An average role player shooting poorly is never an excuse for a contender, that's silly. Harden made poor choices and he was tired. Bad game. When ALL the catch n shoot guys are off, then it's on the creator of the offense or it's a rare unlucky night. Harden insisted on totally dominating the ball and slowing down the game - he must think that that's "imposing his will" but it certainly should not be his will to take it to a grind it out iso game against the Grizzlies, a team that is good at probably nothing else but grind it out games. It's ok. People have bad games. This is why we have Paul who would have given us more stops, more 3pt threat and a second distributor.
at least when Ariza's shot isn't falling he can still guard someone on the floor. anderson is simply a tall stiff who can shoot the 3 and virtually nothing else. and he's streaky ...which means he's inconsistent ...which means you can't count on him ...which begs the question: most overpaid rocket of all time? easily. where are all those folks who defended the anderson signing? where are all those folks that thought he was good and kept arguing that the haters didn't know anything about basketball, and anderson's spacing was gonna make a huge difference? all i know if that locking in anderson didn't pay dividends last year (it was locking in EGO), and it also kept us from being even more agressive this offseason. Bringing in Anderson was an epic fail.
What makes me feel better after losses is seeing people here argue over the same ol thing over and over. I can always count on CF GARM post-loss never changing. How y'all have the endurance or time to stay up for 5 hours after a loss to do this dance is a mystery to me. That said, I blame the loss on Rafer's teardrop shot.
-- His play is on him. The contract is not. If I pay you $17 million/yr to post on Clutchfans, you gonna take it? Can't blame a guy living in this world for getting some cash for he and his family when he can. No dishonor in that. The bad contract is on Morey.
-- You should ask yourself that question and not give the coaching staff the benefit of the doubt. In other words, assume MDA and the coaching may have beeen dumb as bricks Monday night. Because they sure did not make any adjustments.
-- Net rating IS one metric to determine a player's value on any given night, though admittedly not a particularly strong one.
Anderson was ineffective defensively. On decent nights, he can collect rebounds, or guard some terribly ineffective wing. No problems there. But if you just watch the plays in which the Grizzlies scored, they exploited Anderson's ineffective defense. Even worse, a lot of times they ran a PnR against Harden + Anderson. Not only is their PnR deadly, we probably have one of the WORST PnR defense on Anderson + Harden. Anderson's forte is offense. Harden's reason for perennial MVP candidacy is offense. Either the coach tells them to play harder D when they're ineffective offensively or sit them.
Yeah, one of the last Conley 3s (i think it was the one they took the lead with) was Harden and Anderson getting asleep on a pick & roll, they completely left Conley alone and he made the shot, that was terrible and pathetic considering the moment of the game.
It's just one of many performance indicators. Anderson and Ariza are both starters. They both play heavy minutes with Harden. They're both in a lot of the same lineups. For Ariza's to be so far below the other starters is telling. Then when you factor in individual stats like shooting percentage, it's clear that Ariza has been much more of an issue. If Anderson was shooting 22 percent from the field, there would be riots in the streets. I would say if you are apart of lineups that gain leads and not a part of lineups that give up leads, then maybe those lineups that give up leads should play less. And yes, the team excels with Anderson on the court. That's a fact. This is a fact that dates back to last season as well by in large. Doesn't mean Anderson doesn't need to improve (drastically). It just means he shouldn't take all the blame like he currently does when we lose. Nobody ever said nor implied that Anderson is the team's best player who should play the most minutes. That is a logical fallacy, so not sure why you went there.
i thought it was pretty obvious the game was on Harden. He came in and gave away the momentum trying to be a hero when we had a 10pt lead. He just didn't play smart. It happens. There will be many games where we felt we should have won or lost but, it is losses like these and playing down to SAC that make you realize why this organization has never won 60 games in a season in franchise history.
I agree. Also, MDA needed to utilize his timeouts better and follow up with play calls that gave us buckets after them. Even being up 10 late you felt it was a game slipping away, only a matter of time before Conley showed up. Harden had his lazy moments and the ref played great D on us as well. As far as ryno goes it needs to be simple...... play him the first half and if he is either NOT AGGRESSIVE or NOT HOT bench him for most of the second half! SIPMLE, this is why we have Tucker and Moute
Yeah, it took him FOUR consecutive turnovers and letting the Grizzlies make an 8-0 run to call a freaking timeout, i mean, come on...
