Changes need to be made or I’m out. That is what he is saying
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It’s year 2. Sure if by year 6 or 7 it’s still like this he will be just like AD or CP3. But worrying about him forcing his way out after year 2.... really year 1 due to his injury last year and the pandemic... is just paranoia. I’m more worried about what changes the team might make this offseason to get better than what Zion might do in 4 years.
Winning cures all.
They better start winning and very soon. Zion cannot be happy watching Cam and RJ making the playoffs before him. A lot of guys in his class have made it to the play in or better. Time is ticking and Zion's competitiveness and desire to win at this stage of his career is rare and there's no beating around the bush with the issue. Griffin has a monumental task this offseason with some tough decisions.
Yea... I can't blame SVG too much. The roster is a cluster of players who just doesn't compliment each other. SVG started out rough but he adjusted and established an offense that works and most fans should be happy seeing how the offense is developing with Zion featured. Put the right players around him and the team will win games. Griffin tanked the season with his moves and he needs to undo it.
Always try to understand another persons point of view. Fromt THEIR point of view, they got him here. To the place where he was a #1 pick and the next face of a multi billion dollar industry. If you saw yourself as the people responsible for that, would you just hand over that person, product, etc to someone else and trust they got it from here? No human being would. Are they right? I dont think so, but I totally understand their point of view and see why they wouldnt want to hand him over completely until the other people prove that they know what they are doing.
Zion was asked specifically about those 3 things in his exit interview. And he said that those 3 things are part of it, and stressed that they are not the only thing that needs to be focused on. Even mentioned the coaches. 3:45 mark https://youtu.be/51jil1fftAo
I just want two things at the very least.
1. Somebody for Z to kick out to that can reliably hit shots
2. The refs to be considerably fairer towards the man.
I think both will lower the chances of Zion getting clapped by a horrible cheap shot that could end his season. I am worried that one day somebody will be a little too demonstrative with their fouling.
I don’t think Stan was perfect by any means (he came into the side heavily emphasizing inside-out, so maybe the lack of spacing acquisitions is partially to blame on him), but Reddick forgetting how to hit a shot absolutely gimped this offense. I’d say Stan needs to get with the times, but agree that you actually need shooters to space which we don’t really have in abundance.
Nobody had a gun to his head forcing him to play Bledsoe and Adams all those minutes. He chose that life. He had JJ, Harts, NAW, Kira, Hayes, Wenyen, Willy. Heck, he could've even given a Naji a look earlier. He chose to go with defenders who weren't even defending well. He chose to keep banging his head on the wall, playing the same exact lineups that weren't producing. He didn't start playing different players or trying new things until he was forced to. Thats SVG fault for not being creative enough to utilize what he had. Excuses mean nothing to me. I watched Monty get a team to the playoffs full of guys who weren't even in the league 2 years later and they weren't vets. He played guys to their strengths. SVG doesn't know how to play guys to their strengths or run plays to get them in their most successful spots. He doesn't even know how to recognize a player's most successful spots. At least from what I seen.
Excuses now? We had 2 guys literally who shot over 35% from 3 with any meaningful attempts. And one of them Lonzo falls off the map completely in the second half. Kira is clearly not ready for primetime and NAW is streaky as hell from 3. You gonna list JJ? Really? No explanation needed. If you have to rely on scrubs like Wenyan and Hernangomez... And not think about the personnel, then I don't know what else to say.
Yes it's excuses. We weren't a perfect team but SVG didn't fully utilize what we had either. You act like we were running plays to get guys open in their spots and they were just missing. Our entire offense was point Zion and BI. If you know you don't have shooters then do something different. If he really wanted spacing, he could've ran a lineup of Lonzo/NAW/Hart/BI/Zion. He chose to play Bledsoe. You saying Kira not ready but he also had a short leash. You saying NAW was streaky well so were his minutes. JJ shot 36% from 3 on 4.5 attempts but at least SVG admitted to not running plays to get JJ open. You say Lonzo fell off in the 2nd half(which is debatable) well keep him engaged in the offense. Stop telling him to stand in the corner and wait for a shot. Let him bring the ball up, call a play, get the team into sets quicker. Even Hart said the team was much more limited under SVG than under Gentry. Funny thing is all these excuses regarding spacing wasn't given to Gentry, even though he had the same amount of shooters. SVG gets millions of passes unreservedly.
Edit: Oh yeah how could I forget Meli, who played much better last year and is playing much better in Dallas. But SVG benched him from the start of the season for a team that needed spacing. Of course his shooting would be off, he got minutes every 10 games. He played in more games for Dallas than us this season. But "we need spacing"
I really can't understand anyone who looks at this team and doesn't see a clear on-court personnel problem.
Some of that will hopefully be solved by players simply maturing into their game a bit more (we've seen some of that from Jax this season, and NAW as well, hopefully it continues) but there are just far too many people on this team who get real minutes who should not be playing in any functional NBA rotation.
If you look at the top teams in the NBA this year and see how many guys they had getting real rotation minutes while producing negatively, the number is very small. Let me give some examples. I'll use BPM as a way to show production, but just be aware that BPM is only one, limited metric. Still, it provides a rough picture of what I mean.
Utah: They played 6 players over 1500 minutes this year. Only 1 had a negative BPM, and 5 of them had a BPM better than +2. Nobody worse than -0.5
Phoenix: They played 5 players over 1500 minutes. Only 1 had a negative BPM and it was Devin Booker. 2 of those 5 had BPMs better than +3.0
Denver: They played 4 players over 1500 minutes. Only 1 had a negative BPM; Jokic led the league with a +11.7 BPM.
Clippers: 6 guys got over 1500 minutes. Only 1 had a negative BPM, and it was -0.1, not exactly a nightmare. Kawhi had a +6.7, and PG13 had +3.7.
Sixers: 5 guys got over 1500. Only 1 had a negative BPM, and it was -0.9. Three players had a BPM better than +2.5, and Embiid's was +7.5
Nets: Weird year cause of injuries so barely anyone played heavy minutes: of the 3 who got over 1500 minutes, one was negative.
Bucks: 6 players got over 1500. Two were negative, and combined at -0.5. Two guys had better than +3.5 - Jrue and Giannis.
So basically, good teams give the majority of their minutes to good players. They don't give many minutes to teams who produce badly.
How do this year's Pelicans compare?
Pelicans: 5 players got over 1500 minutes. 2 were negative, and our overall minutes leader (Bledsoe) was the most negative (-2.3, far worse than anyone who got major minutes on the good teams). Our 6th, 7th, and 8th men in minutes were all negatives overall too. Only one guy had a BPM of better than +2.5 (Zion, who had +5.4) and only one other guy had better than +2.0 (Ingram, at +2.2).
Again, BPM is just one metric and it's not even the most advanced one out there, this isn't me trying to throw BPM out there as if it's proof definitive of anything. But there's clearly a trend here: if 40% of the guys you play are bad, and the guy you play most is the worst, and 5 of your top 8 players are negatives in the box score, you aren't going to win many games!
Yes, some of those negatives are showing improvement and may well be positives as soon as even next year. That's fine. Upgrades can come via internal improvement, nobody is denying that. But this team, this year, as it was, had a dire talent deficit.
I saw a lot of positive player development under SVG. So, I'm pretty happy considering he's just a transition coach. You're never gonna find a perfect coach that can do all 3 perfectly. For SVG, he needs a good team with actual options to match up with opposing teams. When you really only got a 5 Man deep roster. You gonna be forced to put out bad line ups. Unless David told SVG to blow it up and focus on development. He's gonna give his Vets minutes. SVG was and always been a stubborn old school coach with outdated philosophy. I can't be upset when he does the exact thing that he's known for doing.
If you wanna be upset. Just look at the BPO that hire a washed up retread with toxic breakup every place he went that had little justification in hiring. Maybe Griffin shouldn't have waited 6 games left to shut it down, too.
I give SVG a solid B-. Most of it is player growth under his watch, handling covid offseason, and doing more with a worse team than Gentry.
I don't think anyone has argued that this team doesn't have flaws. SVG just isn't a good coach, no matter what the team look like. I'm judging what he did with what he had. I'm judging his rotations, adjustments, schemes and ability to connect/motivate the team. Its easy/lazy to just blame the roster makeup. That excuses SVG from any wrongs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, I certainly don't watch or follow as close as many of you do.
We were one of if not the youngest team.
Our team leader wanted out, note he did so with class though. Still loosing his leading defense and solid shooting as well as great leadership reverberated throughout the season.
Our 3 pt specialist JJ fell off a cliff.
Lonzo, who saw significant improvement before the bubble last year regressed in most metrics and became very streaky.
Bledsoe who was brought in to provide solid veteran leadership and toughness threw a tantrum essentially the whole season and was a negative in everyway he should have been a positive. As poor as his effort was I cannot imagine the sulking if he was demoted to coming off the bench. If he were to switch to DNP last season would we have enough Guards including injuries ?
Next year
If we get a solid replacement , even if it is just in minutes played, for Bledsoe we are a playoff team. If we can get another solid 3pt shooter as well Zion and Ingram will have someone to keep defenses honest. Our young crew was playing with heart and good effort - I see a step up for them next year. Of course we all want huge changes but it will not take much to switch this to an above .500 playoff team. Zion mostly missing his first season, a new coach in a shorten season while losing your team leader and two best outside shooters at the start partially derailed this season. We still saw dividends in the development of our younger players and are sitting on a stockpile of picks - we even now have the benefit of knowing better what we have, how they play together and what our coaches fit is.
I'm an optimist despite following this team from the Baron Davis years. This situation feels night and day from the AD times. We have one sour player in Bledsoe - back then it seemed everyone we brought in looked like they were headed to the gallows. It feels more like a younger better version of CP3, DW, TC with Zion, BI, Hayes and on the upside we have an experienced coach, a better GM and tons of draft capital.
We were on the younger side but not the youngest.
Youngest teams in the NBA this year:
- OKC Thunder: 23.5 years old on average
- Minnesota Timberwolves: 23.9 yrs
- Memphis Grizzlies: 24.3 yrs
- Orlando Magic: 24.3 yrs
- Detroit Pistons: 24.4 yrs
- New Orleans Pelicans: 24.4 yrs
Something worth noting is that basically none of the very youngest teams in the league are good teams. Or even just real playoff teams.
The oldest rosters, on the other hand?
- Los Angeles Lakers: 29.1 yrs
- Los Angeles Clippers: 29.0 yrs
- Miami Heat: 28.8 yrs
- Brooklyn Nets: 28.5 yrs
- Milwaukee Bucks: 27.7 yrs
- Philadelphia 76ers and Utah Jazz tied: 27.5 yrs
Unsurprisingly, the best teams in the NBA tend to also be older and more experienced. The only one of the top top tier teams not listed here is Denver, whose average age is 26.5 and falls somewhere in the middle of the league.
Let Zion run the show. Just like Lebron does. Let Zion form his dream team. Gayle just going have to accept she may need to spend more money.
Luckily Gayle has accepted this and Griffin has mentioned it a couple of times. He has said she is not worried about the tax if it means a winning team.
Just hard to do that when the player pool is small and you haven?t had much time to evaluate what you already have.
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I'll go 75-25 roster construction versus coaching mistakes.
Griffin clearly cross-stepped with the roster. Even he acknowledged the lack of shooting and that the line up was, in his words, "wonky." I give him points for not trying to white wash the facts. But none of the problems he identified were unknowable in advance. Indeed, the lack of shooting was widely commented on before the season even started and the wisdom of allocating $29 million to a traditional pivot with a fair amount of wear on the tread, to say nothing of the draft picks involved, was questioned as well, especially given the obvious other needs on the team. I think it's crystal clear in retrospect--and was pretty obvious even advance--that the roster the front office put together was a poor fit for the modern game. It sometimes looked like a 2004 analog NBA team trying to keep up in a digital league.
The more troubling question is what kind of vision or perception of the game allowed this to happen? A lot of comment from Griffin, Gundy & Co. early on suggested that they had an alternative vision for how to play basketball, one based on deemphasizing the 3-pointer and pace and space in favor of scoring in the lane and shooting foul shots while also denying opponents penetration and not fouling.
As we know, that didn't really work out. On offense, we got to the line, but were so poor at foul shooting that we didn't reap the benefits many nights. We were efficient on two-pointers, but opposing teams shot the lights out from deep, burying the Pels many nights in a 3-point avalanche so deep it was almost impossible to dig out. And, to add insult to injury, even when we kept it close despite these handicaps, we were woeful in late game situations, meaning that the dividend of game-toughness, experience and situational basketball IQ that we hoped to gain by paying Adams and Bledsoe $45 million never showed up, leaving with the team two very expensive and flawed veterans who comprised 40% of our starting line up and alone ate up a third of our payroll. Tough to overcome that.
Yet, I think some coaches and GMs would have looked the situation in the face and said the roster is fatally flawed, we accept that fact and we are going to move quickly to make changes. Griff and Gundy instead said they weren't going to "give" minutes to young players implying they had to earn them even when a veteran like Bledsoe clearly was not earning them. At a minimum, they could have tried replacing Bled with Josh Hart, who clearly had earned some equity with the team. But they futzed around until the injury bug hit and then it was too late. Too much status quo for too long.
I'm in the camp that doesn't want to overreact to the disappointment of this season. The Pelicans really were close in many ways and a season of maturity will help address some of the problems. But Bledsoe can't be a starter on this team and I think getting a true PG who hopefully can shoot and defend as well as take the reins of the team at crunch time is the top priority. Point Zion will be a weapon, but I still think you need a floor leader at this point who can make things run the right way. And a couple of long shooters, pretty please...
Yeah, I think they need to shift from developing, trading assets to acquiring value and experimenting with positions to building a team around the core. I'd like to see a big move, like replacing Bledsoe with a very good SG, but I'm not necessarily expecting it unless the right situation arises. I do expect them to identify their core and build around it at a minimum though.
I think the 1st stage of the rebuild was so-so for Griff. We did get a lot of draft assets but Bledsoe and to a smaller extent Adams are negatives to those moves. I think the Davis trade turned out pretty well though. Starting this offseason the aquiring of talent to build up will define Griff here imo.
Ouch. SVG is certainly not an evaluator of talent. As a matter of fact it was a train wreck when he was GM it sounds like
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/5...van-gundy-exit
I agree. I've said a bunch of times, as have others, that while rebuilds don't take place in five minutes and we shouldn't expect to be a finals contender next season, there does need to be a leap. We have the top-end guys on the roster needed to make this team a playoff team in Zion and Ingram. We have the assets in terms of young players, older players on good/expiring deals, and picks to make trades to improve the roster. We even have, though I think it's unlikely, S&T possibilities with guys like Lonzo. And, because of this season and getting to trial different things, we also know what we need to put around Zion as the number 1 option.
Therefore, with all those assets and all that information, this off-season, and really up until next trade deadline, needs to be a serious future-making period. Not everything needs to be set in stone, not every asset needs to be offloaded, but some clear changes need to be made, this roster needs to show some real upgrade, and we have to start winning now. Playoff team next year is a must.
Meh, decent trade, However I will say, the way we kept on getting beasted by PG's and SG's day in and day out speaks volumes about our guard situation with the defensive ability. Not saying all of it was Lonzo's fault (Or bledsoe's to be fair) cause he did have some tough assignments and i don't expect him to be a defensive stopper, but we need a disruptor on the guard end. Didi showed some decent promise along with Hart & NAW. But Lonzo and Bledsoe? It was horrific to watch them get tossed around all game. (Some of it was the rotations and miscommunications.) Also i don't think Brogdon is that much better defensively. So we have some tough decisions to make this offseason. I personally think Lonzo is gone via S&T.
Also, let me add, I'm not feigning away from BI and Zion and their defensive lapses, but way more often we got blasted by PG's.
EDIT: Lonzo did get better as the season went on though to be fair to him. Late in the season. but if he wants 18M or more, we have to ship him elsewhere or let him walk.
SVG such a good coach that nobody wanted him but us.
Oh wait my bad
https://apnews.com/article/new-orlea...2d853280ae2537Quote:
POINT ZION
Griffin praised Van Gundy’s vision for “point-Zion,” an offensive scheme used increasingly throughout the season in which Williamson served as the primary ball-handler.
Griffin recalled that when interviewing nine coaching candidates last year, “Stan was the only one who saw point-Zion in Zion.”
Too bad Zion does not see it that way
The club should ditch "Point Zion" with all due haste. Williamson is a finisher of epic proportion; he is not an orchestrator. It's like asking a podiatrist to perform brain surgery on the fly; it just makes no sense. The podiatrist might have the medical knowledge to be competent at some point, but lacks both the know-how and experience right now.
Further, we hear SVG talk about how JAXSON needs to work on the basics and not worry about knocking down the three at this point. But with Zion, we are going to force feed "Point Zion" upon him when there is a litany of basics he should be working on first? Again, it's a 'head-scratcher'.