Thats all bad news imho. Fewer bodies to wear out ad and lbj. Its all on mario and wenyen. Impossible.
I guess we start Trent? Could make an argument to start Whiteside. Might help his ego not take a hit too. I shudder at the thought of starting Mario or Wenyen.
And there are a number of younger players that have already surpassed him. If he was inconsistent, but showed flashes of greatness, it would be different. Even when he is "good" - he is just adequate.
Thinking about this more, it is very bad news... Even if Collins was bad offensively he is our best defender to throw at AD, we could likely play him against their center lineups when Javale or Dwight are out there with AD. I guess we just have to double the hell out of AD and Lebron inside and dare their guards to hit open 3's. Theres no way we can play those two straight up inside, get a stop, and get the defensive rebound. Stotts often doesn't double team.... we will see tomorrow how this works out.
The loss of Collins is brutal. Dude was killing it in Orlando. I’m glad I’m not in Stotts’ shoes right now. How in the world can we replace his production?
I think that means we have to move Melo to 4 and start Gary at 3. Wenyen will obviously get major rotation minutes but Rio will also get more minutes. I just don't think that we can have Hassan and Nurk on the court at the same time when one of the posts for the other team is a player as dynamic as Davis and they use LeBron quite often as a front court player as well. I guess if we went with a 3-2 zone and just close out with our perimeter to contest the threes they can get to and let them try to make the rest, then we could just shut down the paint completely by just sinking Hassan and Nurk in there. That would give up a lot of wide open threes and likely lead to Nurk and Whiteside getting into foul trouble trying to stop guys with a full head of steam going to the hole. Yeah I would probably have a rotation of Dame, CJ, Gary, Melo, Nurk, Wenyen, Rio, Hassan... and Ant will even have to get a little run but that would be the order I would bring guys in and the order of playing time from most to least. Hassan would get more PT if Nurk got in foul trouble but after writing about it I don't think Nurk and Hassan can play together against this team for any sustained period of time it just wouldn't work well on either end of the floor unless (only on offense) Nurk started draining a really high percentage of uncontested threes but then there's still the D that wouldn't work. Damn Neil for not getting players for two roster spots he was allowed to fill, who the fuck does that? Incredibly stupid. Yeah this was going to be a playoff environment the entire bubble and yeah rotations are shortened in that instance but the there are these things called injuries and the fact that in a playoff environment, no game is expendable. Fuck!
Zach definitely has his weaknesses but staying with extremely mobile and long PFs isn't one of them. He is very important, even if he is fouling too much, in an effective defensive scheme against the Brow. If you are going to say Wenyen can do the same things, I would have to counter with yeah we will need him to do those things too... we aren't good enough to throw just one guy at AD all game and double teaming him may not be an option because there's this other guy on their team named LeBron who is a huge problem himself. Losing Collins is brutal.
Tough call between Trent and Gabriel. I go with Gabriel to start on AD instead of moving Carmelo to PF.
There aren’t a number of young 7 footers that have surpassed him either. He hasn’t had consistent minutes for a full season yet. I won’t judge him til after next season.
We need Trent off the bench. I really like what I've seen from Gabriel so far. He's been a pleasant surprise for sure!
There are good reasons to bring Trent and Whiteside off the bench. That leaves the choice between an unproven ultra-long-shot and a proven scrub. I would roll the dice on Gabriel, but we can safely predict that Stotts will run up the white flag and start Mario.
Yeah even if he's playing, he would foul out every game anyway against Davis. His weak white ass would get smashed
Yeah, there is just no logical way those guys see more than 5 minutes on the floor together unless we want a complete shit show.
We could use his energy, athleticism and the time it would take to get those six fouls. We don't have other personnel to fill in for that time and it's not like AD is some Adonis of girth and dominating physical strength. Zach and AD are similar in what they do purely physically with AD being a bit more athletic, AD is just far more skilled on both ends and has a much higher basketball IQ on both ends.
