RedDawg#8

Trae-Delon Bogi-Kev-Cam JC-Gallo-OO That's your rotation tonight. No need to p*ssy foot around. JJ and TLC can play on an emergency basis only.

Cam has caught whatever Trae had on defense. He is losing the weak side shooter on multiple possessions. Side note. Kev should have been subbed back in instead of TLC, but that's just me. That or they should have put in Wright next to Trae. I do not see the need to play 4 wings when the 4th wing is really a 12th man type.

God yes! It makes no sense for a guy who opened the season as our 6th wing to leapfrog over 3 key core players in front of him that we can barely find enough minutes for to begin with. If there is one position group that should not be relegated to fixed units its got to be our wings. Forget the names on paper for a second, just the nature of those positions are naturally interchangeable and flexible parts. Then add in to the fact that this season, none of our top 4 wings have established themselves as a clear cut starter or reserve. Between Dre, Cam, Bogi and Kev it's been up and down all season for each of them. So this idea that we can keep Dre's seat warm for him in the starting lineup by plugging in a Hill or a TLC was just plain stupid. Cam and Kev should be getting as many opportunities as possible to show what they can do next to the starters. Especially while Dre is out. We should be rotating 3 wings only until Dre comes back unless injury or foul trouble occur. Mix and match and let these guys get all the minutes they can so hopefully someone shows that they excel in one role or the other. Stop wasting precious minutes on scrubs like TLC.

He definitely can and has shown it before. It was bad this season but I think his engagement really fell off a cliff after the Covid attrition happened. He was writing it all off on playing with a bunch of new faces, and he hasn't seemed to have turned it back on even slightly since then. I also think teams are targeting him much more. They see the same tape that we do and they are game-planning for his lack of awareness and effort. Since he has been back, almost every guard he faces and for sure every backcourt we have seen has had career nights going against us/him. They are telling their guards to hunt their shot and let it fly because there will be no resistance. In the past, most teams hunted Trae in the pick and roll to get him switched on to a big, or they would try to post him if he was assigned to a wing. Trae actually faired pretty well in those circumstances. Now it looks like teams are just hunting shots for their guards because they know Trae will eventually die on a screen and leave them wide open. Im not even that mad about that because I generally hate how we defend the pick roll altogether and I think it leaves a lot of our wings to dry because they don't have the freedom to play the screen and go under when it's clearly set way too high. That's another story. What kills me is his ball watching and "help" defense. Especially when his guy has the hot hand. We don't need Trae to be the guy who double teams against a Lebron or Embiid. He isn't going to do anything but get a weak foul if that. He needs to be on his man and prevent the kick out, or the offensive rebound by his guy. The Bucks beat us in the playoffs by singlehandedly having Trae's man crash hard to the offensive glass because he would always lose them. They also had Jrue leak out after every Trae shot attempt because Trae would be posing and playing to the crowd instead of getting back. Teams are going after the immature parts of his game now. He is an offensive force, but they know that they can get every one of his points back if they attack his weaknesses. Ability is there as he is quick and scrappy, but it's about pride at this point. Don't just let your man kill us play after play. I'd rather he be so selfish that he face guards his guy and doesn't help on any other assignment. Im sure the locker room would appreciate that much more than what he is doing now. They can figure out what to do 4 on 4, just stop leaving and losing your guy.

This is a HUGE reach my friend. He said it was about effort like 3 times and only once mentioned game planning as if it was an afterthought . Clickbait title if I ever saw one.

2 on 2 fast break, we are in the bonus. That should have been a drive to the rim and get to the line. Zero awareness. Seek contact when you're in the bonus.

That open TLC miss was money if Kev was on the court

We were in the bonus, he should be driving to the rim and getting to the line. They haven't been able to stay in front of him. That shot was a bail out

Trae is showing so hard on Lebron Im starting to believe that it's on purpose. Otherwise that is the laziest, stupidest defensive effort

Stupid foul man. These guys are too dependent on take fouls they don't even realize they are in the penalty

If Kev was on the court with the starters we could really put some pressure on them. TLC is self check

Im not feeling the rotations tonight. TLC better not get more minutes than Kev or Cam. OO better get at least 20 minutes.

We have to play better defense. Bradley is hot out of the gates, they need to pay attention to that. Don't let him pull a Simons on you. We're on pace to give up 35+ in the first quarter. Cannot have that BS tonight

Meanwhile the 2 guys that won you the game on Wednesday are riding the bench in lieu of TLC and Bogi in his first game back from Covid. If anything let Cam and Kev start because you know they have the conditioning. I don't like TLC being a placeholder for Dre. Just play a 9 man rotation with 3 wings. They already don't get enough minutes as is.

There is just no reason for this at all. Are we THIS married to our rotations that we are willing to start our 4th best available wing just so we can stick to our failed 5 man 2nd unit from the beginning of the season? Everything about this is stupid.

Covid absences will make you forget that we haven't been this healthy since around Thanksgiving when we lost Bogi and Cam against the Knicks. And even then we still didn't have Dre or OO. We played 8 games with Kev as the only 1 out of our 4 main rotation wings. Then Covid hit. We are almost back to full strength tonight. More healthy than we have been in the past 16 games. Let's make it mean something tonight.

Yuppp lol Hunter has played a grand total of 21 basketball games (16 regular season, 5 playoff) dating back to the end of January 2021. Kid is going to have some rust. Heck, you could argue he was still rusty in the 11 games he played this season before getting injured. He certainly wasn't back to the form he was last season.

He came back in Monday but he is 4th string again.

Im ok with parting ways with either Dre or Cam. Cam obviously has more raw talent and the higher potential, but Dre was able to do everything Cam is doing now on way better efficiency last season prior to injury. The prolonged injuries and absence of Dre has allowed Cam to close the gap so as far as I'm concerned it's about who you want to bet on going forward. Both at their best are absolutely phenomenal to watch. Cam is exciting and Dre is/was automatic and steady. I prefer Dre at his best, but we haven't seen him at his best since going down last season. In a Cam trade for Grant, I think Dre and Grant become redundant as both are more combo forwards than they are true wings. There would be an opening at BU PF if Gallo is included but idk if you want to trade a major prospect for a backup. So do you start Grant and send Dre to the bench? If you send out Dre, I think Cam is a better fit with Grant in the rotation as they could be on the floor together or separately as Cam is a 2/3 and Grant is a 3/4. To me, we run in to the same roster questions by bringing in Grant. And even though he is an amazing defender, we would inevitably be trading away one of our top 2 perimeter defenders in order to get him. So again, it's tick for tack. We aren't adding anything, but replacing what we already have. Is that worth it in the end?

Totally legit. We only played an 8 man rotation against Sac. Adding Trae, Bogi and JC back I can totally see us having a hard time playing 9 guys meaningful minutes, let alone 10. TLC was 3rd string before injuries. He should be an emergency player only at this point. Imagine how hard it will be to squeeze Dre back in to the rotation when he returns. Yikes, we are back to where we started.

They know what they are doing. No way would they put him up against Giannis, KD, and Embiid in the frontcourt when he can moonwalk in the starting lineup as a guard this year. Still sad though considering the Bulls most used lineups are him at SF or even PF when they go small.

This isn't grade school. These guys are professionals. If I allow another man to get me in my feelings to where I am not playing up to my standards, who does that ultimately hurt in the end? Trae has a Max deal. Am I going to sabotage my own value as a player because Im sad about not feeling included? Nope. But that's me. Truthfully, I can see certain guys who believe they are a great player deep down but aren't getting the chance to shine being frustrated, but that's still not an excuse. And that's why we may need to follow suit with most teams led by a ball dominant star and surround them with guys who are hungry and have accepted their role in the league. Our young talent has potential, and THEY know it too. They want that max deal one day too. But these 10 day guys came up and said I'm happy to be here and will do whatever it takes to stay here and we saw amazing effort out of these dudes. They were willing to do the dirty work and not receive any credit. Im not saying that our guys can't coexist together. But they will have to accept roles and a hierarchy first. Middleton HATED Giannis when he joined the Bucks. They had a rivalry between themselves because Middleton saw Giannis as competition and a threat to his minutes. Eventually he realized that it was Giannis' team and he had to be option 2. That's when they started winning. The coaches and organization have to clean up this picture and define roles and stop letting these guys try to define it for themselves. Trae, JC, Clint are clearly defined if you ask me. Everyone else has question marks that need to be worked out internally so that players can just accept it, focus and play hard.

This is the part that bothers me. This offseason we had the least amount of roster turnover we have ever seen in the Schlenk era. JC said in camp it was the first time he walked in the locker room and knew almost all of the guys. We brought back the rotation that carried is to the ECF. We brought back locker room voices like Hill and Lou that were instrumental in teaching the young guys winning habits and mentality. This was the season that we were destined to come out of the gates fast for the first time in the Schlenk era because there was already good chemistry. The adjustments were supposed to be minimal this season. We had Dre and Cam both healthy that we needed to work in to the existing rotation. We had OO out, we had Clint playing through rehab, and we had Wright to figure out what his place was. We still had a ton continuity in the lineup that it should not have been an issue for us to play well. We came in sleepwalking, thinking things were easy and we would flip a switch when we needed to. We did it for a 6 game win streak. Then decided we were back, and then started collapsing in those home games due to poor defensive effort. Then Covid. I think this team thought they would snap out of it but were blindsided by the Covid outbreak which set us back even more. When we got 6 guys back and still lost to an undermanned Portland team, I think that put our back against the wall. Schlenk calling them out opened their eyes even more. There was finally a sense of urgency last night. It should not have taken 36 games to find it, but it's here, and I hope stays for longer than 6 games this time.

Losing JC would be tough, but KAT is a difference maker who can carry the load when Trae sits. I love JC, but the opportunities he has had to step up in Trae's absence have been very underwhelming. I would want to keep JC and lose Clint if we got KAT, but I'm interested regardless. He always gives us the business so Im well aware of the kind of beast he is.

The info that is shared usually provides great context more than anything. Obviously all of the proposed trades won't come true because they may overlap in regards to assets, plus executing one may remove the need to pull the trigger on another. For me, it's providing insight as to who we value internally and who we like externally, which paints picture of what the FO think's are our strength's and weaknesses are on the team. There is good info as to long term and short term direction of the team. And when you look it through that lens you find that most of the information is very accurate. A prime example is Cam. Supe's and Camp's sources always affirm that we value him way more than what the mainstream sources are putting out. So when his name is all over the news cycle I never even blink because I know it's BS. Knowing that he, Dre, and other are now available I would be less surprised at a trade now than I would have in the past.