He’s leading the league in assists, but I’m not sure he should ever have been the point guard. I suppose he always has been a point guard was a call that point forward or not but there is no denying that he deeply affects how a team operates when he’s on it.
lebron, harden, steve nash--you have to play a certain way with these guys. and it generally means you're crap when they're off the floor. one of them has delivered titles, though. even if we get a better second string pg, they're still not lebron. houston finally just said screw it and went out and got other ball-dominant playmakers so that they could essentially run a similar system all game long without getting murdered in the non-harden minutes. but even that hasn't worked that well overall.
It just seems, that as great as he is and has been, that's it's not as great of a risk to take as a player is in his twilight years to carry such a load. If he pulls if off, more power to him, but if he can't, I'm not sure I'd be so surprised. There's a reason you don't see many starting PG's in the league at 35, and nobody in the history of the game has the mileage Lebron has at this point. There comes a point where carrying that load just isn't reasonable any longer. Hopefully it's not this year, and we can enjoy this ride to the end.
well, there's a lot to that, though. first, you don't see a lot of starting anythings that are 35 years old. second, pgs tend to be small, and smaller guys often fall off a cliff athletically in their early 30s (it's why i'm shocked lou williams is still carrying a heavy load with the clips). only those with tremendous skill and vision (like stockton and paul) can survive that. third, playing pg is very taxing defensively because you're constantly in the action...but lebron doesn't guard pgs. and fourth, since nobody really pressures him full-court, it's not like he's exerting energy playing that position that he wouldn't be were he playing another on offense. lebron's basically played point his entire career. mario chalmers, mo williams, these were sgs in pgs' bodies. only kyrie sort of counts, in that he did a lot of ballhandling in cleveland, i guess. in short, i don't think playing pg is a problem for lebron. being 35 is. no matter where he is on offense or defense. in some ways, i think his shift to pg duties on offense is probably better than what i expected for him late in his career, which was to play pf/c more often.
That's for any superstar player. It's still undeniable that we shouldn't be losing 20-30 points leads without LeBron on the court. Something has to change there. Whether our bench starts stepping up or we get involved in signing buyout candidates or making a trade.
i'm not sure it's "undeniable". if you're bad outside of your stars, you lose 20 point leads. lots of good teams lose 20 point leads. lots of teams don't even get them, in part because they used their resources for depth instead of stars. i totally understand why we can't play offense when lebron's out. i think the real problem is why we can't do a better job holding serve with defense while lebron's out. rondo is obviously part of that, but we might to start thinking about putting in more defensive-oriented lineups when the stars sit. if we're not going to score much without lebron (or AD), let's put more energy into the opposition not scoring.
Alright Vogel - make sure you play Caruso 25-30 minutes tonight if Bradley is OUT - and do not play Rondo anymore than 15 minutes.
Well, Bucks would be a great example of how to win games with your star player playing under 30 minutes as they have won many games with Giannis doing exactly as such. I'm not sure we have the defensive talent out there to defend with our 2nd unit. From what I saw, defensively, we're not experiencing a large drop-off when LeBron sits. It's our offense that takes a huge slide and with Rondo mainly filling those minutes by LeBron, there's a difference of 10+ in the offensive rating. We're just not getting anywhere near the offensive production without LeBron. I'm not expecting Rondo or any PG to come in and buffer our lead but it would be nice if there wasn't such a huge drop-off. Clippers have found a way to counteract that by having guys like Lou Williams being able to just score the ball and with Kuzma not fulfilling that role, we just look lost out there minus LeBron. Heck, even AD has had trouble at times generating his own offense.
I’m not sure if you watched that series, but the first time the Bulls beat the Lakers in the finals, Pippen pressured Magic Johnson full court, and it changed the entire series. if I am an opposing coach, I think that would definitely be part of my game plan to wear him down and to test his ball handling skills since we have so few options to back him up.
Called appropriate time-outs to stem momentum on Dallas... Does not let the squad get comfy out there, let them figure it out on their own OR the unimaginable like experimenting with line-ups during crisis moments. Got Carlisle tossed too even if it was unintentional...
Needs to give young guys like THT, Kostas more burn. They're young legs and they can play. Put them in
Lue 0 for 17 over 3 seasons different rosters when Lebron not in lineup. Vogel 2nd game without Lebron, without Davis and without 3rd starter in Danny Green 1 - 1 SCOREBOARD in team preparation and in the coaching hire.
Vogel has-been doing a great job. Really helped get KCP turned around and working on Kuz. He can't run the offense he would like with Lebron but otherwise all is on schedule. We just need Lerondo to get into playoff mode more often. Team is happy and winning. Hard to find that combo in the NBA.
Lue did a huge favor for the Lakers by thinking he was better than he really was. Frank Vogel is the perfect coach for this team. Lakers 3rd choice was the best choice.
I've been asking for this for some time!! Not the Kuz part, but definitely Cook and to a lesser extent Daniels.
I love the Rock. He makes like one post a week and it's usually under 10 words. This is one of his longer posts.
