Based on the media day, Ham's comments and players' interviews, I imagine Reaves will stand-out. He's everything Ham preaches. (Although he forgot to mention him when naming our best defenders, putting Lonnie in front of him) But I think Reaves will eat Lonnie's minutes. Nunn may play too. Our game rotation to start the season may be something like: PG: Russ (26) | Schroder (14) | Bev (8) SG: Bev (16) | Nunn (14) | Reaves (12) | Schroder (6) SF: LeBron (26) | Reaves (14) | Troy Brown (8) PF: AD (18) | JTA (18) | LeBron (6) | Swider (6) C: Jones (17) | Bryant (17) | AD (14) Lonnie loses the spot in the preseason if Nunn is good. Will be next man up when we have someone missing from 1 to 3. Swider makes a case in the preseason and Troy he's the only wing so he gets a shot. It's up to them to make it count. Ham's focus on defense-first may make it difficult for Swider. If he bulks, Troy or JTA may get those minutes. If Lonnie plays, it can eat from Nunn, Reaves, Troy or Swider. There's a lot of competition in this roster and Ham mentioned that. We may not be good on paperz but there's a chance with the right mindset and being a tenacious team to build a good run. If we defend hard, our talent can makes us win games
Hard to say..we are basing things off of not seeing them play yet. Folks are sleeping on Nunn, he is going to play if he's healthy. This kid started in Miami after going undrafted. He has some grit to him. 15pts a game, with playoffs and Finals experience? If he's healthy, that guy is ahead of everyone else IMO. I don't get why Dennis gets the start. Dennis and Bev make up a very solid 2nd unit with one of the bigs and two wings. They both can harass the ball in the backcourt, and both are decent facilitators. We are talking about 2nd unit guys they will be going up against. The key for Austin is improving his jump shot. I think he can get some opportunities cutting to the basket in this offense too. I just don't look for him to play much lead guard this season. It looks like he has bulked up some, in anticipation of playing more SF this campaign. He has to knock down those open jumpers. The rest of the game is there.
With the addition of Matt Ryan we have a full 15 man roster. I was hoping by this time we'd have a set starters and rotation but we don't. You're guess is as good as mine. Kendrick Nunn / Russel Westbrook / Dennis Schroder Lonnie Walker / Patrick Beverley / Max Christie Austin Reaves / Matt Ryan / Troy Brown Jr Lebron James / Wenyen Gabriel / Juan Tuscano Anderson Anthony Davis / Thomas Bryant / Damien Jones Scottie Pippen Jr and Cole Swider on 2-way
I like that when we can legitimately play small ball and not force feed AD too much physicality on defense against bigger tougher 5s. There has to be continued work from staff and our two actual centers in Jones and Bryant so we can f****** use them!!
Key takeaways from preseason: - Nunn was a big surprise and will play a big role in this team - centers fell short of expectations, they need to prove they belong. Gabriel was the best one - we will play 3 guards a lot of times - Lonnie has some game, will be part of the rotation, no question - Pat didn't offer much. I guess he may really (just) be a culture guy and he will stand out in spurts, like big games or wtv where his energy stands out, once basketball wise he kinda falls short of what we need - Russ played ok/bad in every different scenario. We can only grow when we get rid of him - Ham shown very good things so far, but still needs to prove to me if he's the man to lead us after LeBron As of now, this team is borderline fighting for top 6, leaning towards the play-in. There's room to be top 6 even with Russ, which is better than what we had last year
Bev isn't a starter. He's a 15-20 minute a game guy that needs to come off the bench. As much as we advanced stats liked his shooting, he's been basura from there so far... If you want to play AD at the 5 with LBJ at the 4, you need a bigger sized wing that can shoot and rebound, IMO. Maybe you can slot JTA? But the spacing gets more clunky because he isn't a knock down shooter. I'd like to see more Reaves replacing Bev minutes, and I like Nunn. Think we need to feature those guys together more as the season goes along.
JTA is the worst shooter of the roster, including bigs. He can't play with Russ any minute. He can be serviceable but it messes up our offense because teams just leave him and double team AD or LeBron He's the type of player who glues well in a very competent team. It will take time to reach that level if we ever do
Depends. All you want him to do is be league average. Mind you, the one season he got time in GS, he shot pretty well from three; he'll get shots that will be open, but we can't have Wiggins or Thompson just shooting over the top of us when we have AD at the 5.
Yeah I haven't enjoyed seeing him play so far. His shot is really awful and he doesn't offer anything on offense nor he's super smart. That's why we need to play him in lineups that are more offensive, so we have better spacing and he can exploit holes in the opposition's defense. Playing in the Warriors is a unique context, doesn't translate to other teams, clearly not to ours especially
Of course he's offers other things on offense: he can set screens, knows when to slip screens, always in the right position. He is just a product of playing with the second unit that doesn't maximize his abilities. We can't have Wiggins or Thompson shooting over the top of us if we go small. So, if we decide to go small, what's the alternative at the 3 position? We starting another guard? We starting Christie? Or do we just abandon the idea and throw Gabriel at the 5 and revert LBJ back to his normal position at the 3?
Oh yeah, for me we can't play AD/LeBron at 5/4, unless it's in very specific situations like Wiggins at the 5 or something like that
i think we can play lebron at the 4/5 to close halves. last 5 minutes of each half. reaves should be out there with them. and i'd be ok with JTA and nunn (or schroder if he ever plays) as the others. to open games, we need AD at the 4 and lebron at the 3, imo. start one of our three centers, whichever one you trust most to play defense.
It's still so weird how our two center signings were universally praised, Jones even getting early starting nods before training camp, only to still start AD at the 5. Were we so scarred from DJ, Dwight and sometimes Melo at center that anything else looked promising?
well, one thing we might be learning is that maybe vogel wasn't an idiot, and you just can't succeed in these circumstances.
