
My god what a total carry by BI! 3 assists away from a 42 pt. triple double. 4 TOs isn't great, but looks like he made up for it in other spots with 12 boards, 2 steals, a block, and a prefect 9 from FT. We can't keep wasting these games from him, or asking him to do all of this by himself in the playoffs. CJ has got to step up and stop being scared in these games. -
04-10-2023, 08:12 AMAs I See ItBelieve me, CJ is not 'scared'. He is a lot of things ('self-serving' comes to mind), but 'scared' isn't one of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by AD-AT
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04-10-2023, 10:04 AMPelicanidae
This is such a surreal season because if someone had told you before the year started that even with major injury issues to both Zion and BI, we'd still be over .500 and make the post-season, it wouldn't have sounded too bad.
But watching just how we got here has been painful. -
04-10-2023, 10:36 AMluckyman
Everybody's predictions for this year (good, bad, and mid) went out of the window in January.
I think we've all come to expect both BI and Zion will miss 20 - 30 games. But they both managed to go beyond that.
That's just plain horrible for fans. -
04-10-2023, 10:57 AMAs I See ItVery Good Take.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelicanidae
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04-10-2023, 11:03 AMPelicanidaeIt's wild how much time these two miss. Zion obviously misses whole seasons, and then BI misses like 25-30 games a year fairly consistently. Our injury luck in general is terrible.Quote:
Originally Posted by luckyman
Trey, JV, Naji, and CJ were the only Pels who played more than 66 games this year. -
04-10-2023, 11:25 AMPelicanidae
Trey Murphy III finishes the season at 60.6% on twos, 40.6% on threes, and 90.5% at the line. At just 22 years old, he’s the youngest player in NBA history to shoot 40+ percent on threes and 90+ percent on free-throws for a season. pic.twitter.com/I8NJFCvLAi
— Brett Usher (@UsherNBA) April 9, 2023 -
04-10-2023, 12:01 PMPELICANSFAN"Injured" is probably the main issue.Quote:
Originally Posted by As I See It
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04-10-2023, 12:35 PMPelicanidaeAnd ''inflexible'' would be anotherQuote:
Originally Posted by PELICANSFAN
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04-10-2023, 12:58 PMAs I See ItOr at a bare minimum, "INEFFICIENT" (and that's being kind).Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelicanidae
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04-10-2023, 03:25 PMnew city champ
Not here to pile on Pels, they’ve had some rotten luck with injuries again this year. But I do worry more now about coach and how he sees the game. Like dae, I detect a certain kind of inflexibility or rigidity in his coaching style. Sometimes it’s just adherence to long-time NBA norms, like how vet back ups can make stupid plays that would get a young guy stuck to the bench yet keep their spot in the rotation. Other times it’s a more general sense that he’s kind of passive and fatalistic about things at times. Maybe that approach helps keep a young team together in tough times, but I worry that it also leads to a foolish consistency when changes are needed or better situational awareness and flexibility would help us win games…
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04-10-2023, 03:29 PMPELICANSFANHow so? He has a torn ligament in his dominant hand. Not an easy injury to play with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelicanidae
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04-10-2023, 04:26 PMPelicanidaeFoolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.Quote:
Originally Posted by PELICANSFAN
CJ is playing now exactly like he always does. But he has a serious injury in his shooting hand.
The wise thing to do would be to adjust how you approach the game, when you have such an injury - be more willing to defer, maybe try to prioritise facilitation, use yourself more as a decoy, use motion off-ball to off-set a reduced personal efficiency by improving looks for others.
Instead, he just goes out there and pretends that he's fine, plays the same way, but worse.
The critique I have for him, at least the major one, is the same one I keep making and people continue coming back to me by pointing out that he's injured, to which my response is always the same: I know that - does he? Because he plays as if he has no issues, no injuries, nothing to adjust to. He is inflexible because he refuses to adapt his game to account for his injury, and ignores the issues that result from it. So he's either ignorant, or selfish - or, as I suggest here, inflexible and has trouble doing things any differently.
None of those options are good options, but they're what's on the table. -
04-10-2023, 09:59 PMluckyman
Jose is injured and Trey is in the starting lineup. The bench has no scoring punch.
So why is Kira not getting any minutes at all? Dyson is 'defensive purposes' only at this point.
I didn't want to say anything because it was against a bunch of scrubs, but Kira's last minutes were straight up dominant.
He can pass and score. The bench needs scoring. Whats the deal? He's not awful defensively either. -
04-10-2023, 10:17 PMAs I See ItThank You, LuckymanQuote:
Originally Posted by luckyman
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04-10-2023, 10:26 PMmsusousaphoneAdapt to where?Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelicanidae
During the relaxed regular season play, Trey and Herb were hitting 3s and things were great. In the last game, Minnesota ratcheted up to playoff intensity and the young ones found out pretty quick that there isn't as much space when the game is taken to the next level. Now that's not going to be a long time issue as I think our young guys will rise to that next level and start to pickup their offensive game to match that playoff intensity D but since they aren't there yet and Jose and Zion are injured.....CJ can't defer to anyone. He's the vet floor spacer next to BI. The only one. Even iniured. He's inflexible because the roster doesn't have any place else to go. Either Trey and Herb are going to have to pick it up in a week, Zion comes back, or JV, BI, or CJ is going to have to have a monster game for us to pull through. It may even take two of them having monster games.
But I think people aren't seeing how Trey and Herb struggled to find space for 3s in that playoff atmosphere. -
04-10-2023, 11:17 PMPelicanidaeI listed several things he could do differently in the exact comment you're responding to.Quote:
Originally Posted by msusousaphone
CJ can't defer to anyone? So just to clarify, the argument has now taken this path:
CJ isn't doing anything wrong -> Okay CJ is doing some stuff wrong, but he's injured -> Okay maybe he could adapt but how? -> Okay, sure but who is he supposed to defer to? -> No, none of the other players on the floor count, they're all worse than him at this
Which leads us to the logical response of ''no they aren't, he's being really bad at it, because he's injured.''
Which is my entire point.
The CJ McCollum defense squad has simultaneously decided that he's so injured we can't blame him for any of the problems he's causing, but also not even close to injured enough for anyone else to be a better option. Which is it? Either he's injured so badly we can't judge him, or he's still better than Trey. He cannot be both. -
04-10-2023, 11:37 PMPelicanidae
I also want to jsut note that in order for the idea of Trey and Herb only really being useful during ''relaxed regular season play'' to make any sense, you have to do very weird leaps of logic such as pretending that the 4th quarter and overtime of the Memphis game were ''relaxed regular season play'', since Herb and Trey were both pivotal to that victory and CJ was very much the 4th wheel in that game.
Wanting to defend CJ is fair. As I've mentioned before, he's been put in very tricky circumstances between other guys being injured and his own injury, and it's been hard for him this year. I get that. But when we're at the point of playing down how good other guys have been, often within those same difficult circumstances, just to puff up CJ's accomplishments and make him look better, that's going to be somewhere I'm just not playing ball. Trey and Herb have been excellent and I'm not going to accept that they're both just not up to the task of ''playoff intensity'' basketball just to make CJ look better.
And as a final final side note on this comment, I love the pretend idea that Trey and Herb have just now ''found out pretty fast'' what playoff intensity is now, in a regular season game against Minnsota, when they both went 6 games against Phoenix in the actual playoffs last year. I feel like they may have already ''found out pretty fast'' what playoff intensity was then, in the actual playoffs against an elite team, more than they did in a single regular season game against Minnesota. Just spitballing there. -
04-11-2023, 01:21 PMb_l_p
damn... he spittin ^ !
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04-11-2023, 03:03 PMPELICANSFANI think that is asking a lot of a player who has always been relied upon to be a scorer. This team also needs him to be a scorer as we do not have many players that can do so at the same level. If Willie ever decided to call plays and screens for Murphy, it may allow a bit more of him deferring, but Willie has not figured that out yet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelicanidae
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04-11-2023, 03:06 PMPelicanidaeIf he can't change because he's always played this way, then that is the definition of inflexible. So yeah, that's my point.Quote:
Originally Posted by PELICANSFAN
And sure, I've criticised how useless this team is at getting shots for Trey, that's also a problem. We were 25th in the NBA in offense after Zion went down (top 10 with him), so our offense has more than enough problems to go around. -
04-11-2023, 03:11 PMPELICANSFANIt's probably part that he has played that way for 10 years or so in the NBA and part that the team relies on him to be a scorer. I do not call that inflexible. How many players do you see completely change the way they play because of an injury? Did you see Booker, Lillard, even Lebron suddenly defer since they were playing through an injury?Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelicanidae
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04-11-2023, 03:26 PMPelicanidaeLebron is already a pass-first player, so probably a bad example from you there, but with the other two yes! One of the biggest problems with Lillard's entire career, one of the primary reasons the Blazers have never achieved as highly as some thought they 'should' based on Lillard's high tier scoring is the fact that he was eternally unable to actually impact the game in other ways, particularly off-ball and defensively.Quote:
Originally Posted by PELICANSFAN
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04-11-2023, 10:01 PMneworleanshoo
I know - for certain - that our chances of advancing are much higher with a T-Wolves win. But I'm a dreamer, and the best-case scenario for the season as far as satisfaction is concerned would be to knock the Lakers out on their home floor. The refs would never let it happen... but maybe just maybe we could shoot lights out and make the refs moot?
Screw it, go T-Wolves.