Originally Posted by bradael
Changes need to be made or I’m out. That is what he is saying
Signed,
Jrue Holiday, Clown Davis, Chris Paul
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Changes need to be made or I’m out. That is what he is saying
Signed,
Jrue Holiday, Clown Davis, Chris Paul
It?s not SVG that needs change? You are not changing anything if you don?t start from the top.
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.
Contributor
You’d blame the chef for making a substandard meal with inferior ingredients they didn’t choose?
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.
Sounds like he's saying they need to be better. Including himself on the defensive side of the ball especially. And they've been bad on that end 2 years straight.
That's all it sounds like. He just got to the NBA and he's 20.
They’ve been changing things from the top since 2019. But it feels like 10 years ago according to some fans.
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.
@mcnamara247
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
Griff has blame too. I agree.
Ding ding ding
Knicks GM , Memphis GM, Phoenix Suns Vice President of Operations (Yeah that guy go Google it) showing you how it is done in 2 years.
SVG did not establish an offense that works. He leaned heavily on Zion and BI. Those 2 guys just are great players, and Zion was historic. The offensive schemes sucked and were grade school.
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.
If you think you could have implemented a much better offense with the personnel they had, you're on something good. How often does a good offense come from teams with poor spacing? Be realistic about it.
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"
Last edited by HoustonPelicans; 05-21-2021 at 12:33 PM.
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.
Basketball.
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.
Last edited by Taker597; 05-21-2021 at 12:55 PM.
That's generous
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.
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