A really tight rotation for this game. A little surprising considering its on the second game of a back to back. I'm curious of Luke's defensive plan, I've noticed they been switching a lot, with every line up. It usually hasn't ended too well.
A switching defense requires excellent communication and chemistry to work correctly. Sure we have tall guards like Nick and D'Angelo who can switch with forwards, but it's not going to work if communication and chemistry isn't there.
Julius and D'Angelo are not just poor defenders, but worse communicators. They're are constantly and consistently doing the wrong thing defensively around each other. Unnecessary switches, unnecessary doubles, not helping each other, not paying attention... Clarkson is in a similar boat. Those three make Lou Williams look like a good defender. By contrast Nance Jr. is consistently communicating defensively even if he's not a great defender. Ingram does too, but I'm not sure he has the personality to lead a defense.
At some point Luke needs to look at these guys and ask them "Do you guys want to play zone? Because we've been trying to play switch defense all year and it's not working."
The defense is just abysmal. D' Antoni level bad right now. No timely stops at all. Can't win that way.
As soon as he did I turned to my son and said "Watch the lead disappear by the end of this quarter since Luke put MWP in." It didn't even take to the end of the quarter. He came in just over 3 minutes left and by the one minute mark they already had a lead.
To be fair to Luke about the switches, he did say last night in the post game press conference that he's beginning to see his players switch when they don't need to be or shouldn't be switching. A reporter than asked Luke was is that happening. Luke said it's probably because the players see switching as being the easier thing to do even though its not always beneficial. My point in bringing this up is that Luke doesn't want our players to constantly be switching everything all the time. The players with more experience will hopefully begin to recognize this. I just know that there is this notion out there that Luke's defensive philosophy is to switch everything all the time and that is just not the case.
That's my feeling. Like Weezy said, MWP just simply should not be playing. Zu can block and alter shots and actually has a pretty nice post up game. MWP has literally NOTHING - he gets beat on D, which used to be his calling card, and those threes he used to make once in a while are straight up airballs. It would be much better to give that time to developing Zu who looks like he can be a player.
Luke kept mwp cause he knows better than rest of us....or thats what i was told when i asked the forum when mwp made squad lol