We had the #1 ranked half court offense in the nba, we were down around 4th or 5th on transition. You're not making the top 10 all time list for offenses without being good at both, the Warriors on the other hand were only #2 on half court, but they much better than anyone at transition. That's pretty much it, isn't it, trying to create the perfect assortment of role players to beat golden state and cleveland is just beating your head against a brick wall expecting it to break.
Only 1 team wins a championship. The rest go home just like us.There was no way in hell we were going to even if we won game 6 minus nene.
If you watched the Spurs series you could see we are lacking in half court offense. This is where the eye test surpasses extracted, iinterpolated efficiency stats that are then interpreted to supposedly mean something. Stats and data only confirm what we see. They don't establish facts about a basketball team's strengths and weaknesses. Remember the context. I'm talking about winning a championship, not just being top 10 all time in offense. I just posted about the differences between the regular season and the more meaningful playoff season. To win a championship you've got to be able to play with the big boys, not just whip up on lottery teams.
So the first steps into next season start with the draft in one month. One of the key ingredients to the building of the Warriors was their 2012 draft. They pulled three immediate rotation players out of that draft, Harrison Barnes, Festus Ezeli, and Draymond. Those three guys played over 20% of all available minutes in their rookie seasons. To put that into proper perspective, all of our first AND second year players combined only played 14.6% of our total minutes. And this is probably a fair comparison since Dekker was hurt his first season and Harrell got minutes due to injury this season in similar fashion to what Ezeli got in his rookie season. This may seem like nothing but it's important. Because if you can get three or even four guys in your rotation that are effective role players and you are paying them either first round rookie scale or close to minimum salaries for three to four seasons instead of $7 million to $20 million a year, then you create much more roster flexibility now and in the next two to three seasons. So in my opinion it's important that we come out of this draft with at least one rotation-ready role player while we go through our current stash of first AND second year guys and determine who is rotation-ready for next season. And then make the sometimes emotionally difficult decisions to let the other guys go. With that as a backdrop, while also understanding what are our greatest deficits are to becoming a champion, namely, lack of paint defense and rebounding, and lack of playmakers, I am going to suggest the following. 1. Kyle Wiltjer is more than ready to take all of Ryan Anderson's rotation minutes without us losing anything. We lose no spacing. We lose no defense. We lose no rebounding. If anything we gain even more spacing because Wiltjer has even more range than Anderson has. So, in my opinion, that makes Anderson totally expendable in trade without worrying about replacing his skill set as long as we retain Wiltjer. We can trade Anderson for cap space (If possible) or we can trade Anderson for skills we don't have without worrying about replacing his skill set. 2. With no first round pick we either should make a trade to get a rotation-ready role player or we should draft the most rotation-ready role player if we stay at 43/45. In my opinion, Frank Mason is the most rotation-ready player with skills we need and lack in our system. He's a pick-and-roll expert at the point. He can shoot very efficiently from distance either on the catch or off the dribble, and he can defend at the point of attack on the other end. He can play point and run the offense effectively. He can also spot up in the wing and either shoot, or drive and create effectively. He could lace up tomorrow and run our bench unit when James sits better than anybody we've got on the roster. This is the type of player we need to acquire. He can replace Lou in the rotation tomorrow and we're a better team. If we bomb out this summer in acquiring a Haywood, Paul, or George, we've still got a fix for one of the biggest weaknesses we currently have. And we've created more cap flexibility by having the ability to move on from Lou. More to come.
I enjoyed reading your OP, 'Holic, but you have me confused. "IT WAS NOT MDA'S IDEA TO MAKE HARDEN THE FULL TIME POINT GUARD AND THE ONLY PLAYMAKER. But MDA covered for Harden and gave in to Harden in that matter." I've never seen it mentioned in the media that Harden asked MDA to let him play point. As a couple of others have pointed out, they haven't seen it, either. The narrative from the beginning, at least that I recall, was that MDA asked James to play the starting point. It was a surprise at the time. As the season played out, MDA praised Harden's performance at the 1 on several occasions, and there was never any public discussion during the season about making a change in Harden's role. If I missed it, I'm happy to say, "My bad," but I don't think so. I wouldn't argue that changes need to be made with the roster and that we have obvious weaknesses to fill, and wouldn't disagree that some roles need to be tweaked, including Harden's role. I'm just at a loss to understand how you came up with the narrative that MDA making James the starting point guard was Harden's idea.
The only thing that changed about the offense was Harden always bringing the ball up the court in order to not have to make a separate pass to start their offensive sets. THATS IT. I just don't know why folks spend so much time and energy worrying about if Harden is playing the 1, 2, 3, or 4. He's going to facilitate the offense as long as he's the best creator on the court which he will be for the next few years at least unless we are signing Chris Paul, or Lebron. The way I see it, either you believe in James Harden, or he's not James Frauden to you and you want to trade him while he's in his prime. I say keep him, and continue to upgrade around James. You're not going to be a clear cut favorite to go to the finals, but nobody is but the Warriors nowadays.
I'm sorry I didn't make my statement clearer and left it subject to interpretation. I did not say that MDA didn't ask James to play the point. He did. That essentially means, as other posters have properly pointed out, that he added bringing the ball up to what James was already doing the previous seasons, which was to initiate the offense. MDA did ask him to do that because MDA knew that James was going to be initiating the offense anyway and MDA wanted to make it as easy as possible for James to get the ball at the top without having to work to get it. But this next part is where it gets muddy. MDA's vision for this team has never been for James to be the sole playmaker on the floor and for James to make all the plays. MDA's vision has always been for there to be multiple playmakers and for James to move on and off the ball. That's the part that MDA failed to sell James on. And instead of fighting it or trying to force it he gave in to James and let James run the show and supported his player 100% while doing that. MDA was hoping it would work. It took us into the second round. What is Hardens idea is being the sole creator on the floor. That has been Hardens idea since he came here. And we have progressively funneled the whole roster to that end. I mean, look at our roster, and who can create for others compared to the Spurs, Warriors, Cavs,......and the rest of the playoff teams besides okc and maybe a couple others. They've all got at least two or more guys in the main rotation who can and do initiate the offense, run the pick-and-roll and distribute the ball and all of their superstars accept that and share playmaking duties even when they are on the floor together. Lebron, Steph, Kyrie have no problem moving to the wing and letting another distributor do his thing. They share playmaking duties based on what's best for the team at any given time. So this problem of James being the sole creator was here long before MDA got here. And he's being very careful about touching it. Everybody that loves the Rockets and understand how championship basketball is played today is hoping that Harden finally sees the light. You gotta have at least two creating distributors in your top 8. MDA wants Harden to see that for himself.
Harden's been here for 4 seasons and Morey is still unable to put any legit All-Star next to Harden and Howard doesn't count.
"I know what happened. Sorry. Harden wanted this role... MDA went with it. What is told to the public is not always all the truth." -basketballholic
So literally all the articles/videos/commentary/bible passages that said that MDA was the one who wanted Harden to be the PG is false because b_allholic said he knows things that people don't know and won't share the information?
I'm no Ryno apologist, but if all of his minutes were replaced by Wiltjer we would be one of the worst defensive and rebounding teams in the league. It is taking a -5 on defense and swapping in a -20, and taking a 0 on rebounding and swapping in a -10. Wiltjer would instantly become the least athletic player in an NBA rotation, and just wouldn't have a chance to physically compete defensively or on the glass. Think Dirk defense and rebounding minus a few inches with (miraculously) even slower foot speed. Wiltjer is a better shooter, and can compete (if not man-handled) on that end of the floor, but until I see Wiltjer do a year or two of big time body work, I wouldn't feel at all comfortable with him getting real minutes.
