Trib: Cavaliers coach sings praises of Bulls' Nikola Mirotic

What story?

Mirotic said he was going to get his family, then go to Montenegro to work out with his personal coach. He then made it very, very clear that he knows he needs to be in Chicago early, and whatever coach wants, that's what he is going to do.

I'll leave the "facial expression" interpretation to Dr Phil... but we all know that Rose works out in LA during the off-season, Noah goes to Europe, Taj is in Thailand, Gasol is in Spain... but hey, who am I to tell other people what to worry about, and what "hunches" they should have.

Hunch away, I say...

 

Re: Trib: Cavaliers coach sings praises of Bulls' Nikola Miroti

I'm confused...

 

I think you're right that the lineups to finish games will be a more powerful statement than the lineups used to start them.

I think our best reference for how this will play out is the 2011-2012 season when we had Taj/Noah/Asik/Boozer.

Fairly egalitarian minute spread until the 7:00 mark in the fourth quarter, then Thibs went with whatever worked. I'm expecting something similar this year. Thibs will eventually settle into a rotation that doesn't change much until the end of the 4th, where it'll turn into survival of the fittest.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Taj is on the winning end of things.

However, given the different skill sets of our bigs I don't think our 4th quarter lineup is going to be as etched in stone as it was last year. I think Thibs rolled with the Hinrich/DJ/Jimmy/Taj/Noah lineup because he had no other choice. He'll have more leeway to try and create matchup advantages this year and I think he'll take advantage of that.

 

My observation of Taj is that he does just as well against good players as bad ones. His numbers as a starter were always very good. I think it was clear that Thibs liked Taj as a player more than Boozer, he just started him because he didn't want to fuck with locker room chemistry. Boozer was a proud guy and it would've been bad for the team if he started sulking. (Which he did at the end of last year anyway).

I think our series against the Wizards was so underwhelming that people overlook how good Taj was.

He averaged 18/6/2 with 62% TS and a 26.5 PER against Gortat and Nene. And without another shot creator of any kind. And he wasn't really doing anything that he hasn't done in other games.

 

Brilliant words, Transplant.

This post inspired me to look a little deeper into potential lineups and how Pau was used with the Lakers.

It's actually reversed my opinion about what the starting lineup should look like after thinking about it a little more.

The last time the Lakers won a championship their best lineup by far was Fisher/Kobe/Metta/Gasol/Bynum. That unit was the horse they rode to the championship.

It's O-rating during the regular season was 111.4. In the playoffs it was 111.4.

For comparison the Clippers led the league this year in O-rating at 109.4. The Spurs had an O-rating of 112.7 in the playoffs.

I would be shocked if Rose/Jimmy/Someone/Gasol/Noah had as much success. This year's Derrick is probably not going to be as good as 09-10 Kobe and we don't have prime Gasol.

But there are some useful structural similarities between that lineup and ours. It gives me more confidence that a Gasol/Noah combination can work, at least in theory.

I'm inclined to think replacing Dunleavy with McDermott is a more sensible way to go. Dunleavy was brought here to be a bench player, so the contrast between him and Doug isn't going to be as big as Gasol/Mirotic.

 

I'd counter with an observation that I think you'd agree with: Over the years Thibs has proven critics wrong about his perceived weaknesses.

He hasn't burnt guys out and the team's stars seem to have a very good relationship with him.
He hasn't favored defensive guys over offensive guys.
IMO he hasn't irrationally avoided playing rookies. Snell and Asik got about as much burn as they deserved. Jimmy didn't, but he was the 30th pick on a 62 win team....guys like that usually don't play much.

And one other data point we shouldn't disregard: last year Thibs did go with the better offensive player down the stretch. Taj just happened to be better at defense too.

If you do a comparison there's little evidence that Boozer was the better offensive player. Boozer's efficiency and advanced metrics were awful last year. The only advantage he had over Taj last year was his better passing.

 

Gibson Boozer

PER 16 14.4
TS% 52.4% 48.9%
ORTG 102 95
ORTG-Diff +2 -5(Terrible!)
% from Midrange 39.3% 39.2%

Gibson was the better offensive player this year.

 

I agree that, most of the time, if you have two teams with equal talent it's better to have the one with less depth. That's why Lebron always goes deep into the playoffs. I'm also guessing that's why we went after Melo first.

I'm hoping the plan is to Duncanize Pau and keep him between 25-30 minutes per game throughout the regular season with occasional rest.