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The first half was absolutely shameful. Complete gutless performance.

More like they tried hard for the second half. If you want to be mad about Schröder's 2nd quarter, than yeah, sure, be mad but other than that quarter he stayed more composed than Portland's guards have been able to against the pressure defense the Clippers have been known to play against guards (and I watched that entire series). And yes, their best guard at doing this was out, but while Bazemore's performance against Rivers was absolutely shameful on defense, Rivers is good at their pressure defense on guards. He's not lockdown but he can slow guards down.

It's not alternative. Kent did start on Austin and he failed. A defensive specialist. Failed. On that cat.

Except it was Kent Bazemore on Austin Rivers to start the game and he promptly gave up 10 first quarter points.

The fun and games are going to be over in March.

Absolutely horrible, horrible, horrible loss. The kind of loss that starts bad streaks.

Well, that lineup is something. Redick at the 3 with his height?

Man, I like to ramble on about some things on sports based on stuff I saw from different forums (this case was rotoworld where I don't post, but this really probably belongs on TD but I decided to post it here). A lot of ramblings of mine don't get posted. It should also have a PS: Only two defenses may have the talent to do it when healthy.

I think I figured out what you need to do to stop the Falcons on offense but it's very hard even for talented defenses. Let's start with doubling or even tripling Julio Jones is a waste of your time outside of key moments. If you do that, this team will burn you for doing it. You need to be a talented enough defense to be able to put your best corner on him in 1v1 and shield a safety over there (not a hard double). Coleman and Freeman's ability as pass catchers is very important, so you need to also send a safety out in the flats to help the linebackers. Simple right? Well actually, it's not. The Patriots may have a good defense, but the Falcons have played at least two, maybe three defenses that are better than their defense (taking overall record and points given up out of the equation). And the pattern in the two games that I'm thinking of right off the back was this: Those defenses were able to take one thing that was very important away completely, not both of the things. One of the games was a loss, and it was one in which Julio had a great game outside of letting a key pass slip into a defender's hands but Freeman/Coleman's receiving was shut down because Seattle had a safety help their already very talented linebackers on them. So what do you do? I honestly start with shutting down Freeman and Coleman's receiving game. They will want to give them at least 8-10 touches combined as a pass catcher and while they aren't always big plays (they can be), they are important plays, sometimes chain mover plays. But you have to have a corner that is talented enough to slow Julio Jones down without too much help and a defense that can be lockdown on everyone else. I think the only defenses that can do that are healthy Seattle and Denver. Denver is the only team that completely locked the Atlanta receiver corps, they lost because they let Freeman and Coleman go wild.

I can't believe it with this defense. I thought they could slow them down some, but I didn't expect this.

I can see it with Adams and Allison and that's what I've been saying all along at another forum. I can't see it with Nelson. I mean, how? It was just Friday that he was not cleared for contact and it seems stupid and dangerous that he is going to go unless the media was over exaggerating his injury. If he really has two broken ribs, it's going to be painful for him to raise his arms, and one big hit and he'll be right back out of the game. Those Kevlar vests also slow down your speed.

His off ball defense is so bad he has looked two years away from being two years away on that part, and the main fault of this is Baylor's stupid zone scheme.

He went from being pretty disappointing to a pleasant surprise on offense and nothing I've seen says that it's just a hot stretch. His decision making on his shots has been better and he mostly tries to not force it. Still takes a few bad shots, but everyone does. It hasn't been perfect and he's not going to shoot 50%+ in a full season as a guard but if he can continue adding new things to his game I can easily see him putting up a shooting line around 45/35/82 normally. Just, the turnovers... That's my only serious complaint and I feel we were at this same point sometime last season too. Putting up good everything except, turnovers...

That was about as ugly as a 17 point win could be. But honestly not surprising. The last game against them had what seemed to be a shaky flow off of what I was following by ESPN PBP.

I've seen a couple recent Nuggets games. He's a beast.

That was almost a massive meltdown. After seeing this, I think I'd rather let Neal go and go after Barbosa at the deadline.

Howard is not a guy in which you dump it in the post to him and tell him "go get us a bucket" constantly anymore. Unless it's a one dribble post up, it's a total waste of time. If he doesn't get fouled, he'll miss the shot and if he gets fouled it'll take the team out of complete rhythm on offense.

FTFY. This is a real issue. Dennis can be good at one thing, he can't be good at both things. He's too slight of a build to work hard on both ends of the floor. He has to be great offensively every night. That's hard to do.

STUFF THAT SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN SAID.

lol Dennis isn't a turd. Not at all.

Cute Bud, cute. Now stop starting 2 wing players that are bad offensively.

There's no dancing around it. Dennis was so bad it hurt the team from the Knicks matinee in November to the game in LA earlier this season. Since then it's been night and day. Not always reflected analytically (for numerous reasons) though. His shot selection has been much better, if what he wants isn't there he's not forcing it with his own offense unless his team is in danger mode. It doesn't always mean he'll pass well, it sometimes means he'll defer to Millsap and let him make a play. With today's NBA that has playmaking big men it's going to make the high assists PG not seen as often in the NBA. Does it mean it's not going to still be around? No, but it's not as often seen.

You don't grow and develop by never playing. It's much more likely it'll throw you off your rhythm than teach you anything.

The move that Dennis put on Rose on the first of his two key baskets was ridiculous. Rose was actually trying to D up, looked like he was doing a good job of it and at the last second he was barely beaten somehow. Then the second one, it's where I've said Hardaway Jr has changed, just slightly. If he's in New York, he's probably putting up that shot. Instead he waits for Humphries to roll a bit, passes it to Humphries, and Humphries makes a great pass to Dennis for the three. I'll say it again, this was a really sluggish game at times. The guy who has barely played was key and then Hardaway Jr and Schröder were the only guys that hit field goals in the 4th quarter.

I don't know if I said it already but whether I did or not, I'll admit it here. I was wrong. I had my doubts going into this season, and the Bucs game seemingly solidified them. But after the Denver game, it felt different to me than last season, and while I did waver a bit, it turned out that it was different. All the credit in the world. Just getting a center, picking up Sanu/Gabriel, and the development of Tevin Coleman completely transformed the offense.