[2016-2017] Donatas Motiejunas as a New Orleans Pelican

Well, not here....

Anyway last night just shows how poor the chemistry on the Pels is, none of them know how to play with each other. There were times Boogie had Nene absolutely pinned under the basket, but no one was looking to get him the ball. They have 3 guys who work really well in the post, but no clue how to run an offense that would get the ball to them. DMo scored easily the one time they got him the ball in the post, even got the and one.....then they never did it again. IMO things on that team are going to blow up if they can't figure out how to get the ball to guys like Boogie and DMo in the post and they keep losing games like last night.

 

well not sure if rockets appreciated it as well they prefered dwight postups, and bad shooters chucking 3s over the hands of defenders over dmo postups ...they only gave him occasional postup here and there... i suspect now that was on dmo/agent

 

The problem is that he isn't very good at post ups...
His 0.94ppp this season on post up plays is the same number Capela hits, but DMo turns it over 18.8% of the times he touches it in the post....
So while he ranks as slightly above average, the post up numbers have a LOT of guys ahead of him in the NBA. (A lot).

Please note, DMos post numbers this season are a significant increase over last season.

Apart from a few bright months a few years back, his career so far has been a lot of flopping, and the injury has put paid any thought he will develop into a decent player. 5-6ppg guy.

 

Last year was bad, but in Harden's MVP* season, when Dwight was out half the season, DMO was heavily featured in the offense. Even when Dwight came back from injury, DMO was getting his touches because Dwight decided to take a back seat.

 

@Bobbythegreat

It's not such a simple thing to get the ball into the post . Not anymore anyways. The New Orleans bigs should be fine since they can shoot , but to truly be monstrous they do need to find a way to use their size to get those post ups and wear teams down .

They need a Robert Horry , and frankly they need better shooters to be able to capitalize when the double comes .

I think cousins and Davis and DMo is about as skilled a big rotation as you are going to get , BUT .... Of those three only Davis has above average quickness . Dmo maybe used to have it , but he's just not 100 percent physically . He may say he is , but he's lost athleticism and I dunno if he'll get it back .

 

Well that's why I really only harped on DMo and Boogie getting it in the post. Davis can do some other things with his crazy quickness and athleticism but DMo and Boogie are much more suited to getting it in the post and scoring from there as opposed to getting it outside and making something happen on their own.

I know it's not exactly easy to get the ball to people in the post, but when you have that kind of post talent, you have to find a way to make it happen. If Boogie can pin his guy under the rim, you have to get him the ball, it's free points either by foul or by dunk. If it's a coaching thing, they need to bring someone else in.

 

We'll see if Gentry is really the offensive genius he always gets labeled.

It was Game 1 so it's impossible to make long term evaluations, but those sets were ugly last night with Davis and Cousins right next to each other.

 

problem is there aren't any bigs in the league that can truly dominate the game with post play on a nightly basis and that includes cousins/ad. Because most of them that are able to score on their own are much more perimeter oriented now. Some of that has to do with how much faster the pace of the game is played, more small ball, & a lot more 3 pters being used as a weapon. Perimeter play has way more impact to a complete game and winning than anything being done in the paint. Its been a guards game for quite some time now with the depth of talent on the wings. Anything in the paint is just a compliment. If people are expecting to see the ball just pounded in the paint, that won't be happening anytime soon with the personnel the league currently has.

 

The problem with such deep post position is that it limits the angles of the incoming passes and the on ball defender can more easily deny the entry .

 

DMo has never been an assertive player. We were frustrated that he rarely call for the ball even when he got good post position. But he always hustled and always ran even in limited minutes.

This season he seems to have lost the hustle in him. I actually have not been watching him a lot. But last night I did notice how little he did on the court. I am leaning toward believing that he has lost confidence in his own body and just tries to "survive" out there.

 

There was a point in the game when Dekker was guarding DMO. DMO began to duck in for position, he looked at the ball handler, made eye contact, and I kid you not, gestured with his hands with what amounted to, "No? Yes? Ok, no. Oh, it's a Yes!?" before getting the ball. DMO wasn't even sure he was allowed to ask for the ball.

DMO is not hustling anymore as a Pelican because he knows there is no point; he won't get the ball. DMO would hustle as a Rocket because he knew Harden was going to throw it to him no matter what if he was running.

 

i guess the meaning of the word heavily is open to intepretation but he wasnt featured heavily in the offense...rockets often struggled to score but mysteriously they would give him only a couple or few postups per game, perhaps he was already injured without it being leaked but he was used scarcely on offense relative to what he was capable of doing and relative to how mightily rockets were struggling on offense...perhaps its partially on him because he was unselfish and sometimes would pass the ball back and bev and ariza kinda didnt like to get ball back because they didnt know what to do with it......
after dwight come back for the first time (think it was den game or something) dmo got few postups perhaps not to make it obvious but then the number of dmo postups decreased

but to be clear even when dmos usage was at the apex it wasnt even close to what his ability 'deserved' to get and rockets were more satisfied to chuck 3s out of rhytm and over the hands of defenders in their face

 

Not sure if you remember. You are describing the WCF year, and Harden's legitimate MVP season. We started the season really great, rivaling '94 on both first to 10 road wins and first to 30 wins overall. We almost set the road win record. And you talk about it like we sucked in that post.

Seems like all you can take from that year is saying DMo needed the ball more??? DMo was "heavily featured" on that team, as much as any role player of his caliber warranted. Hell, as much as any PF since Scola.

Howard and Josh Smith needed to be involved in plays as well. Smith's experience with that led directly to us running the Elbow Get pnr play with Harden, Josh and Howard that destroyed Dallas in gloriously, laughable fashion.

 

I do remember, not sure if you remember?
heres an example, we won similar number of games this year yet its a fact we struggled mightily on both offense and defense in many games

yes dmo needed the ball more at least more than ariza and beverly perhaps harden mvp campagne warranted more isos for harden and less for dmo?

or perhaps they were tanking his value to resign him for cheap?

it took harden being fouled out for people to witness dmo being capable of taking over games and being even kinda more effective than Harden...

 

What do you mean more than Ariza or Bev? He was indeed featured more than Ariza or Bev. They were just 3 and D guys, with Bev setting up Harden via pistol action. I suppose it wouldn't matter to you if I said DMo got more touches than Scola did with TMac/Yao, compared to DMo with Harden/Howard.

We ran a lot of Horns that year utilizing our bigs, and featured DMo in the famed Houston Fist Up play,,,and of course his low post touches. All you're saying he you loved seeing that success so much the sky was the limit on post touches that you'd give him, so you were apparently never satisfied.

If we learned anything from that year and this it is that you cannot question the development of Harden that rocketed in '15 and you cannot question moreyball for a team with Harden. As featured as he was, DMo was not good enough to change the features of the offense by stop shooting threes, which you seem to be saying. And Howard and Josh were key to that season, too.

 

People are still clamoring for post-ups in 2017? Are you still using dial-up as well? Post ups are a thing of the past, I thought that was already accepted. It's likely why no one wanted Cousins.

 

So Dmo took a dnp-coach's decision tonight. Letting that guy walk looks better and better every day.

 

Just like the Pelicans said, "DMo's role on the team won't change."

 

DMo you da real MVP.