I feel like saying something snarky, but I am going to refrain, just so people don't think I am all snark. But I think each person could imagine a response here?
I'm not saying this isn't a great thread because it is @KSF-ERIC but that was terribly obvious during the scrimmages. Stotts was going to great lengths not to tip his hand as to what this team has planned and what they'd been practicing on both ends of the court. We weren't showing our defense, offense or personnel rotations that we will use for games that count and it was smart of Stotts to keep those things off of opponent's videos so they couldn't study a lot. We have a huge advantage having two new starters that our team is very familiar with but that the league really has little idea about how they will be used this season. It certainly will help against Memphis but in my experience it takes teams 15 or more games to figure out how to best handle offenses that are hard to stop. Huge advantage for us. I'm also cautiously optimistic about how our defense will look different and hopefully surprising in a positive way.
If Stotts actually comes up with a defensive scheme akin to anything that is an improvement over the last decade, I'll be thrilled. Same with something on offense that isn't the weave. Doesn't seem like a high bar, but gave up hope long ago. How is that @UKRAINEFAN?
There's an old school of thought that goes "How you practice is how you play". Given what we have seen from the Blazers "practice" games, it doesn't give me much hope that they can flip a switch and play a whole lot better. I think there's was a whole lot more to be gained by approaching those warm-up games as real games than secretly holding stuff back. The best teams don't care if you know what is coming or not. They can just out execute you and you're powerless to stop it.
We only played our starting lineup for 20 minutes in Game 1 and that was it. Of course, we can play a whole lot better. The best teams absolutely do care if you know what is coming.
So coaches are incapable of gamesmanship??? That's what you are saying? No coach would ever think to hide elements or all of what they want to do in order to attain some advantage? If you've watched sports, even if you've only watched basketball then you know that limiting other teams' exposure to your game plan is a very common practice... I mean, are we talkin about PRACTICE?!? Seriously though, I don't see your point as being valid and I think it was obvious that we weren't showing what we will do. Watch the first scrimmage and see how Dame was playing, watch the way we didn't rotate players in but did line subs like in hockey. There was very little in those scrimmages that resemble what we will logically be doing.
It's hard to flip the switch when you have 3 bad defenders in your starting lineup and your second unit makes them look like the Bad Boys.
Gary and Nas are both better defenders than any of the three guys you are referring to in the starting lineup. So our second unit doesn't exactly make Dame, CJ and Melo look like the Bad Boys. Also we'll see if they're really that bad when the games matter.
I don't know if Rio is worse than Melo but otherwise I agree. I don't think Ant is going to play much and Gary is definitely going to play a lot. If Melo is as bad on D as some think he's going to be then I think Gary will end up starting or at least playing more minutes on the perimeter than Melo.
Just talking about perimeter D. In every other way Melo is better than Rio... maybe Rio is a better passer but I might still say Melo.
