Why? Because you say so? Because you prefer to blame the coaching instead of acknowledging the current squad is not capable of generating consistent offense outside of KD and the injured Sengun and FVV? We are just not as good as you think we are.
Eye Test and Real Talk.... We just aren't as good as we thought we'd be. We will never know how the team would have looked with FVV this year, but clearly Amen and Reed (to a lesser extent) just haven't taken the leap necessary. I love Amen but he's an odd fit based on his non-shooting. He's not strong enough to consistently finish through contact so he's still finishing around contact. His FT is very promising but it hasn't translated much anywhere else. He's borderline a secondary playmaker at this point. Reed will be inconsistent. I think we've got something with Reed, probably just won't manifest this season. If we are healthy entering the playoffs we may still be a dark horse contender, but the core just isn't ready to contend.
A few stat-free observations: KD might be the worst passer out of a double/pressure I've ever seen. When the KD trade happened, my immediate concern was that we were going to rely too much on KD to create/initiate actions and play him too many minutes even before FVV was injured, and that is playing out unfortunately. Will KD be healthy the rest of the season averaging 35+ minutes a game? Would be a miracle if so. This team looks slow and flat, the only perimeter player who can penetrate/create and make explosive plays is Amen and he has not taken the step I was hoping he would this season. It's fine if you have a guy like FVV at the helm who can limit turnovers and get the ball to people in their spots, but without that guy we play slow, lethargic offense and are turnover prone. This kind of reminds me of that first Adelman year when we had a prematurely aging Tmac who was still an effective scorer, but having Rafer bring it up and get it to him and let him be a play finisher was critical. This offense reminds me of when Rafer got injured in the playoffs and Tmac had to bring it up and basically do everything, which was not sustainable. Sengun getting back will help, but we have so clearly been missing someone who can get him and KD the ball and let them be play finishers.
team waste too much time trying to get the ball into KD's hands. KD far too often is doing the Jalen Green specialty 1 hand passes. Jabari cannot jump properly. Reed doesn't use his quickness enough.
Tough to beat a zone with 2-3 non-shooters/only wide open shooters on the court and 1-2 of the shooters cold AF.
Because good coaches don't let double digit 4th quarter leads evaporate without making a single ****ING adjustment..... DD
I think it’s clear that a ball-handler is needed, there’s no other way you can explain tonight’s collapse and all other games we had such meltdowns (including vs Suns that we eventually won). Or opponents defenders, when entering 4th quarter in a deficit, just use the simple tactic of putting both heavy pressure on our player that has the ball, and if kd is not with the ball - they try to intercept any pass towards him, and when he does get the ball - he deals with heavy pressure. Reed still doesn’t have the experience to handle these situations. We need an experienced pg that can fill in for Fred. Or - we can leave things as they are, but we’ll get to the playoffs from 6th or even from play-in, and go home 1st round, telling ourselves that next season with Fred will be better. I personally don’t think that with an aging Durant we can allow ourselves to stay like that. We have to trade for a pg. We got dfs that is definitely redundant, and we have some picks we can send with him, and get a good pg.
A single adjustment? No lineup changes? Just kept the same lineup for the entire 4th? Maybe going 10-44 on 3s was the adjustment you wanted... compared to our average of 30 3PA? Oh and we went 15-24 on FTs.... Accept it.... this is a talent and bad injury luck situation.
It’s both, you cannot really think that another 4th Q meltdown has got nothing to do with the HC responsibilities. Pelicans, Kings and now Blazers. None of them is a tier-1 team, though all of them just strangled our offense. I agree that the lack of pg is one area that is not Ime’s fault, but he is responsible for not being able to calm our guys down and finding the relevant x and o’s to get us some precious points in these situations.
It is more than just those 4......we have lost to the bottom 5 teams in the Western conference.....and in almost every case they went to a zone late and we had no answer for it...and fumbled away the lead and the game. Ime isn't helping - not sure what exactly he IS doing, you don't see guys getting better - you don't see him adjusting to help the team- what exactly is Ime doing to help? If you have a guy that is not confident like Jabari, yank him and put in Green.....got to try something can't just let the game slip away and throw the players under the bench....ACTUALLY DO THE ****ING JOB OF A HEAD COACH. DD
I've never claimed the coach is blameless, I think lack of healthy talent on the overall team talent is the main issue. You can go to espn and check out the all the different players that Ime subbed in and out tonight trying to keep the lead and get back the lead in the 4th. You can clearly see we had a poor shooting night. And it would be a bold faced lie to suggest Ime didn't make any adjustments as @DaDakota
No it isn't he didn't make any significant adjustments at all, there is 1 GLARING adjustment in that he left an unconfident Jabari in there, when he was clearly not ready to meet the moment. DD
So he did make adjustments...... And you were having a little emotional hissy fit earlier when you said he didn't make a single adjustment?
WTF ever - Ime has been terrible at adjusting to the zone all year.....and we are losing winnable games because of his lack of making said adjustments. All you have to do, if you are a crappy team is to pressure the ball, we have no answer, no one flashing to the FT line in a triple threat position, that could be KD, it could be Green it can't be someone that is not a triple threat like Bari, or Tari...... Anyway, Ime will continue to be a mediocre coach because he just doesn't have that BBall knowledge that great coaches have....he just blames defense......over and over again....... He ain't it. DD
