Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

Like wife beaters, but for her helper?

 

No one in the NBA is really streaking at the moment. The longest win streak is 3 (we’re at 2) and only 4 teams have a 7-3 record over the last 10 (Boston, Chicago, Phoenix and San Antonio). Pretty well everyone is going through some kind of malaise.

Makes me wonder if it’ll make teams more open to trading for better fitting pieces and we get a bit of movement. I’m sure Rui can help some team with too many guards.

 

Problem for the Lakers is Rui is really flawed player but he's about the only reliable 3 point shooter they have. Tricky situation

 

Thybulle is also a flawed player, we won’t get some two way wonder. But we may be able to swap a poor fit for a better one and have the team we’re trading with improve in the process too.

 

Nice win and we needed it

3 point line 27% and still won

Jake 26 pts 5 reb 4 ast 1 stl

Ayton 15 pts 8 reb 1 ast 1 stl 3 blk

Vando 7 pts 7 reb 3 ast

 

Organized offense rate went back down after being in a nice spot the last few games, so that's not great. But Ayton looked more engaged regardless and Jake had a great game which is good.

We're getting into the doldrums of the season, so its really helpful that the schedule is pretty light for a while. Especially with guys hurt.

 

I've been on the thybulle train before there was a thybulle train lol but he's probably not worth Rui. You would ideally get him and give him up some true dead weight like Gabe

 

0.0 that’s our plus/minus point differential

 

You better blow out the Lakers or you're guaranteed to lose? Not a pattern you typically see

 

It is weird. Best closing mediocre team of all time?

 

In games in which the point differential is 5 or less in the last 5 minutes, we're something like 13-0 this year, best in the NBA. Which is insane. It makes little sense.

Oh? It's the last 5 minutes of the game? And we're close? Okay, let's win this thing! Against NO today, we were up 5 points with 5 mins left, won by 8, 111-103.

Oh? We're down 18 with 5 minutes left? Well, it is a long season...

After all that depressing play, we've won 3 straight now.

Now: on to SA, a team that was too fast for us last time.

41 year old man: 30/8/8 with 2 steals and a block, only 1 turnover in 33 minutes. That no one has ever been that good at that advanced an age is now boring to talk about. Still: it's insane. Completely nuts.

Anyone else notice that OKC has gone 6-6 after Chris Fitch jumped all over the refs complaining about how they call OKC games, esp. SGA? Fitch got tossed, but maybe it made a difference? Either that or OKC just ran into a lull. Could be a little of both. They are no longer a threat to win 74 games, and those guys were talking about that 5 weeks ago. Still: who wants to play them in the postseason?

 

A game that we should win and we do

We already know what LBJ did

Role players

DA 18 pts 11 reb 3 ast 1 stl 3 blk

Smart 13 pts 6 reb 4 ast 1 stl 1 blk

Vando 7 pts 8 reb 4 ast 1 stl 1 blk

 

NO pretty much had its whole roster, which has been rare in the zion era and especially this year, and it was a road game, so you take a W any way it comes.

 

Zion had mediocre numbers strangely enough. Thought he always got up to play Bron.

 

Zion wants out about 4 years ago

 

Lebron is a terrible help defender when he's load managing but right now it's been funny watching these young physical guys like JJ and Zion go at him. Zion to close tried to bully James when lakers setting up PnR with Luka and James just went right back at him Zion probably ain't used to that.

You flip out Lebron for Zion (at least a healthy one) and NO probably a good playoff team? I think he needs to be traded they aren't running point Zion for some reason ?(Maybe they like Queen setting things up). If you don't have point Zion that team needs a legit PG.. An old school Mike Conley type to get that offense set otherwise they have no offensive hub to run things off and they fall apart

 

Are we failing upwards?

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How rare and funny to have not one but two guys the size and bulk of Luka and LeBron on the same team both outstanding passers and capable of running the offense from PG position and getting to rim / creating their own shots during the flow of games. Even with James declining at it due to age.

 

ok, odd aside:

i've never really understood the interest in "bench scoring". do we really care about the proportion of points that come from players who do not start games? are points just a stand-in for quality?

found this on the interwebs:



it's just not related to winning. even if you take us out as an outlier (and wow are we an outlier), it's not like you can look at this and detect a clear pattern. hell, if you take okc out, it looks like an inverse relation to winning percentage. this is made even more surprising considering that good teams win in blowouts more often and thus get to play bench players more, too.

now this is bench pts%, but i imagine that's fairly close to just bench ppg.

i feel like people are just saying your bench players aren't good, which is a different question that should be indexed differently.

the 23-24 C Bags bench only scored about 25% of the team's points (based on my calculations), but their net rating was great.

anyway, i just don't care about bench scoring. i do care about finding 6-8 quality support players beyond two stars.