Strengths: Strong, athletic, explosive backcourt. Baron Davis can make fastbreaks successful in the open court and create opportunities for guys who cannot create their own offense. Jason Richardson has come into his own as an explosive shooting guard who can be a secondary playmaker and a possible go-to guy. Lots of young talent off the bench. Weaknesses: Frontcourt isn't very deep or talented inside. There's only one guy besides Baron Davis who can handle the ball well without dribbling off his foot and he's too slow/weak/unaggressive to break down defenders. No inside game, no off the ball movement, team defense, transition D, weakside D and individual perimeter and post D need work. The tone is set by all the perimeter guys and hardly any of the big men. Our most talented big men are all perimeter guys. We don't rebound the ball well, make the effort to get to the foul line, and we don't make our free throws when we do. We need to be more physical on defense and on the glass.
I would like to add a couple... Strengths: We have several young guys who can contribute off the bench on any given night. Pietrus is a great perimeter defender. Foyle is a great shot blocker. Weaknesses: Inconsistancy. Those young guys do not perform on a night to night basis. It is pretty much guaranteed that ONE of them will contribute, you just dont know who it could be.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting wtwalker77:</div><div class="quote_post">I'm all for threads that promote discussion, but I think Custodian pretty much nailed it.</div> Thanks! I'll probably whine about all of our defensive/offensive weaknesses ad nauseum once the season is in motion, but I"ll try to put a cork in it. In the end I'll be grateful that we have some direction now and not a patchwork quilt of various players (and scapegoats). Baron is obviously the glue, the spark, and the tone setter and we're still quite a small team. Just like the old saying goes, "we're only one player away from making the playoffs", we're also one player away from NOT making the playoffs. B-Diddy is just a roll of the dice and if J-Rich goes down we'll probably face similar situations because none can score like him yet. If Bdiddy or Jrich can't make at least 72 games in the year we are in for some trouble when we can't break anybody down off the dribble or post up with our backcourt. I've got high hopes for Dunleavy, but I'm not holding my breath until I see at least 10 games played in a row where he sets the tone offensively and isn't getting punished by Peja, Melo or Lebron, etc... I think NBA coaches by now know how to exploit Dunleavy on the slow defensive rotations out on the perimeter and the more athletic ballhandling small forwards can just drive passed him to get to the paint where Murphy will stand and watch as Foyle attempts to stop him. I guess the one thing Dunleavy does real well is he's got excellent court vision, good hands for stealing the ball, and he plays better post D than Murphy, I think. I think he's the perfect compliment to when you don't want Fisher or Pietrus to dump the ball into the hoop because there's still time left to do something creative that the defense won't expect. Dunleavy to Dampier in 2003-04 were some good moments, even though he played even worse D back then, but at least he was busting up good defenders like James Posey and Jamal Tinsley with his dribbling.
Custodian hit the main points-probably overstating somewhat. We have SOME inside game,defense-but certainly not enough. I'm concerned that Fisher is not the "catalyst" Baron is. Down the road Fish's contract is poison,at this time it's not extreme. Fish makes timely 3's-but fies up other 3's at bad times. We have some rising talent,some have a ways to go,some can look great at times yet are not consistant. We have a few things we can count on, otherwise it's a bit uncertain. There are several guys who can follow a 20-25 pt game with a 7pt game. A big part of that is that this crew fires too many 3's and needs to get the 10 ft J or drive to the hole. I'm hopeful that most everyone has a sense of what needs improvement,and that many have made progress we will soon see (maybe)
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting REREM:</div><div class="quote_post">Custodian hit the main points-probably overstating somewhat. We have SOME inside game,defense-but certainly not enough. </div> Some inside game? Wait you're not talking about when we invert our lineup to that of the backcourt posting up the other opposing backcourt and putting the big men behind the arc, are we? That doesn't count. I'm also concerned with Fisher's contract bloat, but what can we do? Let's just find some sucker GM like Twardzick to dump him to. It'll be easy as pie.
Also, I forgot to mention that our team in the past has gotten lit up by relatively small time ballers playing the forward position. Why is that? Role players like Nets fan favorite, "Veal Chop" Scalabrine and the Hornet's "Boki" Nachbar are going off on career highs against us. Keep in mind this is usually right around when Barnett is hyping up Dunleavy. If God is a Warriors fan, I think God has a some kind of switch he turns off and on whenever Barnett annoys the hell out of almost everybody with mentioning Dunleavy before Dunleavy even does anything remotely broadcast worthy or memorable from recent time periods.
Barnett is a fair man, so many years without playoffs have humbled our announcers. As I see at times that they point out bad calls made against the opposing teams or support calls in favor of them. We just need Barnett to shut the hell up about Dunnuthin.
