DLo / Vincent Christie / Reaves / Knecht LeBron / Rui / Reddish Vando / Wood AD / Hayes In an ideal world Max takes a big step forward, becomes a legitimate 3&D rotation player and starts (even if he's only 20ish minutes a game). Bring Austin off the bench to stagger the ballhandling, he would close over DLo. This time around I prefer to start Vando and give Redick time to work out the kinks around his lack of shooting next to AD. At this point I'm pretty dejected and about ready to accept that our window is closed. Too many teams on the rise or peaking as contenders in the West.
let's gather around in a circle, hold hands, and pray Rob needs our help right now, and we need divine intervention.
Some quibbles on the tiers. Russell had a higher VORP, BPM, PER, and virtually identical eFG% and WS/48 with Reaves (and almost identical ORtg and DRtg). You can put them both in one or the other area, but splitting them makes little sense. Rui might be a starter, too. I can see putting Gabe, Wood, and Vando below the line. Hayes might surprise this year.
That’s a fair point, DLO and Reaves are probably both suited as quite good 6th men. I guess I’m splitting hairs, but Reaves did have the better run in the previous years playoffs when we made the conference final.
JJ said yesterday that he plans to use a 9 man rotation in the regular season. I find that odd to fit our bench unit and manage Bron/AD minutes but it is a way to minimize our poor depth. I think with Vando out, the 4 bench guys are clearly Gabe, Max, Knecht and Hayes. When Vando and Wood return, I'm curious to see who goes out. Won't be shocked if Vando plays the backup 5 at times when he's back Wood mentioned that JJ expects him to play with Bron and AD together, giving us a size advantage on the court. I appreciate JJ approach on this, by naming the starting lineup and now the 9 man rotation, setting clearly what his vision and expectations are, which I think helps players know their role and what they are supposed to do and trying to master that. Maxwell Lewis was one of the guys who worked the most time with the staff this summer and he said he was working on shooting corner 3s, guarding and corner crashing, which exactly what he would be supposed to do if he got any playing time. Not that he will (or should) but it's good to know that these guys are working on exactly what is expected front them instead of wasting time in other areas
JJ have been raising the g-league team and commenting that it will be an extension of their team and will be used wildly. I think Bronny, Maxwell and the 2-ways spend most of their time there. JHS will play a lot of games there barring injuries in the 10-man group. Even Knecht I imagine will play there a few times. The only guy left out is Cam and Wood, who will just eat bench for the year
Going to use this as the game day depth chart thread as well, missing multiple key players today, would be nice to see Olivari get some run, especially over JHS. Also maybe this is a “break out” game for Gabe though, since we’ll need offense
Next Man Up …. right? The big problem with Ham last year is when Rui and Vando came back from their injuries to be available he did NOT give them the benefit of the doubt for what they had done the season before as starters off and on …. and pig headedly kept Prince in there instead. He did that on opening night if I recall that one article with the time lines of all that …. over starting Hachimura who “was” available opening night.
TBH..Rui isn't a starter, Vanderbilt either, but I agree, he could have played both a little more than Prince. You gotta work with what you have. Those two are still 2 of my favorites on this team.
Yeah but neither had Taurean had a career of being a starter. He unfairly IMO to Rui went opening night on a gut feeling to start Prince, further blowing up continuity from the prior season’s great run as well as what we all applauded Rob for giving the team the continuity for the first time in a long time with the deals he made that summer. And then as mentioned was too pig headed to right his wrong decision. JJ is doing it correctly here in same circumstances with the injuries to key players he and the FO were planning on him having them available and a whole roster …. until the Dec - Feb deadlines could make better deals. If we had those 2 guys from the start it literally could have been this team in the 1 or 2 spot right now.
I don't know bro..,We really look about the same to me. It's the roster that's the problem. This is too much of a finesse team IMO. It's not going to work, it doesn't matter who the headcoach is. Denver showed us that in the WCF, and we still ran it back. Running it back for a 3rd time is insane. However..I keep yelling that there are two guys available., that would totally flip the script here. Picture this... We keep our top perimeter guys. Lebron, Austin, Dalton and TB We still have Vando and Reddish Our bigs are AD Nikola and Jonas There's your 9 man rotation Imagine the possibilities with that group. I'm pretty confident that JJ can draw up all kinds of goodies with these guys!! I'm still thinking chip contention..always! It's the players man.
We just ran Koloko, Bron, Reddish, Knecht and Gabe in the beginning of the 2nd quarter, I don't like it. We have a weird roster where the rotation players are either all offense or all defense, so we have to really balance out in the rotation. We have 6 offensive players: Bron, AD, Reaves, Rui, Dlo and Knecht 4 defensive: Koloko, Reddish, Max and Gabe It's a numbers thing. We can't have less than 3 offensive players and more than 2 defensive players on the floor. The above 5-man lineup to start Q2 was wrong based on this perspective with 2O and 3D. I get Reaves is out but we still have to have 3 offensive players out there at all times. Having 3 dead bodies on offense kills your offense AND defense because you're always defending in transition. JJ gotta do a better job on this,imo
60% of the roster is made up of non NBA players. What do you want him to do about that? 6 offensive players and 4 defensive? At what level? Jr high? The kids JJ coached last year could've dropped 75 on this pathetic team. Tonight there was one offensive player and one .5 defensive players. Bron and a little Cam but the back line was putrid so he couldn't funnel and had no help.
