KPJ: Can someone explain to me why he has become Clutchfans favorite whipping boy?

Telling the truth about a player isn’t bullying… he just needs to adjust himself a little instead of being a stubborn d******d.

 

Cause then you get Hinkie'd out of the league. There's a limit to tanking. Otherwise why not start only G League players around your top picks? Why wouldn't every tanking team do that?

 

Nix and Washington aren't G-league players. Well, Nix is, sort of. But they already billed him as lottery talent. Washington is a FRP who has played well in preseason. KPJ is widely regarded as a 6th man type player. It's pretty convincing that they would want to develop the young players where they are supposed to fit in the future. Nobody would question a rebuilding team for doing that. In fact, forcing KPJ in the PG role when everybody knows not working looks a lot more suspicious. The narrative of an NBA exec guided by sentimentality of redeeming a troubled kid is as bizarre as can be. It's the opposite of "too good to be true." It's too bad to be true.

 

I will say it again: because we didn't draft him. If we drafted him, he'd be getting the Christopher/Sengun treatment from the fanbase.

 

This Orlando game was one of KPJ's best games, his problem is the 4th quarter.

Of course he won't have a good shooting game very often.

 

Wait, what kind of special fanbase treatment do you think Jaygup is getting? Sengun on the other hand has been our most consistently effective player despite active marginalization from Silas.

 

I guess it's subjective. To me I think the rest of the world will see Nix and Tyty as players suitable to be in the G League this season. I can make a case for Tyty obviously because he killed the G League even out of shape, but those are details only known to expert fans.

 

Hell, TyTy is the best PG we have on the team. Nix on the other hand is straight trash.

 

Yeah I said after seeing him for some minutes in the summer league, I think Tyty is going to earn serious PG minutes on this team by the end of the season.

I'm tired of dumping on Nix. He's just a kid who is playing the minutes given to him, earned or not. No one is turning down minutes even if they are not good enough for those minutes yet. He's been as you would expect for a project who needs development and is overweight. If we're tanking I don't mind him as backup PG as long as the starter is good at being a PG but we're also developing KPJ and that's a lot of development going on at a position that affects all the other players on the floor.

Personally I would move KPJ to the 3, bench Gordon, sign a DJ Augustin and let Tyty genuinely compete with Nix for the high-minutes backup PG position (which I think Tyty would win easily right now).

 

All our issues start with the coaching staff's idiotic decision to "develop" KPJ at point. This was the perfect season to develop TyTy at point given that we don't care about winning. Instead, fans get to watch Silas trot out KPJ at point making one boneheaded decision after another. As if that wasn't bad enough, Silas even wants KPJ to ISO more. Watching us play these last 2 seasons have depressed the hell out of me as a fan. I don't mind losing, but I do mind us not developing players in areas where they need development in.

 

Yeah it's not looking good right now, but they're just overly patient the coaching staff. They do make changes eventually and I think they will move KPJ off ball before the end of the season.

There are enough minutes behind KPJ for Tyty to develop and more can be had if KPJ moves off ball.

To be fair to staff, Tyty has a handful of NBA games under his belt, is not in optimal shape and I'm sure is still learning the offense and defense.

 

This is a major part of the problem though... what offense and defense? I would understand not playing him and letting him learn if we actually had something for him to learn. Our offense is to give the ball to KPJ and Green and let them ISO. Our D is nonexistent.

 

With the personnel we have, we could easily be a good defensive team if we had a defensive scheme in place. No one knows what to do on rotations, players get lost on switching/staying on their man. It's a complete mess.

 

He is a holiday guy.

I'm a holiday guy too.

 

I know people say this, but I have seen players look lost in the defensive and offensive schemes therefore there must be something to learn.

The fact that our defense looks like a mess is just because all the other rotations in the league have more reps with a variety of different and similar schemes. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone can expect us to be anywhere but last on defense right now. I'm very happy that we've climbed to 27th or whatever, I can't believe there's 3 teams worse than us defensively. Defense requires experience more than offense and we have the least experience. Add to that - the guy who should be our best defender on the floor Eric Gordon does not care about defense this season. It just has to be bad.

Everyone keeps pointing to the Spurs and how well coached they are but those guys are 30th on defense and have one of the most seasoned coaches in NBA history. That's just how the NBA is, young players suck at team defense and older players can outsmart them constantly.

 

I expect there to be actual schemes and a system. There is a difference between a player just being lost and confused vs a player being late or confused because they are learning a system and its schemes. I also expect our coaches to be out there directing. Instead, EVERYONE looks lost all the time we end up with some weird combination of man-to-man and switch.

 

I am a Sengün guy.

 

Yeah the thing is defense is like the team functioning as a single organism, if there are 2 out of 5 people on the floor who can't communicate with words or swift movements then the whole thing breaks down and everyone looks bad.

My expectation is that the youngest rotation will defensively be the worst, messiest, contain the most number of lazy defenders, etc regardless of the coach. Therefore it doesn't bug me. Therefore I'm focused on very tiny improvements to defensive and offensive choices plus individual skills MONTH by month. If by game 82 we're in the top 20 defenses, I'll be extremely happy.

I can see you care about this a lot and I wish I shared that concern. If you are ready to receive words of hope, the team was 30th in the first month and 28th now. We're within 1 defensive efficiency point of the #1 seeded Denver Nuggets who are ranked 24th defensively. Popovic's rotation - half of which he has been working with for years - are in 30th place. The Magic, Pistons and Jazz are all very defensively focused and have excellent defensive coaches and they are ranked near us.

It's bad now and it will be fine. It's frustrating for us as fans I know, but good outcomes do sometimes come out of situations just like this one.

 

Who is the weak link on the team? Is kpj a defensive juggernaut that some of his stans paint him as? Is sengun that big of a liability on defense? does sengun offense compensate for his defense? too many questions to ask but hard to get an accurate answer and debunk any potentially false statements since defense is hard to measure.

 

At the end of the day, we need the "GUY" and right now it looks like our best hope is Jabari.

Green will never be HIM, and KPJ well, looks unlikely, so next up is Jabari.

DD