Wow, so Kevin Durant is worth 5 wins all by his lonesome? So that means the Thunder would be -2 and 31? Btw, the Blazers *still* have the 5th best home record, you namby pambies.
I'm still sticking by Greg for now. The rest of the team made him look bad tonight. Dallas had SO many second chance points because the perimeter defender would let their man go, he'd get to the rim and Greg would challenge, the player would miss the shot and another Mav would clean it up because no one would come to help. He's looking a little more spry out there each game. He's not getting stripped by point guards as much. Tonight was just a bad team effort, especially in the fourth. Unfortunately Greg isn't to the point where we can just fall back on him and let the game come to us.
offense is not our biggest problem, we can score with anyone. its our defense. and tell me how durant would help that. i think ill be waiting a looooong time for that answer
You're silly if you don't think Greg is doing things for us right now or helping. He definitely is. The biggest thing our team is suffering from isn't a solid scoring option behind Roy. It's solid offensive schemes ( and defensive schemes too but is another issue entirely) to take advantage of the scoring options besides Roy. That's a coaching issue that needs to be corrected. We've basically got three offensive schemes with one side dish occasionally thrown in. 1a. The Roy Iso. 1b. The pick and roll/pop that leads to us hardly ever hitting the roller and instead having a lot of contested jumpers. 2. The Travis Iso. Side dish: Occasional LaMarcus/Greg postup. It's those schemes and a bunch of other players standing around. Considering this has happened the entire time Nate has been here with several different groups of players I think we can conclude this is a Nate issue and not entirely a player issue. Imagine this team utilizing Rudy's movement more. Implementing consistent cutters down the middle when Greg and LMA post up? Back door cutters, double screens for three point shooters and open jump shots instead of contested ones? Greg does things wrong as I said in another post: brings his arms down too much, gets too much body contact sometimes, loses a defensive rotation. These are all correctable - you lose your timing after missing a month off, he missed a year and is coming off a major surgery (and a lot of you seem to want to downplay the significance of coming off MF surgery) and had never played in the NBA before like other players with the same surgery had to fall back on at least. He'll fix these things people. There is a reason he was a good defender in college. But he also boxes out well, he'll battle for boards and while he may not grab them he'll tip them out towards his teammates. A lot of those same teammates who decide to just let their guy blow by them and get the rebound because they don't move towards it. That isn't Greg's fault. He also affects shots and players driving the lane. He does pick up fouls on the perimeter and gets blown by when he's on a guard - but that is a defensive scheme issue because Nate doesn't have his players fight through a lot of screens which gives the other team the mismatch they want. That's never a good sign for a coach to concede to the other team a mismatch - it also sends a message to the refs that you aren't fighting through screens and aren't being aggressive. You can point out a lot of things wrong with Greg but again they all look and will be correctable in my opinion. He's being made to look a lot worse than he actually is because of some schemes we're using and that's no good for him.
Penknife wasn't awful tonight, he was just irrelevant. The #1 pick in the draft needs to do more than just not be the reason we lost.
Not as solid as Durant would be. Plus LMA??? Now your talking. Roy, Durant, LMA as scoring options in order? Nice!!!! Namby pambies LMFAO never heard that one. And yes! 5 wins in the West is huge. Times 3 since the season is only about a 3rd done (stfu I am not doing the actual math) that is 15 wins. That is HUGE in the West. Hell even 10 wins would have got us in the playoffs last year.
I have always hated Utah but can you imagine this team after a year or two of having Jerry Sloan as their coach? We would still have to find a pg if Bayless couldn't hack it, but I think he could.
We need a PG that can help Oden be in a position to succeed. We don't have now and I'm extremely skeptical that guy is on the bench.
I imagine the team having most anyone but Nate and get happy. One big thing for me and this has nothing to do with Nate's actual drawing up schemes and sets: Get a damn t for your players, Nate. Greg gets a lot of legit fouls, but he also gets a fair share of ticky tacky ones that are just real morale killers for him. He's going to keep getting these if Nate doesn't stand up for him and pick up a t. Fight for your rookie big man! Show him you have his damn back when he's getting a foul for Shaq throwing himself out of bounds.
Good to know you just want to make threads whining and not actually participate in dissecting the things you're complaining about. This is shocking!
Didn't LMA and Brandon say something in an article about how cheap Nate is? Maybe he doesn't want to pay the fine? I think what it comes down to is that as a player he was instructed what to do in the grand scheme of things. I am just starting to think that he was successful despite the fact that he must have never realized WHY he was being coach that way. Carlisle got a T and it didn't seem to hurt his team.
