We will still be out a center, no Oden or Przybilla. Also we may miss the scoring punch that Outlaw provides. But, We will be getting back Rudy, Batum, LMA and Blake within the next 3 weeks. Well, Is that going to be enough to win at a 600 clip? LMA will have to play the remainder of the season as our starting C with Howard and Pendy backing him up. Then at PF, that means that a mix of Cunningham, Pendy, Howard, and Batum will have to solidify that position. The rest of the team should be fairly solid. Your thoughts?
The negative is that with more players, it will be back to the role confusion of earlier. The positive is that without Oden blocking his path, Roy reverts to his starring role. When you play only 7-8 players, everyone busts his butt. If only we had a class system of 7-8 players clearly superior to the rest of the team, instead of 12-15 near-equals. But that would take consolidation trades instead of the bake philosophy.
My thoughts (and prayers) are for obtaining a Center by trading Blake + others, as necessary. My candidates= Gortat Okafur Divac Walton Jabbar ? Anyone! Hey, if Howard can play like he is - then I say bring back Bill Walton!
If guys like Rudy, Nicolas, LA and Blake play with the same amount of effort than we've been getting from Pendergraph, Dante and Juwan.. we should be able to make the playoffs. I love what the guys we have are bringing, but we just don't have enough scoring punch to survive a long period of time, especially when Roy scores six points. To score 95 tonight was actually shocking.
Very true! I didn't like seeing Mills and Bayless on the court at the same time. If Mills is going to get some minutes - let him play true PG! When everyone gets back (Batum, Rudy, Blake, etc) we're going to have a problem - we need to consolidate! Won't happen until the summer, but we need to consolidate big-time - - -and when doing so, we need a Center!
Well that all depends. Some of us felt there wasn't any drop off from the 1st to 2nd unit, but the problem was, there was no difference either. So I guess what I am saying is, that a lot of the 1st unit talent was 2nd unit talent grade. The upgrade I think if anything, will be in defense, with guys like Batum coming back.
Yeah I worry about this a little too. Aside from LMA, none of the guys coming back is clearly superior across the board from any of the players they might be replacing -- certainly each is superior in certain areas (Blake and Rudy's 3 ball and Nic's defense) but one way or another somebody is going to get their PT cut and that's going to happen in the backcourt where this team has no shortage of guards and wings. The only positives I see are that Brandon can get back to playing 36 to 38 minutes a night and should be fresher and hopefully more effective down the stretch As for the question of how good will we be with these guys added back into the fold? Probably not very much different than they are now; we'll lose our hardship exemptions making our front court even thinner, Juwan is unlikely to hold up at 35 minutes a night at center for another 40 odd games. My best guess is that the team will hover at somewhere around .400 to .500 for the remainder of the season and end up with around 42-45 wins -- probably just on the outside looking in, come playoff time.
Hey, Sabas might be available. It's not like he'll be significantly less athletic than when he played for us before. Unless he's actually in a wheelchair. But even so, he could probably throw a behind-the-back full-court bounce pass still.
I think the team will regress. Nate is wonderful at getting poor teams to overachieve. Nate is not very good at managing too much talent, and I think it will cause problems.
That's my whole though pattern. It's hard for me to give credit to Nate, when he may have actually done nothing but what he had to do. When the injuries started, it gave him no choice but to play a shortened rotation and to play certain guys he didn't want to play. That leaves me unsure of what he is providing. He may be providing motivation. But then again, maybe he is just fortunate that all that happened, shortened the rotation, and made some playing time moves that he didn't have the balls to make.
