18th January - New Orleans Pelicans vs Los Angeles Clippers - 16-26

[msusousaphone]

BI is having a career year. Zion is set to be the greatest player of the next decade. But they have to do it consistently to supplant Jrue as our best player. I think both will. BI will continue to get even better and I am all in on the Zionwagon. But.....potential alone doesn't crown them.

Jrue is the perfect 3rd to a Big 3, yeah.....but BI has to keep this up a bit before earning that Big title and Zion has to at least get on the court.

[Dago75]

Blows my mind that professional players making this much money can be this bad at shooting free throws

I cant even complain about the officiating...we literally beat ourselves with unforced turnovers and crappy FT shooting

[Pelicanidae]

Zion is set to be the greatest player of the next decade. .

MVP races between Zion, Luka, and Giannis are going to be absolutely wild.

[Creative]

What a disappointing 4 quarter. Great 3 quarters and terrible 4th. We have a great team, but still need a lot to learn. #WorkInProgress

[luigi modelo]

They’re a deeper team. Our bench overachieved for 3 quarters. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. They played their hearts out today. I’m definitely not disappointed at all.

This is how I feel. There was definitely some poor reffing, but we are used to that at home now

[Wowowowow]

We loss this game because somebody has to lose.

This isn’t a game to rile up about. It was evenly matched and what tipped the scale in their favor is their wise and veteran players made shots when it counted.

I know when it’s one of those “omg fire everybody!” games.

To me, this wasn’t one of them.

[HartOfaPelican]

We loss this game because somebody has to lose.

This isn’t a game to rile up about. It was evenly matched and what tipped the scale in their favor is their wise and veteran players made shots when it counted.

I know when it’s one of those “omg fire everybody!” games.

To me, this wasn’t one of them.

I’d have to disagree. We were maintaining a 10pt lead as long as our bigs were in and we were utilizing them down low.

Once the three point shot for us slowed down, we should of hit the paint. Instead, Gentry falls into Docs
Trap and pulls our big with theirs.

We all know Kawai and Lou are far better shooters than our guards.

That 3-4 minute stretch of terrible coaching is when we lost the game.

The bigs go back in and we crawl back within 3 but it’s too late.

Gentry got out coached in my opinion.

[HoustonPelicans]

Okay Gentry made a mistake going small. We all make mistakes. Not the end of the world. We lost to a Championship favorite. Learn from it and move on. I'm not going back to trashing Gentry when he has completely turned this team around and his offense/defense is looking fantastic. We are on the right track thats what matters.

[Silver Nail]

I’d have to disagree. We were maintaining a 10pt lead as long as our bigs were in and we were utilizing them down low.

Once the three point shot for us slowed down, we should of hit the paint. Instead, Gentry falls into Docs
Trap and pulls our big with theirs.

We all know Kawai and Lou are far better shooters than our guards.

That 3-4 minute stretch of terrible coaching is when we lost the game.

The bigs go back in and we crawl back within 3 but it’s too late.

Gentry got out coached in my opinion.

Gentry's poor coaching didn't create alll the TOs and horrible FT shooting. We lost this at the line. They had only 3 more attempts then us but had 8 more points there.

[msusousaphone]

People keep saying "we pulled the bigs" like it was only a tactical maneuver to match Doc and it isn't the usual time we would sit people for the final 4th quarter push. This is the type of disadvantage that happens when two starters are out and you're deep in the bench.

[djrnno]

I’d have to disagree. We were maintaining a 10pt lead as long as our bigs were in and we were utilizing them down low.

Once the three point shot for us slowed down, we should of hit the paint. Instead, Gentry falls into Docs
Trap and pulls our big with theirs.

We all know Kawai and Lou are far better shooters than our guards.

That 3-4 minute stretch of terrible coaching is when we lost the game.

The bigs go back in and we crawl back within 3 but it’s too late.

Gentry got out coached in my opinion.

You keep ignoring the obvious , Too many missed FT's and too many TO's , Gentry did NOT turn over the ball NOR did he miss a FT . Throw in some bad officiating and you have a loss . AG's rotations had FAR less negative impact on the game than those things . But you hate AG fo it falls into your narrative . AG is not my favorite coach but he is down on the list of reasons for the loss

[Pelicanidae]

You keep ignoring the obvious , Too many missed FT's and too many TO's , Gentry did NOT turn over the ball NOR did he miss a FT . Throw in some bad officiating and you have a loss . AG's rotations had FAR less negative impact on the game than those things . But you hate AG fo it falls into your narrative . AG is not my favorite coach but he is down on the list of reasons for the loss

I'm not actually going to attack Gentry here, because I agree that while he had some impact on this loss, he was not its primary cause, and a loss in a game like this was semi-expected anyway so nobody should be freaking out.

But the fact is that you should be worried about what you can control, not what you can't control. Nobody shoots 100% from the FT line. Nobody on our pre-season projected starting lineup shot better than 80% from the FT line last season. While improvement is obviously possible (just look at Ingram this year from the line!) it's not linear and FT% is generally kiiiiiinda stable. So you go into each game knowing, roughly, what you're going to get from each player in that regard. You can't suddenly hit 100% of your FTs by trying harder, or by wanting it more; in fact, paradoxically, it may get harder the more you want it due to the pressure. There is nothing that the team can do, mid-season, to magically increase the overall roster accuracy from the line.

In-game lineups, however, you can control: that's precisely what the head coach does all game.

So yeah, while it's true that you can easily chalk this loss up to FT misses (very easily, and I'd largely agree!), that's something you can't control and as a result it's worthless getting mad about it too much. You can't make constructive criticism out of ''just hit more of the shots''. That's just something we have to live with as a team. But Gentry's rotations are his choice. He could do them differently, if he wanted. They're obviously limited to who is on the roster and who is healthy, I'm not disputing that, so it's not like he has infinite choice but he does have some choice.

That's basically it. Worry about what you can control. We can't control FT accuracy: people are as good as they are, give-or-take some minor variance, and nobody's going to take a super leap mid-season. We can control rotations and the lineups we have on the floor and the minutes they play. So in that respect, it's understandable why someone might look at the FT misses and say ''yes, that's bad, but also inevitable with this roster'' and moving on, while simultaneously looking at Gentry's rotations and seeing legitimate, unnecessary issues in them that could actually have been done differently and were within our control that might have won the game.

[luckyman]

People keep saying "we pulled the bigs" like it was only a tactical maneuver to match Doc and it isn't the usual time we would sit people for the final 4th quarter push. This is the type of disadvantage that happens when two starters are out and you're deep in the bench.

I dont think I've ever seen this team go with a lineup of BI at the 5 and Lonzo at the 4.

Seemed like a desperation move by Gentry to try and match wits with Doc. They didnt lose the lead with that lineup, but they fell further behind with it.

[msusousaphone]

I know we've run a fair share of 3G lineups and even had a few stints with 4G lineups (actually to some success, IIRC). Can't remember exactly which personnel was in those.

So JJ is probable tomorrow against Memphis and Favors, Jrue, and Jah are listed as questionable. Good news on Jrue and JJ, meh for Favors and Jah. Zion is somehow listed as doubtful (lol) and Kenny Hustle and DMill are out. I hope we treat this Memphis and any other game against the teams vying for the 8th spot as playoff games.

[Pelicanidae]

I know we've run a fair share of 3G lineups and even had a few stints with 4G lineups (actually to some success, IIRC). Can't remember exactly which personnel was in those.

So JJ is probable tomorrow against Memphis and Favors, Jrue, and Jah are listed as questionable. Good news on Jrue and JJ, meh for Favors and Jah. Zion is somehow listed as doubtful (lol) and Kenny Hustle and DMill are out. I hope we treat this Memphis and any other game against the teams vying for the 8th spot as playoff games.

90% of the time when Gentry rolls out a 3+ guard lineup, especially the super-weird ones that don't contain a lead ballhandler, I just get sad.

It works maybe 20% of the time. The other 80%, we get hammered. For obvious reasons, both in terms of a lack of defensive versatility and interior defense, and because of a lack of consistent abilities to generate good looks on offense (again, particularly in the paint). It's such an awful idea, at least when done with the regularity that Gentry does it, and it actually makes me kind of feel bad for him. Like this is his one party trick and he doesn't realise that everyone got bored of it 10 years ago.

I'd love to refer to line-up data to prove this, but due to injuries and janky rotations, we literally only have one 5-man lineup that's played more than 100 minutes together at this point in the season, and really you want to avoid looking at such small sample sizes as if they were definitive. If you look at 3-man combos (where we do have many 200+ minute trios) you find that of our 9 positive net trios, none of them are 3-guard combos. By contrast, a couple of the negative net trios are (Lonzo/Jrue/Redick being the worst culprit, outscored by 10.9 points per 100). Is this definitive? Not at all, but it's worth at least thinking about when Gentry rolls out 3-guard lineups every night.

[djrnno]

I'm not actually going to attack Gentry here, because I agree that while he had some impact on this loss, he was not its primary cause, and a loss in a game like this was semi-expected anyway so nobody should be freaking out.

But the fact is that you should be worried about what you can control, not what you can't control. Nobody shoots 100% from the FT line. Nobody on our pre-season projected starting lineup shot better than 80% from the FT line last season. While improvement is obviously possible (just look at Ingram this year from the line!) it's not linear and FT% is generally kiiiiiinda stable. So you go into each game knowing, roughly, what you're going to get from each player in that regard. You can't suddenly hit 100% of your FTs by trying harder, or by wanting it more; in fact, paradoxically, it may get harder the more you want it due to the pressure. There is nothing that the team can do, mid-season, to magically increase the overall roster accuracy from the line.

In-game lineups, however, you can control: that's precisely what the head coach does all game.

So yeah, while it's true that you can easily chalk this loss up to FT misses (very easily, and I'd largely agree!), that's something you can't control and as a result it's worthless getting mad about it too much. You can't make constructive criticism out of ''just hit more of the shots''. That's just something we have to live with as a team. But Gentry's rotations are his choice. He could do them differently, if he wanted. They're obviously limited to who is on the roster and who is healthy, I'm not disputing that, so it's not like he has infinite choice but he does have some choice.

That's basically it. Worry about what you can control. We can't control FT accuracy: people are as good as they are, give-or-take some minor variance, and nobody's going to take a super leap mid-season. We can control rotations and the lineups we have on the floor and the minutes they play. So in that respect, it's understandable why someone might look at the FT misses and say ''yes, that's bad, but also inevitable with this roster'' and moving on, while simultaneously looking at Gentry's rotations and seeing legitimate, unnecessary issues in them that could actually have been done differently and were within our control that might have won the game.

Not saying make 100% of our FT's , That's really unrealistic as a talking point , What'd we shoot 60%? INEXCUSABLE .Even BI who had been shooting FT's really well did not do so good . JJ a 90% FT shooter 6-8 . And players do improve , BI and Ball have . Also 21 TO's and you're not winning many games against good teams like that

[Pelicanidae]

Not saying make 100% of our FT's , That's really unrealistic as a talking point , What'd we shoot 60%? INEXCUSABLE .Even BI who had been shooting FT's really well did not do so good . JJ a 90% FT shooter 6-8 . And players do improve , BI and Ball have . Also 21 TO's and you're not winning many games against good teams like that

Of course it's inexcusable, but what I'm saying is that it's also not particularly surprising. That's the kind of thing we've been dealing with for dozens of games now, decisions are made by the coaching staff knowing how we shoot from the FT line, so we can't rely on it to bail us out because we suck from there. Additionally, I'm not saying players don't improve at all, I'm saying that players almost never make big leaps at skills at random, midway through the year. Ingram, for example, came into this year shooting massively better from the FT line than he ever had before, and that's surprising. But it would be three times as surprising if he had come into this year shooting 67% from the line until January 2nd and then magically leapt up to 86% for the rest of the year. That leap happens, but you can't be relying on it to randomly occur in the middle of the season.

I'm not disagreeing that missing FTs cost us (although I wouldn't really get mad at JJ for shooting 80% from the line lol), we lost by 3 in a game where we missed 13 FTs. Of course they cost us. And of course turnovers cost us too, for obvious reasons. I'm just also saying that our mediocrity from the FT line is something that we just have to deal with: it sucks, it will lose us games, i said as much before the season started, but it's also not something that will randomly change mid-season. It's out of the coaching staff's control. But Gentry can decide not to run stupid lineups and rotations. So he should make the choice to not run them, where possible.

[HartOfaPelican]

I'm not actually going to attack Gentry here, because I agree that while he had some impact on this loss, he was not its primary cause, and a loss in a game like this was semi-expected anyway so nobody should be freaking out.

But the fact is that you should be worried about what you can control, not what you can't control. Nobody shoots 100% from the FT line. Nobody on our pre-season projected starting lineup shot better than 80% from the FT line last season. While improvement is obviously possible (just look at Ingram this year from the line!) it's not linear and FT% is generally kiiiiiinda stable. So you go into each game knowing, roughly, what you're going to get from each player in that regard. You can't suddenly hit 100% of your FTs by trying harder, or by wanting it more; in fact, paradoxically, it may get harder the more you want it due to the pressure. There is nothing that the team can do, mid-season, to magically increase the overall roster accuracy from the line.

In-game lineups, however, you can control: that's precisely what the head coach does all game.

So yeah, while it's true that you can easily chalk this loss up to FT misses (very easily, and I'd largely agree!), that's something you can't control and as a result it's worthless getting mad about it too much. You can't make constructive criticism out of ''just hit more of the shots''. That's just something we have to live with as a team. But Gentry's rotations are his choice. He could do them differently, if he wanted. They're obviously limited to who is on the roster and who is healthy, I'm not disputing that, so it's not like he has infinite choice but he does have some choice.

That's basically it. Worry about what you can control. We can't control FT accuracy: people are as good as they are, give-or-take some minor variance, and nobody's going to take a super leap mid-season. We can control rotations and the lineups we have on the floor and the minutes they play. So in that respect, it's understandable why someone might look at the FT misses and say ''yes, that's bad, but also inevitable with this roster'' and moving on, while simultaneously looking at Gentry's rotations and seeing legitimate, unnecessary issues in them that could actually have been done differently and were within our control that might have won the game.

You’re willing to go into the details and write much longer posts than I’m willing to haha.

Basically, I agree with everything you said. Of corse we missed FT. I’m not stating that because it’s obvious.

What I am say however, that it’s the coaches job to put the team in the best position to win. Taking out our big and try to match our shooting with theirs was a huge mistake on Gentryes part. Thus, getting out coached.... which has happened far too many times this season.

The turnaround for the negative was very obvious when the bigs came out and the score reflected that. Favors and Hayes played incredible all game. There was no reason to go small when we did.