Depth! As is blue sea deep. As we let players go, other teams scoop them up. So we are deep. So what? What does that mean? I will tell you what it means. It means: 1. We cannot have an 8/9 man rotation. Try at least 12. Think in terms of maintaining the first half play last night for the full 48 minutes. Just go, go, go at Franchise's pace. To do that over 82 games and playoffs, you need more players. Look at the pace Dallas and Kings set last year and they were less talented and deep than we are. There is no "Funderburke" or Griffin (Dall) on our team. 2. What back to back? Those should be situations where we do not lose a step. Distribute the minutes over two games rather that one. 3. Up tempo on both sides of the ball. 4. Be in the top 3 in average scoring. 5. No players should be fatigued 6. Top four in the west - home court advantage in the first round. 7. No player plays more than 30 minutes except Francis and Mobley (32) 8. End of the Kings dominance over the Rockets. 9. Top five in the league for home court record. 10. Cemented IR - Tito, Brown, Collier.
kings, lakers, spurs, mavs. top 4 in the west. with seattle out of luck early, and the clipps showing their immaturity, it will be the blazers, rox, wolves, and jazz who round out the playoffs in that order.
Certainly not! The thing is Spurs and Dallas have some very good players but they also have players who would not make our team. Look how they scooped up Willis and Meng. The key question is whether our team would be able to reduce the experience gap over the course of the season because that is the only thing stopping us from being top 4 in the west.
The Rockets are as talented as they come. Chemistry and a short learning curve will be the challenge for them. It's up to Rudy to help get them there.
I loved your post DearRock, one of the best basketball posts I have seen in a while. My favorite is your number 10 - something often overlooked. I agree we can be top 4, taking out dallas, if we gel and stay healthy. One of the top four teams in the east and the west falls out every season so we just need to see who should be doing good and isn't. We need to be the team that comes out of no where - like the Nets last year - and really improve. Depth will help us do that more than anything else.
Assuming everything breaks right for the Rockets there'd have to be some significant injury problems for us to break the top 4 in the West. We're too young and this team other than Cat and Steve have questions to answer. Sacramento and Dallas have better proven depth than we do. If Duncan goes down S.A. could fall hard. If Kobe goes out Shaq just isn't going to be able to bring it every night (health), even if he is interested and the Lakers could be vulnerable. Portland, as schizo as they are, could wind up in the top four and make everybody puke. I think we're a playoff team this year, and yeah I think a certain amount of luck is going to be involved (Sonics, Clipps, Jazz). The nucleus of this team has never played together if you factor MoT, Rice and Yao as starters. There are going to be tremendous highs this year accompanied by total embarassment. The great thing is at the end of this year we'll know we will improve (Yao, E. Griff., Nachbar) and we'll also have a better idea of how deep we really are. If we are as talented as Alexander and some of you think we can pick and choose what we need to do next off-season. History says we'll have a glaring need .
Thanks LeG. Declan, certain little things should tell you that things are going to be different. Things like Cato having an improved shooting touch and Morris torching Gooden for 10 points in 2 minutes. Remember we have the best caretaker on the planet (Rudy T). Somebody said we need Ron Artest. Please. We do not need the attitude. Great chemistry is almost assured based on the personality of the guys on the team.
