I like Wells as our power guard. I think T-Mac should be at the shooting forward, and Battier at small center.
Battier is renowned for his spot up shot in the corners mainly. Wells is about the a 30% 3pt shooter - certainly not the strength of his game. But,as long as healthy, he will bring us all the energy, hustle, D , inside scoring and finishing at the basket we could possibly want. and then we wont even care that he couldnt make a jumpshot.
We have an effective distributor with lo turnovers in Rafer Alston. Let T-Mac create, save his energy to score and lead us. I do not want to burn T-Mac with bringing the ball down the floor and wasting energy. I think Rafer can be in the top 10 point guards in assists-he is effective and should get more credit..
We are going to be effective with small ball. Bonzi is very strong inside and will create his won scoring opportunities. You will never hear him cry like Scottie Pippen that no offensive schemes are being created for him. Bonzi will score like a thief inside and give you bonus opportunities with his strength. He will slice to the basket and fight for a rebound. He is strong. My favorite kind of basketball-slash to the basket-a la Vernon Maxwell or Clyde-also the toughest and hardest to defend. You cannot stop a train comin' at ya. Battier is deceptively strong with a nice shot-more a finesse player, but no wussie. He is tough-we will have scoring.
the position is point forward. that's where im happy to see McGrady trying to distribute. as Tbar pointed out McGrady playing a classical PG and bringing the ball up court will only kill his energy levels. better to let him set up at the top of the key and be a triple threat. Which is what he often does naturally anyway.
So we have Alston skipping up the court and McGrady "poing"-ing up the court. Who's our third PG gonna be, a Gummi Bear?
I will say this, Magic once said that the closest player to Kareem is Yao and the closest player to Magic is T-Mac. He said Yao and T-Mac should be modeled after himself and Kareem, not Shaq and Kobe as they were trying to. Magic also strongly suggested letting T-Mac run the offense, ISO him with the floor spread, surrounded by shooters, and guys that can pick and pop (particularly big men - this is where Juwan haters should listen and probably why Padgett was brought back) Magic also suggested that the games should begin with Yao touching the ball 15 to 20 times off post feeds and pick and rolls from T-Mac, which would open up T-Mac to then pick apart the D with the ball in his hands the rest of the game. He said they needed good shooters and a tough strong physical 2 to do it. Hmm................
Dude, seriously now your Juwan hatred is out of control. We ALL are well aware of Juwan's deficiencys and we ALL are aware of the numerous better starting PF's in the West that the Rockets often face. HOWEVER, you are getting out of hand with posts like that. I don't care what small ball or money ball or geek stats junkie data you come up with or how much nonsense you can post, there is no way in hell Juwan is THAT bad. In fact he is STILL an above average PF, in fact he is STILL a starting calibre PF in the NBA. He OBVIOUSLY is probably somewhere around 20-25 in that position, BUT that STILL makes him a solid NBA player.
Thats real interesting. Just to add to your theory, T-Mac has said in numerous interviews that this year, his primary goal is to get Yao going early in the game, getting him the ball alot. This coincides with what magic says about getting him the ball early to open things up for mac later.
I like the idea of T-Mac handling the ball more and running the court for more posessions, but am not a fan of him being our PG. Every major threat in the league has a PG that could absolutely abuse that. Guys that are quick enough to really disrupt our defense and open up the games for their teams. Sometimes, playing the Xs and Os a bit more conservatively is a good thing...
I've heard the new offensive strategy is to slow the game down some more and score fewer points than ever...but, improve that #2 defensive FG % to #1...think it will work?? Seriously, I don't give a crap what the offensive sets are, as long as the ones they use can get us averaging 100 pts a game, or damn close.
The fact that you think Juwan is a starting caliber power forward is laughable. I would rather start Padgett who, while a worse player in theory, atleast offers you something with his shooting. All Jawon offers you is 10 points on a low percentage if you force feed him the ball in the post enough times - that's inefficient and a waste of posessions. We're talking about a power forward who gets less blocks than many point guards. Any discussion of our most productive lineups should NOT include Juwan Howard.
I was scratching my head until I read your post, if Magic said it then it is worth listening to. I have concerns about wearing out TMac, but it will be interesting to see how it works out.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You know bball better than that. I've read your posts. And I don't hate Juwan. I HATE JUWAN PLAYING ALONGSIDE YAO!!!!! Juwan should only be on the floor as a shooter with 4 quicker players on the floor that can actually get back. And Yao should only be on the floor as the isolated low post option with 4 quicker players that can get back down the floor quickly and can shoot the long ball. When you put them together, it is horrible. That is why I want Juwan traded so much. I do not want to see him on the floor with Yao. Funny thing, I thought your post just before this one about Magic and Kareem was perfect. I agree with everything that Magic said. It is obvious to me that in winning time, McGrady is going to be initiating, just like in the Dallas series. The big difference is we are going to be loaded with guys that can shoot the ball. Once again, I know you know bball better than to think that Juwan is servicable in the lineup with Yao. You are even stretching it in saying he is in the top 20-25. If you take salaries out of it (and Juwan's salary is horribly bloated for what he brings to the table) and you were going to pick power forwards to play on this team, you would come up with way more than 25 names before you were stuck with Juwan and there would be plenty of power forwards on that list before Juwan that make less money than him. 1. Garnett 2. Duncan (only because we already have Yao and Garnett is the better perimeter defender) 3. Nowitzki (I would actually prefer him on our team over Garnett because of his outside shooting.) 4. Brand 5. Rasheed Wallace 6. Lamar Odom 7. Marion 8. Jermaine 9. Gasol 10. Bosh 11. DWIGHT Howard 12. Kirilenko 13. Gasol 14. Chris Wilcox 15. Channing Frye 16. Shareef Abdur-Rahim 17. Troy Murphy 18. Jamison (with his 3 pt shooting, he would be real high on a list of PFs that would do very well on our team) 19. Josh Smith 20. Zach (obviously, I have given up on ranking these guys from best to worst, at this point, I'm just naming better power forward than Juwan, guys that if salary didn't matter, we would all prefer to see on this team) 21. Josh Smith 22. Nene 23. KMart 24. Gooden 25. Al Jefferson 26. Boozer 27. Okafor 28. McDyess 29. Collison 30. Udonis Haslem 31. P.J. Brown 32. Amare (injured) I haven't even put Ben Wallace on here yet or Okur or Kurt Thomas (who is Juwan Howard with better rebounding and defense), or Villanueva, Tim Thomas, Donyell Marshall, Jamal Magloire, Darius Songalia, or CWEBB (he is still way superior to Juwan but way too slow to even consider playing alongside Yao), Ratliffe (Cato style PF), Evans, Jared Jeffries, Antoine Walker, Varejo, Gadzuric, and Lafrentz. We would be better off with Eddie "one hander" Griffin back on this team playing alongside Yao. He's got better shooting range, that is, if you can keep his shooting hand out of his pants. Juwan is not even in the top 40 power forwards and there are even more power forwards than that which are probably not significantly better than him as a player overall but they would be better fits for our team than he is. He shouldn't even be on the PF list. Because he's too slow. Juwan is a backup center.
This is just a matchup lineup, and it's not an all-the-time thing. But if you ran out a line-up of McGrady, Wells, Battier, Howard, and Yao, it's completely unguardable in the half-court. They would have trouble defending the guards at the other end, but could play a 3-2 or 2-2-1 zone and make it work reasonably well. I know that McGrady (or Bonzi or Battier) can't guard Tony Parker. But Tony Parker definitely can't guard McGrady (or Bonzi or Battier).
I don't know. The reason they got pass-first, playmaking PG in Rafer is to take those duties off of TMac's back (no pun intended). IMO, TMac is most effective setting up in the half court off the ball and then getting it where he likes it and is most dangerous. Running him as the "point-forward" means now that he has to set up the offense and THEN try to get in position to score. And, that's not even taking into account trying to get others their shots. I'll wait to reserve full opinion until I see it in at least a decent sample size, but I'm not too comfortable with this idea.
And they made back-up PG's an off-season priority. You couldn't run a line-up that big out there for too long. But it would be an unbeatable line-up to run out for a few possessions and get some gimme opportunities.
Obviously we need a PG to handle for a good part of the game and take the pressure off TMac because TMac is a scorer primarly and he creates off his scoring. Magic was the opposite. He was a facilitator/distributor that scored off his playmaking as the opponent scrambled to defend the pass. So, just as Magic needed a backcourt mate who was primarily a scorer, McGrady needs a backcourt mate that is primarily a distributor so that he doesn't have to perform that function throughout the game, but can go to it in key situations, just like Magic could go to his post up back down game in key situations when the defense was overplaying the pass. The defense in game situations in the fourth is going to double TMac off the ball, so the easiest way to operate is for him to walk it up and initiate. We still need a ball handling PG as well as shooting at the PG spot. That's why the combination of Scott, Cooper, and Magic worked so well together. Coop could come off the bench and defend and throw that great lob pass to Worthy for the dunk when the defense was forcing the ball out of Magic's hands. That is, if Magic just didn't throw the lob himself. Dude was incredible.
