Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

Always nice to get a win on opening night

AD was huge

But the 3 point shooting, again

5-30 16.7% oof

 

Positives: AD. He's going to be so dominant this year. It's his team.
Rui was great too.
Team effort on the glass, defense and overall execution. Great stuff

Negatives: DLo looks off. Gabe is invisible on the court. Max got in foul trouble and struggled overall, but will get better for sure.

 

Naz Reed the ultimate scrub Laker killer did not show up lol

 

i'm only halfway through the game, so i'll update later:

AD had an awful first stint and a kinda rough first half in general, so he must have been great later. we got hayes much better looks than we got AD, which is strange.
really like vincent's defense. he's not quick but uses his strength and position well and doesn't quit.
thought dlo actually played great early. had three threes rattle out or we would have been up big. one bad TO but it came after a good steal. loved jj putting him in the middle of the floor when minny went zone. got them right out of that. he fought on the boards, too.
lebron looked rusty/old except for that runway back door dunk.
liked rui's energy on both ends.
reaves solid as usual. max can't hit open threes as usual.
knecht is ready to play 25mpg right now.

glad we got the bronny stint out of the way and that we were up 19 when we tried it. it was distracting and we lost 7 points off the lead immediately.

 

Absolutely. The level of high level basketball was visible throughout the night. It's night and day compared to Ham. Really enjoyable

 

the alternating of strategies was definitely nice. i like that we switched mostly onto their secondary players and kind of dared them to try to post in a crowded paint (minny always plays one or two bigs near the paint).

edwards didn't get a lot of clean looks, either, which is all you can ask for against a scorer of his caliber. some nights, he'll hit them anyway, but last night he didn't.

 

btw, low turnovers/winning the possession/FGA game: yes! finally. you can win a lot of games this way.

 

When is the cut off? What would constitute eating crow(olives)?

20-10?

 

1 can of pitted black olives should do.

and drink the left over juice from the can. I wanna see that full body hurl action

 

alright. Save this.

 

.... sorry OX I started this .... didn't have ANY expectation you'd go literal on it and commit. But yeah we need to set the W/L goal post somewhere reasonable as to a decent record and the team looking much different and better than what you have been in a rage about, and Weezy as well being privy to all the internal FO discussions with Redick clearly involved too as to what he DOESN"T want to pre-maturely lose off the roster .... to complete a hard to make trade, and the picks, with the season just now starting ..... and repetedly state unequivocably Jeanie and Rob have "thrown in the towel" on the LeBron and AD era. Opions are great. But when stated as fact and if someone questions you on something that radical, because it is, you shouldn't get so upset. Everyone's in the dark about decisions of highest importance that go on in the FO.

This is EXACTLY like how furious most everyone was that Rob started the 2nd season with Westbrick still on the team and the rage he took for not getting a trade done the whole time up until he pulled it off with much better terms.

So what's a decent W/L record, with Vando and Wood not playing yet, for the first 2 months ..... and the team looking nothing like the radical doom forecast. Certainly open for discussion. I mean having to drink the juice too it's got to be fair for you.

 

No room to do squat. Couldn’t believe how well the team defense was.

 

there were a few breakdowns in the third quarter that obviously pissed jj off, but yeah, i felt like we played pretty solid team defense in game 1, which i wasn't expecting based on the preseason.

important to me is that it took finch and his staff 2.5 quarters to find something that worked (that mid-floor pick and roll thing not involving conley, which isn't a staple in their offense from what i've seen), and it was basically too late at that point. this is what not just relying on lebron and AD's greatness to tread water can do for you. you get a cushion and the ability to counter while you're still ahead!

anyway, just one game, but i think i'm sort of in shock that we won a season opener. it feels like it's been forever, and it basically has.

edit: forgot that it wasn't a pick and roll, it was actually that edwards started cooking, we countered with doubles, and they found a formula to beat that for a few plays. but again, we kept edwards from going off long enough to not have to resort to that until later, which allowed us to play from ahead instead of behind.

 

Who knew that crashing the boards and rebounding will get you easy second chance points???
Every Good Coach throughout the history of time.
I’m already convinced that this team will be much, much better now that we have a real coach.
Now that the feel good story has been written, time to send Bronny down to three G League.

 

anyone think it was strange that the wolves didn't play dillingham at all? they had naw running point at times, and neither he nor ddv is really great at it, imo. like, it's far worse than when we have reaves as the sole ballhandling guard on the floor. you'd think that minny learned after getting conley how valuable it is to have a good pg, particularly when you've got a bunch of guys aside from ant who aren't creators.

i'm guessing as the season wears on, they'll move to playing the rook--or at least trying it. they spent two future unprotected picks to get him (ok, the swap is top-1 protected lol), and those could come after ant has already signed here.

 

Heard in the broadcast that Finch was vocal regarding Dillingham needing to get better in some stuff (they didn't specify) so I imagine he's giving the rook a hard time to push him to get better.

Absolutely agree he's a big bet for them and likely to fit well in their future. But it should take time. Not everyone can draft a Knecht hehehe