In order for us to succeed, each and every player on this team needs to fit into their own role. An excellent example of this is the Washington Wizards. Do they have more talent on their team than we do?! NOOOO!!! What they have is a real leader in Michael, who enforces each player to fit within a role. Any great team will do this. Even the Lakers do this. With the Rockets, the wrong guy will shoot at the wrong time, and nobody will just play their own role. Like for example, an obvious example was tonight. What is Moochie doing out there on the court, dribbling the ball around for 24 fricking seconds?! First off, that should have been Francis with the ball. Second of all, in the deciding seconds the ball should go to one of your stars in either Francis, Mobley or Griffin. Seeing as how Francis was not having a great shooting night tonight, it should have gone to one of the other two. In clutch, our backup pg should not even be in the game. Francis is our Franchise and he should be the only point making crucial decisions in the clutch. When each player decides to fill a certain role to help propel this team, that will be when we are playoff bound. That will be when we have team chemistry. Until then, we will have to wait until next year.
Really good post man! That's why there are "role" players. When I look at the role players on the 94-95 team and compare them to the current squad, I don't see the 94-95 squad much more talented. The big difference is that the 94-95 squad knew who they were. And Hakeem had already learned to trust his supporting cast. That makes a team THE team! But I want to make clear a point about Moochie dribbling in the last possession of the regulation. I think someone (sorry forgot who) already mentioned it in another thread that had someone made a move to get open Moochie would have passed the ball. Watch the tape and you'll see that Moochie could do nothing but hold on to the ball.
very logical post, completely agree. the problem is we have role players trying to be superstars. i think rudy is partly to blame for that. for example he trys to turn mooch into steve number 2. mooch cannot be steve, but we use him like he is. i like mooch as as a change of pace guy to give steve breaks but in the final minutes steve or cuttino need to have the ball. we have one superstar in francis, a probable one in eddie and a very talented mobley. i really like our nucleus, but i agree people need to fit more into certain roles. i think kenny has been playing great and done everything asked for him, but instead of rudy using him like superstar kenny, he needs to be like ruben patterson kenny. he can out hustle people, get rebounds, and play pretty strong defense. he doesn't have to be the focus so many times, he's just not that good and it keeps everyone else from being active. let steve be the focus, and kenny work around him. i think rudy is a great coach but he's caught between too many loyalties, and i don't think he has the right idea with this particular group. with dream it was easier because the players around him were cleary defined to do certain things.
