monsterpile wrote:Mikkeman wrote:longstrangetrip wrote: Did you read the article I posted just above, kek. It's not just the narrative that we continue to blow 4th quarter leads...it's also that we are far and away the worst plus/minus 4th quarter team in the NBA. The 4th quarter is when the money is on the line...doesn't it tell you something that we are by far the worst team at crunch time? We were also terrible in the 4th last year, and some argued that it was because of the youth of our roster (I disagreed). So Thibs goes out and gets 4 veterans (Butler, Gibson, Teague and Crawford), and we are STILL the worst 4th quarter team in the league! What does that tell you? What's the one constant between last year's team and this year's? I'm still looking for a credible answer as to why we are so awful at the end of games other than Thibs' starter-killing rotations, and nobody has provided one. I'm still waiting...
Yes, I'm happy that we are happy we are 18-13, but many expected better given the addition of Butler and the easy schedule. But after a hot start, we are only 8-8 the past 16 while playing a cake schedule. I have a difficult time mustering much excitement about the last 16 games, especially when I attend games and see the negative body language on the court that Robson and others have also noticed. It's a team going in the wrong direction.
Based on stats playing bench more wouldn't help at least currently 4th quarter collapses. Bench players have clearly worse 4th quarter net rating numbers. Starters have 4th quarter net rating between -1.7(Teague) and -8.8 (Wiggins) when bench has it between -7.4 (Jones) and -24.4 (Shabazz). So giving bench more minutes in 4th quarter wouldn't likely lead to better results.
http://stats.nba.com/players/advanced/?sort=NET_RATING&dir=-1&Season=2017-18&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&TeamID=1610612750&Period=44th quarter net ratings
BTW. Another team that has also many promising young players seems to be even worse in 4th quarter. Milwaukee has currently 4th quarter net rating -11.0 when Wolves have it -8.1.
Interesting you mention the Bucks. Have you seen some of the tactics Kidd has been using lately at the end of games?
Unfortunately I haven't had much time this year to watch games, so I'm not aware about Kidd's tactics. I just noticed that Greek Freak had quite OK 4th Q net rating but many other their main players sucked. I also checked clutch net ratings (last 5 minutes in games that have ended with less than 5 pts margin) and there Milwaukee had pretty decent numbers (even positive net rating). Wolves had -7.2 but there were many other teams that had even worse numbers. (Toronto, OKC, Utah and Clippers for example) So it might be that MIlwaukee's bad 4th quarter numbers are mainly coming from blow out wins and losses where they have sat GF most of the 4th quarter.