MY take after 9 (I know, big deal) games Health, Identity and Chemistry will determine how successful we are this season. Will we grow into a Sacramento type offense that can actually outscore opponents and have defensive lapses? After all we don't have the greatest on the ball defenders on the roster. Van Gundy gave this team a clear identity- Defend hard every night, pound the ball to Yao in the post and try to get TMac loose on the pick and roll. Identity leads to chemistry. We had good chemistry but we didn't have the bench to overcome our matchup problems with Utah in the playoffs. This season the bench is better. Everyone should see that M James, Scola and Bonzi are big upgrades. I think Francis is an upgrade also. Brooks too. 1. We need to find our identity. We stayed in many games and won them last season in spite of our poor outside shooting simply because of the nasty defense. This season it will be important to see if we are able to stay really strong on the defensive end. 2. For all the talk about Adelman's offense I didn't see Peja, Bibby, Jackson, Miller or Divacs on the roster. We don't have consistent outside shooters for TMac to pass to. Battier is so-so, MJames streaky, Rafer I think our offensive identity will still rest upon Yao in the post and TMac driving to the basket. It might evolve some with better outside shooting but with the current roster the bulk of the points are coming from two places. For all the talk I don't see us becoming a 100 ppg team. 3. The real problem with Rafer is that he is not good. For all the defending him because he takes care of the ball and runs the offense, he is a terrible shooter and doesn't even come close to the other PGs in our division. 4. We still must stay healthy to be successful. TMac and Yao are very good but they are not Hakeem. We cannot win a championship unless we have both stars on the court. I think Adelman is doing a good job so far staying pretty close to the same script Van Gundy went with. I only question if we will keep our defensive edge mentally. We are not Sacramento. We have more Doug Christi type players than Bibby and Peja's surrounding Yao and TMac. I feel good about the team. But I don't know what our identity is? Until we find that identity - patience
I do think we have less outside firepower than those kings, but a lot more strenghth going to the basket. Shane, rafer, and mike will shoot better eventually, and i beleive the time where brooks gets his chance is almost upon us (he is a college 3 point shooting champ...). Scola will get better. Patience is the key right now. This offense is a LOT harder to run then gundyball. Gundy relied on a few set plays. This offense gives the players a LOT more flexibility and relies on reading and reacting. We can already see the dividends it's paid giving t'mac open lanes to the basket. Phil jackson once said that it took a team being together a whole year before they start running the triangle well. This offense has elements of the triangle and the princeton offense. In the begining, addleman said he'd call a lot more set plays to make the transition less jarring. Look for our offense to be scary around the all star break.
Don't even compare us to the 02 Kings right now. That team took the Shaq and Kobe Lakers to 7 games, and SHOULD have beat them. Right now we cant even beat the Grizzlies
just because he's missing his shot you call him soft? on the contrary, Rafer is second to MJ when it comes to mental toughness.
I never understood the notion that NBA teams run this magical "offense." There's a 24 second shot clock, this isn't high school where you can tell your players to come down and make at least 7 passes before the defense breaks down and you eventaully look for your shot. It's the NBA, which means you run sets and plays. And when you find something that works, you milk it. People want to talk about JVG and only running set plays...but we've seen it again this year, that's works with this team. You can't just take the shackles off and let the players freelance or figure it out themselves (at least yet), because they've shown they don't have the basketball IQ to make something like that work (again, at least yet).
