13th February - New Orleans Pelicans vs Oklahoma City Thunder - 23-31

[ml wave]

Yeah it was bad.

Can't imagine the kind of criticism he'd get if he had done something even worse, like fouled 5 times (including really bad fouls like leaping into a 3pt shooter from 5 feet away), or turned it over even more times than he did, all while playing largely poor defense. If someone did that, they'd be getting really savaged right now. Glad nobody did that, there's no way it could go unremarked upon.

You know, it's not like he's missing the FTs or turning it over on purpose...the thing I don't get though is why does he never know when to intentionally foul? Does he not know that we're down 3 with 16 seconds left? You just can't let the other team take 8 seconds off the clock in that situation. No, in the grand scheme of things it's not a super big criticism...yes, I get I'm not really replying to this particular post...thanks for letting me vent.

[donato]

This is what I mean. It's perfectly fine to say that Jrue has dud fourth quarters way too often this year. No doubt, it's true. But is his poor play THE single main reason we're outside the playoffs?

Not Gentry taking 2 months to sort the rotation?
Not Favors missing half the season?
Not Lonzo playing like garbage on both ends until mid December?

I'd argue that any of those things easily have just as much influence on our current position as Jrues play, and in some cases like the Favors issue, possibly more.

It's weird to single Jrue out and sideline all of these issues.

Our season has been suboptimal for a ton of reasons. It's weird to pick one single reason and laser focus on it to the exception of all else.

It seems no matter how many times people tell you WHY they put as much blame on Jrue as they do, you just ignore it or can't see why more blame should be on Jrue than some of your comparisons. Some points:

"Not Gentry taking 2 months to sort the rotation?"

People complain about Gentry all the time, so how exactly are people not blaming Gentry? Many/most want him gone after the season. Also, does Gentry make Jrue choke in the 4th, be incredibly inconsistent, miss FT's and have awful brainfarts turning the ball over?

"Not Favors missing half the season?"

I don't remember people blaming Jrue when he was out with injuries or when his wife was sick. Why would we blame Favors? Favors has been pretty good when healthy, Jrue has been inconsistent all year. In some ways we looked better when he wasn't playing at all!

"Not Lonzo playing like garbage on both ends until mid December?"

Lonzo is a 22 year old developing player that makes a LOT less money than Jrue, with much lower expectations for this season. He's also trending upward. I'd say if anything most people are happy with the way he has been developing, but sure he has a ways to go. If Lonzo at 29 years old (or even 26) is making the dumb plays Jrue is making at Jrue's current % of the cap, age, experience, then people are going to be upset with Lonzo also.

Jrue looks fantastic sometimes, but I don't blame people at all for being upset with his performance this year, and the blame is justified IMO.

[Freyfamilyreuni]

This is what I mean. It's perfectly fine to say that Jrue has dud fourth quarters way too often this year. No doubt, it's true. But is his poor play THE single main reason we're outside the playoffs?

Not Gentry taking 2 months to sort the rotation?
Not Favors missing half the season?
Not Lonzo playing like garbage on both ends until mid December?

I'd argue that any of those things easily have just as much influence on our current position as Jrues play, and in some cases like the Favors issue, possibly more.

It's weird to single Jrue out and sideline all of these issues.

Our season has been suboptimal for a ton of reasons. It's weird to pick one single reason and laser focus on it to the exception of all else.

Of course Jrue isn't the only cause of our current record or even the main cause. But his play has probably been the most disappointing cause. I mean we know what we have with Gentry. He's not a good game manager. He's not a good play caller. And he probably takes too long to adapt his system to the talent. But it's not like this is a surprise. This has been Gentry's MO at least since he's been coaching here.

We knew about Lonzo's weaknesses before he got here. He wasn't a great shooter and he wasn't good at attacking the rim. He was also coming off of a pretty major injury and hadn't played basketball in a while. He was also asked to be the point on a completely new offense with a lot of new teammates. His early struggles weren't a surprise.

Almost all of the players were just learning Gentry's system. We should have known our defense wasn't going to be very good because we had a ton of new players who had never played together in a new system. And lets' face it, none of Gentry's teams have been that good on defense. Now perhaps we didn't realize how horrifically bad it was going to be.

And of course the injuries sucked, and Favors missing so much time sucked but there isn't anything that can be done about that.

What I didn't expect is for Jrue to come out of the gates so poorly. Jrue should have been one of the things that the team could have relied on in the beginning of the season. We know he has the talent. And Griffin and the coaching staff gave Jrue the green light to do whatever he wanted to do out on the court. Jrue's been in the league too long to be this inconsistent, in my opinion. He has the talent to be an all star every year. We've seen it on display. What's keeping him back is his inconsistency.

It's nice to be thought of as underrated. But sometimes I think it's used as a crutch for Jrue. Him being in a small market isn't holding him back. What's holding him back is the fact that he lets his team down too many times in crunch time.

[Pelicanidae]

Some points:

"Not Gentry taking 2 months to sort the rotation?"
People complain about Gentry all the time, so how exactly are people not blaming Gentry?

"Not Favors missing half the season?"
I don't remember people blaming Jrue when he was out with injuries or when his wife was sick. Why would we blame Favors?

"Not Lonzo playing like garbage on both ends until mid December?"
Lonzo is a 22 year old developing player that makes a LOT less money than Jrue, with much lower expectations for this season.

Jrue looks fantastic sometimes, but I don't blame people at all for being upset with his performance this year, and the blame is justified IMO.

Where did I say ''Favors has been out for various reasons, therefore we should blame him!''? I didn't.

I just pointed out that the claim that had been made (which was that Jrue's play was the main reason we aren't in the playoffs) misses out tons of other relevant factors.

That's not ''blame'', it's reality. Favors missed a ton of games; that's not his fault, he was injured and then had understandable personal time off. I'm not blaming him for it. But the reality is that it also had a negative impact on the team and is one of the many, compounding reasons that we're not in the playoffs right now.

Same for Lonzo playing like garbage for much of the year. You can justify it if you want; I'm not getting mad at him or saying it's his personal fault we're out of the playoffs, because it's not. But it is just plain, blatant reality that it is one of the many reasons we're not in the playoffs right now.

All of these factors come together and add up; there is no one, single, ''main reason'' we're not in the playoffs aside from maybe just 'injuries' as a vague catch-all. It's being reductive to claim otherwise.

As for Gentry, you're right that people do blame him for various things, but the issue is that people often view it as being an isolated problem. So they'll simultaneously argue that Gentry is a bad coach who needs to be fired, and then turn around and say ''Jrue is the main reason we're not in the playoffs'', as if the poor coaching wouldn't itself have an impact on any given player's output.

The fact is that anyone who is pointing at one single, isolated issue, and saying ''THIS is the reason we aren't in the playoffs'' is very probably over-simplifying things and just looking to point fingers. The reality is that we are where we are due to a bunch of factors, some that the team couldn't control, which have compounded upon each other to turn the season into what it is. Any attempt to reduce it down to one individual is missing the big picture.

[Pelicanidae]

Of course Jrue isn't the only cause of our current record or even the main cause. But his play has probably been the most disappointing cause.

That's fair, I think. Jrue was phenomenal for the last two years, and this year he has clearly taken a step back. He was a top 20 player the last two years: he's only like, top 50 now. That's a pretty big single-season decline and it has been disappointing to see. We've seen flashes of his old self, even very recently, but it is a shame that it's not on the level it was last year or the year before.

[As I See It]

I think to some extent, the system and personnel of the Pelicans does not suit Jrue's game. There are no defined roles in Gentry-ball. From one moment to the next, Jrue is the team's main facilitator then a primary scoring option. I don't think there is a clear cut point guard on this team (yes, I realize the trend is away from defined roles in the NBA) and Jrue jockeys back and forth trying to fill both rolls while Ball seems to just 'do his own thing'. Added to this is the fact that JH always draws the toughest defensive assignment (1-3 and sometimes even 4) and you have a guy who is asked to fill so many roles on this team that it is almost humanly impossible.

Is there better than JH? Absolutely!!!
Are we lucky to have Jrue Holiday? Absolutely!!!

This team should have never gotten rod of Elfrid Payton, but that's water under the bridge. JH has always been at his best when playing the 2 exclusively.

[AUSSIE_PELICAN]

It is the scale of how many points Aron Baynes has scored in his career. 1 Baynes = 2688 points (as of today).

Lebron, for example, has scored a career 12.58 Baynes, at 33,817 points.

Why Baynes though?

[Pelicanidae]

Why Baynes though?

It's a twitter meme. Aron Baynes is a really solid roleplayer but there's this twitter Aron Baynes Fan Club and they make a ton of funny posts regarding Baynes, so it's been adopted. At one point, I think it was after Zion's first game, the Aron Baynes Fan Club posted something joking about how Zion had scored 22 points which was impressive, but still had a long way to go before he caught up to Aron Baynes!

As a result, I've been tracking Zion's Baynes rating since, as a joke.

Roses are red
It’s wet when it rains
If you have the highest* FG and FT Pct in NBA Finals history
Then your names Aron Baynes

*min 2 shots https://t.co/9JtmOmN7YS

— SunOfficial Aron Baynes Fan Club (@BaynesFanClub) February 14, 2020

[AUSSIE_PELICAN]

It's a twitter meme. Aron Baynes is a really solid roleplayer but there's this twitter Aron Baynes Fan Club and they make a ton of funny posts regarding Baynes, so it's been adopted. At one point, I think it was after Zion's first game, the Aron Baynes Fan Club posted something joking about how Zion had scored 22 points which was impressive, but still had a long way to go before he caught up to Aron Baynes!

As a result, I've been tracking Zion's Baynes rating since, as a joke.

Roses are red
It’s wet when it rains
If you have the highest* FG and FT Pct in NBA Finals history
Then your names Aron Baynes

*min 2 shots https://t.co/9JtmOmN7YS

— SunOfficial Aron Baynes Fan Club (@BaynesFanClub) February 14, 2020

Thanks