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This was a rough one to watch. I want to believe that this team has a goal, but that isn’t so clear any longer as we don’t play like we want to make the playoffs, and we aren’t playing young players, so we aren’t looking to develop our young players. What gives with these guys?
If you Jimmer it, they will come.
You got a coach that refuses to play for development till he's mathematically eliminated. SVG is old school... Cut off your nose to spit your face old school like Gentry.Originally Posted by UNO Gracias
The thing is, Can’t Gundy isn’t a bad coach. He isn’t a great coach, he isn’t a horrible coach, he is slightly above average. His system is good enough to keep you competitive. What he is doing now isn’t changing the narrative about who he is as a coach. Barely above average coaches don’t win titles unless they have players like Lebron on them. Is JCG just waiting on Zion to hit God mode before he can ascend to title winning coach, while skipping over the hard work?
I would absolutely love that but idk what or who we could trade to grab us the 3rd pick, it would take a lot, the top 5 in this draft look outstanding
Also I would do back flips if we could do this because I think both green and Mobley will be superstars but how in the world do we get the third pick without giving up Ingram
The way this game is officiated like all the players are criminals, how can they show emotion? You know Montrezl Harrel got a tech for yelling "And 1!" the other night huh?
It probably cost about 2-3 1st and maybe a player. So, it's pretty unrealistic. I think Mobley, Green, and Kira has scary defensive potential. We still got to get quality starting Vets that can instill a real cohesive culture.
What really worried about me was if you listened to that JJ podcast is how Zion made excuses for the defense I didn't like that. His logic that they are playing against the greatest players in the world and they are gonna go off no matter what. Which is really not true at all when you compare to the majority of the league.
The one person that I feel for the most is probably Adams, because he's clearly not built to play 4/5 games a week due to condensed season. His body is struggling.
I have not been impressed with his cynical posts for a good while now, but capital M capital M forecasted this a long time ago .... Credit where credit is due ....
"we might make dollars, but we don't necessarily make sense"
"always be sincere....whether you mean it or not"
I actually view Green as mildly problematic defensively. Not a mess or anything, he'll probably be okay, but I wouldn't class him as part of a big defensive 3 type of situation.
Mobley, of course, is probably the best raw defender in the draft honestly.
Basketball.
He's just not very good defensively flat out, I think your best option will always be trying to hide him on whichever of those two is the worse opposing ball-handler.
Josh Hart: 1/7 from 3
Lonzo Ball: 2/11 from 3
Melli: 0/4 from 3
Kira: 1/4 from 3
When you give a combined 111 minutes to 4 guys who go 4/26 from 3, you're going to have a problem. Pretty much just unavoidable. With some of these guys it's forgivable: Kira's a rookie, we all take time to adjust, Hart shouldn't be in the role of volume scoring, Lonzo's destined to have an off day eventually after such a hot February, fine, but you can't survive all of this happening in one game. If they had gone something like 8/26, still only 30% from 3, we would have won this game.
Oh well.
And of course, as usual, the defense was horrific. We all know Zion has to get better defensively, that's no secret to anyone, but hopefully a game like this can put the narrative that he's personally sinking us on defense to rest (I know this narrative isn't that common on here but on Twitter it's rife): Zion didn't play and the defense was still god-awful. Bledsoe doesn't care, Lonzo has forgotten how to pay attention off-ball and has never been good at navigating screens, Ingram is just a mess 80% of the time, and while Adams is fine positionally he's not nearly good enough to make up for the amount of perimeter breakdowns we have.
For a SG... I think Green would thrive with a great supporting cast and development. He's a got more than enough athleticism to be an underrated defender.
If I could get Suggs or Cade. I would in a heartbeat. Even 4th... Seems pretty out of reach with how stubborn Griffin not forcing SVG to focus on developing.
I think at the end of day.. You really should try to get Mobley in addition to our lottery pick. If you want to load up on rookie talent. 2021 is the year. We struck out and fumbled Hayes and NAW development. I hope we are more aggressive in actual deep class and not trying to make moves in shakey classes.
Like even Mobley and Zaire at 10th is great draft in my book. Got a potential SF defender, make Ingram expendable, and get Hart back to his natural position off the bench.
Last edited by Taker597; 03-05-2021 at 02:53 AM.
I think at 10th I'd be hoping for Moody to still be on the board. I've seen people putting him anywhere from about #6 to about #15 (tankathon currently has him 9th, NBA Draft Room has him 8th, SI had him 14th in their mid-January mock) and frankly I think he'd be great for us. I feel like Ziaire wouldn't be a bad choice though, he projects well defensively and has potential as a difficult shot-maker, I just think Moody is about 2.5 years ahead of him developmentally with room still to grow.
Mobley of course, is the star. If you can't have Cade, Mobley is such a good consolation prize. He's so good, so smart, so mobile, so instinctive. He's basically the best defensive big man since maybe AD, in terms of college-to-NBA projection, and he comes with a really advanced passing game as well already as well as those glimmers of a face up game. He'd pair so well covering some of Zion's height based shortcomings on D.
If we could come out of this year with Zion, Moody, Mobley, Kira, and Ingram as our young 'guys' then I'd feel pretty comfortable going forward really, even if we acknowledge there are other things that need working on in terms of bench and legit depth. There's 2 or 3 guys in that list that I have real confidence in being good-to-great defensively in the NBA and another guy that I think will be at least solid. The one guy who isn't someone I have defensive faith in is already a proven 20+pt scorer and a solid secondary playmaker (Ingram), so it's not like it's the end of the world that he's bad on DIt would be a young team but it would be something we aren't right now: young and talented.
Players on the Pelicans roster in Defensive EPM:
Brandon Ingram: -2.0, 405th in the league
Zion Williamson: -1.5, 374th in the league
Lonzo Ball: -0.1, 212th in the league
Josh Hart: -0.8, 309th in the league
JJ Redick: -2.4, 414th in the league
Steven Adams: +0.8, 119th in the league
Eric Bledsoe: -2.2, 409th in the league.
There are only 436 players in the league.
Why does our defense suck? Well, we start two of the worst 40 defenders in basketball this year, give heavy bench minutes to another bottom 35 guy, and nobody on our team falls in the top 100 defensively, so maybe that has something to do with it.
It doesn't get much better if you use other stats either. In D-Raptor, some guys look a little better, but not much.
Ingram: -2.6, 222nd in the league
Zion: -2.2, 210th in the league
Lonzo -0.1, 127th in the league
Adams: +0.5, 103rd in the league
Hart: +0.6, 97th in the league
Redick: -1.9, 198th in the league
Bledsoe: -3.2, 238th in the league.
We upgrade, by D-RAPTOR, to one top 100 guy, but we still have a ton of just awful defenders.
There is nobody on this team playing actively good defense. Not one guy.
Kira had some good moments, really happy for him. I really think we need to start posting Ingram, his dribble drive game isnt that good.
The problem is that his post-up game is pretty mediocre. He's in the 74th percentile this year on post-ups, though admittedly he doesn't run many of them, but it's hard to imagine him being much better on higher volume. He can only really post very small guys cause his hips are high and he's easily bumped off his spot, and he doesn't have the weight or strength to go bully-ball. Plus, you're then sticking another guy in the paint.
His dribble drive game can be good, when he's using his length and pace to control it (he did this a lot last year and it was really effective) but for some reason this year he's often trying to rely on burst to get by guys and it's just not good enough. He's never been a super super bursty, explosive guy with a lightning first step, and it's certainly not something he's gained in the last 6 months. He needs to go back to using his lengthy strides and sense of timing to create good looks on drives, he's good at that.
I feel like the sets we run should have an option for Ingram to high post like Kobe/MJ style. Doesn't have to be the focus of the play, I'd just rather give Ingram a turnaround jumper if the team has a few seconds left on the shot clock, his midrange is trustworthy
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It’s amazing how we always seem to have a ton of defenders in the paint. Even without Zion, no one can get to the basket as easily as other teams do against us.
Our offense, with Zion on the floor, is not in need of massive change. There are adjustments that could be made but they're mostly personnel based - upgrading from mediocre shooters to good shooters, from standstill shooters to movement shooters, etc, not changing the scheme. We have the 7th best Offensive Rating in NBA history right now. The style of play is not the issue.
Why would we change that in order to give more possessions to our 2nd best offensive player in a play-type that he's not even particularly good at? I'd rather Ingram just faceup and take the shot in those last moment situations than go for post-up turnarounds.
It's to the point that I'm barely paying attention to these games anymore. I'll have the TV on in the background, but that's it.
We are at the point in the season where we either make drastic changes to the roster, or tank it the rest of the way. Anything else is spinning your wheels, and wasting everyone's time.
Anyone not named Zion,Ingram, or Ball should be on the trade block.
Ball's on the block too.
Oh this is what point of attack defense looks like https://t.co/eCrbj6p3MW
— Shamit Dua (@FearTheBrown) March 5, 2021
Game was painful. Even though we kept it fairly close much of the 2nd half, I never really thought we would get over the hump and pull it out. Outside of maybe Kira, everyone else was terrible.
the last few games when we were down, stan had let the players who fought their way back to making it a game also finish the game....last night the backups pulled within 5pts and stan put the starters in then butler and crew blew the game open at that moment lol.....
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