Sorry, I jsut saw there was no game thread so i put one up. Nothing fancy, just a link to the Dallas one if anyone is interested. PS Check out my flash animation Here
Luke Ridnour is not the answer for us at point guard. Bob Weiss is not the answer for us at head coach. Danny Fortson, Nick Collison, Ron Murray, and Damien Wilkins are not being used well at all to help us and b/c of that we've gone from the best bench in the league last season to one of the worst. Great to see Fortson look like he has the bounce in his step again. He starting to shed the weight that he put on from being inactive with the toe injury. Nick Collison played well in limited minutes (why he doesn't play 30 minutes a game is beyond me) and Flip had his moments. Flip has a short leash and when he isn't playing near perfect ball Weiss feels that he must give the team stability with Ridnour on the floor. The thing is that there isn't anything stable about a player who can't make anything happen in the half court and can't defend on the other end. I just think in crunch time you should have your five best players on the floor and in the case of the Sonics our best line up is: Flip Ray Sweet Lew Vlad/Danny (whoever is in a better groove for that night) Nick Teams are daring Ridnour to shoot and he made it painfully obvious with his 17 foot airball that he isn't built for nip and tuck moments. Flip can play a lot better on both ends, and he needs to get away from coming down court and jacking up shots without anyone else touching the ball. But it is obvious to anyone watching these games that Flip has a confidence about him that Luke doesn't have and the opposition shows Flip much more respect than they would ever show Luke. With extended minutes Flip would be able to showcase his ability to get others involved but for that to happen Luke has to get his minutes cut. Bob Weiss needs to stop experimenting with these guys and start clearly defining roles and minutes. Play Nick Collison and Danny Fortson, please. Control Vlad's wild shooting episodes. Give Damien Wilkins an opportunity to earn his worth. And be ready to sit Luke Ridnour the fu*k down.
Luke's now painfully apparent shortcomings and obvious blunders at the end of the game aside, we had a 12pt lead disappear in the 4th. I find the Sonics offense unwatchable at times: run Ray off some double screens and finally just hand him the ball 25 ft from the basket and clear out. And his shot selection is hurting us, especially those 3's early in the shot clock. Sure they're daggers when they go in but he was 1-7 last night. The Knicks game was similar in the 4th. And yanking Luke for Flip on the critical defensive possesion made no sense to me - Flip missed his rotation and sunk way too far in the lane leaving Jason Terry wide open.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Iron Shiek:</div><div class="quote_post">Flip has a short leash and when he isn't playing near perfect ball Weiss feels that he must give the team stability with Ridnour on the floor.</div> You couldn't be farther from the truth. I went to the game last night. Usually a loss is a team fault, last night I blame the loss solely on one Flip Murray. It's a lot different watching a game on tv, in person you realize just how much people are f'ing up. Flip shot the ball damn near everytime that he got it, and missed almost everytime. Then after he missed the shot he didn't get back up the floor and the Mavs ran on us. When Ray wasn't in the game Flip tried to control everything, which is why Shard needs to start commanding the ball more. At one point Ray was clearly upset with Flip because he just kept shooting every possession. Ray called for the ball and ran the point himself for a possession, and we scored off a nice pick-and-roll with him and Vlade. Flip Murray lost to the Mavs last night.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Roland Hood:</div><div class="quote_post">And yanking Luke for Flip on the critical defensive possesion made no sense to me - Flip missed his rotation and sunk way too far in the lane leaving Jason Terry wide open.</div> Flip makes a ton of defensive lapses but yesterday's actually wasn't his fault. They double teamed Dirk Nowitzski 20 feet from the rim. Josh Howard dove down the lane and b/c the opposite big man didn't step up in time Flip dropped to take away an apparent give and go lay up. Considering we were down one we couldn't afford to give Dallas a wide open score. Once Flip realize that he didn't get any help from the weak side guard on his own man (which was Ray Allen) he tried to get back in time to contest the three but he was too far in the lane to really challenge the shot. I blame Weiss for deciding to double Dirk before he put the ball on the floor, I blame Weiss for the poor execution of the double team. Ray should have been in position to rotate out to Terry. It looked like Flip's fault at first glance but it wasn't. Flip makes a ton of mistakes throughout the game but my argument has always been that you can live with some of the mistakes he's making when he is making contributions on both ends. Luke Ridnour doesn't really make too many contributions that will push us to a victory. I don't think that I've ever said that Luke's play carried us tonight. He is a role player who is best served coming off of the bench--not necessarily to start Flip, but someone else who is capable of manning that position at the beginning of games to crunch time. Flip wasn't the reason why we loss. It was a total team collapse.
I only watched the replay once but it looked to me that Ray was supposed to funnel the cutter to a big, Flip stays on Terry and make Nowitski make a cross-court pass to give us time to rotate. In any case, I agree it was a total team collapse. Pathetic that you can make one pass out of double team and get a wide open 3 at the end of game. Probably didn't help that we hadn't doubled Dirk all game long.
