Hate to say it but this team is nigh to unwatchable. Much of the time our pathetic excuse of an offensive plan was to spread people out and just stand there. That makes us highly dependent upon good shooters and isn’t overly conducive to rebounds. Gets even worse with AntJ without Dame as he seems to think the offense revolves around him. For all Billups talked about defense, he seems like Stotts 2.0, talk an emphasis on defense but never actually play it. ugh.
In todays NBA good defense it’s imperative to have length. Which we don’t have much of. Long wings, close out guys
As long as you have a backcourt like Dame/CJ or Dame/Ant, there won't be much resistance. It is your first line of defense....which isn't good, and then puts pressure on the the next line to try to guard multiple players at the same time. Recipe for disaster.
Denver is one of the worst teams at at-the-hoop field goal percentage. The Blazers have two terrific lob catch-and-finishers in Shaedon Sharpe and Nassir Little. The Blazers threw one lob to Sharpe which was successful and one lob to Little which was successful. Why the hell throw any at all? Just to piss off Blazer fans it seems.
25% of the offense could be just throwing up around the rim for Sharp to transfer to the hole. Betting that kid could score 20-25 a night and would be shooting 6-8 free throws min.
What's even more obvious is if they started to punish teams with the lob and cutting to the rim with Sharp and Little is it would absolutely open up the looks from three. Edit- Ant can dunk the ball as well if i am not mistaken?
Ant, Sharpe and Nas (along with sparingly Keon and GB3) will be 3 of the most athletic guys on the court in almost any game we are in. However, when we walk the ball up the floor, that negates a lot of those athletic opportunities. Then we get the occasional lob just to show we can do it, and then don't make a team adjust to prove they can jump with our high flyers.
At the same time, it seems to me that Ant has yet to show any real interest in getting others involved in offense when he is running the show. Too often it is him playing one-on-one (or two or three) and then either puts up a difficult shot or passes out to someone with almost no time on the clock. Not a fan.
Ant tends to do that when Dame is on the bench. The irony to me is how many here clamor for a bench scorer, a guy like Clarkson, a Lou Williams type off the bench, but when Ant tries to fill that role, he's quickly hit with the MeJ label. When each of those guys coming in would have way worse basket blinders.
