Letting Ball walk isn't the end of the world until we get Kira and TM3 getting a better presence of the bench with going through the developmental growing pains.
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Letting Ball walk isn't the end of the world until we get Kira and TM3 getting a better presence of the bench with going through the developmental growing pains.
Jimmer would play 30 minutes a night on this team.
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And Lonzo Ball is a hill that solely exists to die on. I'm so glad he's Chicago's burden to bare. A $22 million a complimentary piece is a sacrifice I'm willing to have on my conscious.Originally Posted by Taker597
I don't even want Lonzo here. My problem is that we burden ourselves to more expensive unplayable negative assests.
Let Lonzo walk is the perfect move, but bring in empty salary for a mythical trade. Nahhhh... That's a bad roster construction.
We already unloaded picks for Jonas and Graham and I feel that was the right move. We are gonna unload way more picks for that trade.
Two step forward one step back kind of existence. Griff's job is probably riding on a trade. I hope he has his alchemist book and speak it into existence. I just don't see it happening.
All kidding aside, Elfrid Payton doesn't hit the floor for Phoenix and he would probably be a starter for us. Let that sink in.
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Eh. That’s not saying all that what you think it is. Not like he’s got Rondo or Schroeder in front of him. It’s freaking Chris Paul. Starting ahead of him
The Pels biggest problem is Griffin. You could have nucleus of BI, Zion, Lonzo and Jrue Holiday playing right now.
Why would we need to "unload way more picks for that trade"??? These aren't "expensive negative...assets". Satoransky ($10m) is expiring, Hart ($12m) is non-guaranteed after this season, Temple ($5m) has one year remaining of guaranteed at $5m which isn't a deal-breaker for any significant trade. These are very short-term salary filler players that may or may not be used for a trade. It's not a bad position to be in.
If you want to argue they shouldn't be getting as many minutes, then that's something else, but to acquire players you have to send matching salary out. Mixing and matching with three players at different price-points gives you some flexibility.
Last edited by donato; 10-23-2021 at 12:31 AM.
Jrue asked for a trade and would've walked for nothing as a FA if we didn't trade him.
The biggest problem right now is we're missing wide open shots for some reason, hopefully that stops soon.
The bench isn't giving us anything, hopefully they start giving us something soon.
We have to play better team defense.
Green needs to stop playing Temple and Sato and give Naji and Jaxson those mins.
I would love to see these things get corrected even before Zion gets back to see we can win w/o Zion just in case he gets hurt again.
Biggest problem for Pelicans isn't GM or any player specifically. It's as almost every season health. I don't remember the season when we had fully healthy team during whole season.
Imagine other teams with their best player out. How would Bulls do without Lavine, Nuggets without Jokic, Philly without Embiid,... calm down and don't overreact. If anyone predicted better score than 6-14 in first 20 games than he has problems with reallity. Without Zion there is no chance we win more than 6 games in first 20, just look at schedule and say which teams we can beat?
Okay... If for say... A b level guy is available like Buddy Hield... The players we provide are only for salary matching .They are gonna demand heavy pick compensation.
Then, we get into a deadline bidding war.
Buddy heild cost 2 1st, and a young playeror swaps
Is Griff desperate enough? Probably not. Even if he was... They probably still pass on our offer or We pass on trade.
NBA trading is completely choas and you can't just assume anything unless you're willing to give a kings ransom.
Last edited by Taker597; 10-23-2021 at 02:00 AM.
Havent yet seen this game (Fell asleep before the game last night, late stuff) so I'll have to watch it back to get full ideas of exactly how it went, but just looking at the box score nothing really surprises me there.
Starters did their thing, efficient scoring from NAW/BI/Graham, good bounce-back game from JV in terms of hitting his shots, but the reality is that without Zion there's just a huge gaping hole in this team.
Obviously other things contributed, like 17 turnovers, but we shot damn near 50/50/80 as a team in terms of efficiency and were very competitive in terms of rebounds. What was missing?
Well, we took 16 FTs, they took 25. Wonder who we might be missing that racks up FTs like a madman?
They outscored us by 10 in points in the paint, which is a part of the FT disparity since paint attempts get FTs more often. Zion is the league's biggest paint threat and he's not here. No surprises there that this hamstrung us.
And then bench scoring: it was bad. Again, part of this is down to missing Zion. Something we did a lot last year, to great success, was Zion + Bench lineups. They were some of our most effective lineups because with Zion on the court, everyone else's role is simplified - they don't have to create as much, they don't have to be the primary offensive cog, there's a sense of clear priority in terms of scoring - plus the reality is that most teams do not have anyone on their bench that can do anything to stop Zion from scoring at will. So in those minutes of Zion + Bench, our bench improved their efficacy massively and opposing benches had nothing they could do.
What are we missing now? Zion. So that entire thing has gone out of the window and the bench is struggling and there's no clear offensive identity to that unit. Therefore, our bench cannot create offense right now.
Like I said, I'll have to watch the game properly to know for sure, but that's a lot of the problem we had in game 1 too. Seems like missing your clear best player really hurts your team, somehow. Wild how that happens.
Basketball.
Teams should still find a way to win w/o their best player. Yes, Zion would be the icing on the cake but what if Zion comes back and gets hurt again, are we saying that's it, we give up. No.
Plus, Zion or no Zion, that has nothing to do w/ other players making silly turnovers, missing wide open shots and standing around, playing w/ no energy. That needs to be corrected period. Also, Green could try NAW or Graham coming off the bench and give Naji more mins by having him in the starting line-up to see if that helps the bench and gives them a boost.
Any time you suffer from a lack of talent top to bottom on a roster it's the person putting that roster together fault. Griffin sucks at his job.
Do they? Sometimes, yeah, if they have a super deep team, but even the Curry/Klay/KD/Draymond Warriors had a losing record when Steph didn't play (in 2018-19 they went 5-8 in the 13 games Curry missed) - sometimes your team has one guy who just makes things way easier for everyone else and when they're gone, not only are you missing them but you're also missing the version of your remaining guys that you get when they're around. That goes triple for when it's your bench, and the talent level takes a step down.
Is there stuff we can try out to see if it changes? Sure! But you blaming stuff on us ''missing wide open shots'' in a game where we shot basically 50/50/80 is kind of proving my point: without changing the shot profile there isn't much we can do in that regard - we were making shots at a very very high rate. Asking them to just not miss is unreasonable, there's no way they're going to shoot better than that with any consistency.. The problem isn't that we didn't shoot well enough, we shot extremely well. The problem is that the shot profile was off - not enough exploitation in the paint, which are both the most high-leverage shots and the shots most likely to draw the FTs we've been missing so far.
Why wasn't there enough exploitation in the paint? Well, we built a team with secondary playmakers and shooters on it to fit around Zion who is the league's biggest paint threat, and whose presence makes everyone else's job easier. Without him there, everyone's job gets harder, and some of them - Graham, for example - are simply not equipped to fill that gap in any meaningful way. Expecting everyone to just shoot 70% while Zion's out to ''find a way'' just isn't reasonable, regardless of who you are.
Changes can be made, adjustments can be made, Green needs to wiggle around some stuff and try some new things, but the reality is that we are going to look a bit disjointed and out of sorts until Zion comes back, because we are disjointed and out of sorts.
Admitting you didn't watch the game and then writing 7 paragraphs on that game based on the box score is definitely a choice.
To be fair those 2 teams that we played are east playoff teams and the bulls are most likely a top 4 team in the east and that's playing them without zion... the next game against minny might be a close game although i don't think we win that game because of bad matchups most especially with KAT...
Here's the thing - there are almost no bad teams. After both losses now, people have said things like "to be fair.... the opponent was good" There are like 4 bad teams (the Pelicans are the 5th). If you guys are waiting around for a bunch of bad teams to be on the schedule, you will be waiting a long time. Look at the schedule. The Pels should be underdogs in the first 11 games until they get OKC. Then, they beat OKC and the next 11 games to finish up November is tough too. And yeah, Zion might play in some of those but he will probably be on minutes restriction.
I would say 6-17 would be optimistic. I think 4-19 or worse is a real possibility
We would've won if your boy herb did a better job defending lavine..... just kidding, that was a good test for him and to experience it himself what top nba players are and what work he has to do... i hope that he can be our thybulle.
Stay positive folks. Remember positive thinking. Trust the process.
No tank threads either. Tank threads are evil.
You'll notice that the points I made in the initial post based on the box score were only the type of things you can say based on box score. That is, for example, we had too many turnovers, we shot well from 3 (over 50%), we didn't get as many FTAs as they did, how many paint points/attempts we had, stuff like this. Just basic raw data points, all of which are verifiable from the box score.Admitting you didn't watch the game and then writing 7 paragraphs on that game based on the box score is definitely a choice.
If I had made points about the efficacy of our defensive rotations or how well a particular player passed, then you'd have a point because those are the things you can only really get from watching the game, but I didn't make those points for a reason.
For what it's worth, I have now (and had done so before my second post replying to PELSGIRL) watched the game and basically everything I said in my initial post is still true, so it is what it is.
You're largely right, though I would disagree on one major point:
Zion returning after 10 games would be entirely within the realm of normalcy for coming back from a Jones fracture, and him on a minutes restriction would still solve a huge amount of our problems. Remember that after Zion returned his rookie season he was on a minutes restriction then too, and it didn't matter: the impact he gave in the minutes he could play was huge for us.
Our biggest problem through two games is that our bench cannot score whatsoever. Getting 20-25 minutes a night of Zion, even if 35 would be better, would give us a real route to solving that problem: even hobbled, minutes restricted Zion turns bench units into dust.
Honestly... I'm okay with losing without Zion , but losing by 20 point 5 out of 6 games is unacceptable and that's why I'm so salty and emotional.
Last edited by Taker597; 10-23-2021 at 10:52 AM.
We were one of the healthier teams last season. Our problem is management. Griffin has thrown away a lot of what we got in the AD trade with his ignorant moves. I would gladly take Ball at $18.6 million (average $20 million) over Satoransky ($10 million), Temple ($5 million) and Kira ($4 million). We couid have had Graham as a shooter off the bench. Instead, we get Temple and Satoransky, who neither should even see the floor for a decent team.
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