This all goes back to having a familiar set of players with a high basketball IQ who play under Adelman for a while (3 or more seasons) before things start running fluidly. Most of these guys are professional athletes, not investment bankers. It takes a long time for them to learn how to play in a system and adjust to defenses. Battier is smart at getting to open spots but his passing is poor and lacks vision. Everyone else is terrible. Straight from Adelman: "It's the whole team," Adelman said. "It's not one or two guys, it's the whole team. We have to get in the right spots and you've got to be aggressive in moving the ball and understanding that they're taking away with the front, and attack the other sides and be aggressive with it." What really kills this team is Artest/Lowry/Brooks standing around on the perimeter looking for an entry pass that isn't there while Yao battles it out for 4-5 seconds (which he always loses), then slowly moving the ball around to the weakside. There's no point if they don't attack the weakside aggressively, or make quick passes. 2 years under Adelman and this team still doesn't know how to execute plays, which demonstrates why they have never been out of the 1st round.
