Look, if McGrady plays 35 minutes and Battier plays 35 minutes, there is still 26 minutes of swingman play that is unaccounted for. Luther Head, and Bobby Jackson got the majority of those minutes last season. Novak should have been playing 20 of those minutes alongside both McGrady and Battier with Novak playing the 3 and whichever of McGrady or Battier was in there playing the 2 offensively, with Novak taking the easier cover. It's not too big a stretch to replace Head and Jackson's minutes at the shooting guard position by moving Battier to shooting guard and giving Novak minutes at the 3.
Have you seen Battier play, he is a foward through and through. He can guard the 2's but he can't play as a guard in the offense. So you're down to around 13 minutes a game, which is reasonable. Our team just wasn't efficient enough at moving the ball on offense so Adleman often went with more guards. I agree if the rockets were more efficient at the offense there would be more reason to play him but as of now i'd be afraid that we wouldn't crack 80 pts without atleast two guards on the court.
If Novak is replacing McGrady, you play him just like you play McGrady and leave Shane down in the corner. You set a bunch of screens and run Novak off them to get the shot or force the defense to over commit to stop him and he passes to a wide open teammate for the shot. It's really simple. I don't know why you can't see it.
No one will ever over commit to Novak the way that they do Mcgrady. In additiion to that i think Tmac is more of a SF too but atleast he can do guard things like dribble, drive, pass, PnR, etc. If the screens don't work we can't do anything else because we only have one person on the court who can dribble the ball and make plays. They ran Tmac off some screens last year, think about how often those plays broke down. When they did, Tmac put the ball on the floor or passed it out and got it back to put additional pressure on the D. We already have problems with Rafer and Tmac not penetrating enough, do you really want to put pressure on Novak/Battier and Rafer to do that. I agree with you Novak is a great shooter but there's just so much more to the game offensively that he doesn't do well enough to stay on the court. If he does have the offensive skill set to do what Peja and even Kapono do then you're right and i'm wrong. I just don't think he does.
Novak works great in the motion offense where teams will focus on Tmac and Yao..... But he has to get up to at least BELOW par on defense too....otherwise you have to run a zone out there to protect him. But with that shot of his......that wonderful shot.....he needs to be playing every night at least 10 minutes, maybe more if the matchup is favorable. Because even though he may give up 2...... 3 is greater than 2 ever day of the week and twice on Sunday...and that is a mismatch in itself. DD
