My thoughts on the current state of the team

[Admin]

As I painfully watch each of these games, even painful in some of our wins, I keep asking myself why dont we have a shooter that can knock down the open J when our big 3 are covered. Then I think for a second and say, why do we need a shooter, shouldnt 3 very good offensive players out of 5 be enough? It sure should. At times when we are running a motion offense, setting picks and screens, we look like an offensive juggernaut. Other times it just seems like we are passing once and taking a shot. I wonder if our team isnt too veteran to want to run an effective motion offense, doing the dirty work and making things happen. If we had DJ in there at SG, how much better or worse would we be? Why is it that Lon allows all 3 of our offensive weapons to be on the bench at the same time in games? Surely he can plan the game so that one of them is in the game at all times right? We have some serious talent on our team and I think that we can win a lot of games with this roster, but its going to take a while and many of us are very impatient. I am hoping that we have this ship rolling by the All-Star break and I firmly believe that will happen, but if it doesnt, what should we do? I am loving JT at the point and wouldnt want to take him away from that job, but I do believe that he needs help in the backcourt with ball handling. I do not like Big Dog being a playmaker one bit. It seems that we always go into a funk when he tries to create plays for his teammates. He needs to strictly concern himself with scoring and playing solid D. Reef needs to keep himself on the blocks and needs to be very aggressive and not wait for the double team, as Nique told him the other night. JT needs to settle the team down and we need to have Big Dog and Ira cutting and coming off of picks. Personally I believe that the potential trade that Babs is looking for is one that will bring us a solid defensive SG, but one who is primarily a good ball handler and is also a good spot up shooter. I love the defense that Ira plays, but we seriously need another ball handler on the floor besides JT. We must be the only team in the league that only has one starter who can successfully bring the ball down the floor. I can see us trying to get someone like a Doug Christie to be that SG. I dont know if we could actually get him from them, but is there someone else out there in the league that could be similar to him? I dont believe we would trade for another young player, so it would probably have to be a vet. Would we trade Big Dog for Rose? That would help both of our teams out because we could leave Ira in at SG and our defense wouldnt suffer one bit, nor would our offense. Rose could then help set up the offense and allow JT to come off of picks at times. I love Big Dogs offensive game and Rose is probably the only guy I would trade him for. I would prefer to get a SG in here that is like what I described above, but I wonder if there is one to be found?

[chillzatl]

The all-star break a coaching change is in order. I know a lot of people want his head now. But this team really can't be judged until close to the all-star break. The reason being is that they are a new team. Lots of new players learning a new system. You can't expect perfection too quickly. But if they still haven't grasped this "system" that Lon is supposedly teaching them, a coaching change needs to be made.

Despite all that, there are some current things that should not be happening. Even an inexperienced coach with an inexperienced lineup shouldn't make some of these mistakes:

1. As you said, Big Dog should NOT be put in the position to be a playmaker. Every time he is, it turns out bad. If the coach was telling these guys NOT to do that, it wouldn't be happening as often as it does.

2. Substitutions. HIs sub patterns have stablized a bit. But they are still erratic. LIke you said, having all our starters on the bench at once is suicide. Mainly because at that point, we have nobody who can really fill it up and we have nobody who can make a play for those who aren't natural scorers.

3. Lazy passes. We make some of the laziest passes i've never seen. Big Dog throwing it into Reef, JT doing the same or passing around to Big Dog. ETc etc etc. It is not difficult to tell guys to tighten up their passes. It isn't something hard for players to grasp so that leads one to think that the issue isn't being raised. We would have 1/3 less turnovers now if these guys were making crisp, hard passes.

Those are three things that, at this point in the season, should not be. I can accept that the guys have problems getting into their offensive sets. That's the mark of an inexperienced team. But the above mistakes should not be happening.

That said I'm still going to wait until mid-season before I start calling for heads.

We could use a SG/SF that could handle and we need someone off teh bench who can run a play. But this lineup can win if they stick to a system that works. Right now they aren't good enough to force their system on good teams. Again, a sign of inexperience.

[Diesel]

That's the Diesel deadline.

It doesn't take a whole lot of time to tell weather or not it's time for Lon to go. The fact that we have three offensive weapons (good ones) and our game plans are not producing 2 20 pt players every night should cause us to wonder why? It's coaching. We can get Reggie Miller here in place of Ira and then we'd say.. Well we need a better scoring C or we need better scoring from the bench. THE PROBLEM is coaching. There are other coaches who do much more with Much less than we have. LON is just not ready.

I feel that waiting to Feb is too long. We should make a change mid december. That way a new coach has a chance to build a report with the team over the 3 months that he will have until the playoff wars start.

My Shortlist:

Brian Hill

Mike Dunleavy Sr.

Chuck Daly

Greg Hill

[chillzatl]

I see your point, as most should. They should be hitting their stride at that point. We should see a clear system being used and not this hodge podge offensive system that we've been seeing. If we aren't playing like we have a system at that point, he needs to be released. Because those players are smart enough to grasp a system in that much time. If they aren't, they aren't being taught properly.

Time will tell.

[beav]

I like dunleavy... while he isn't great, he is at least average to slightly above average IMO...

how old is Daly? He must be in his 70's by now? Even if he were interested, I'd prefer someone that wasn't around when they were shooting granny shots into peach baskets...

I'd like to see van gundy given a shot too, at least we won't be complaining about no defense...