khans2k5 wrote:monsterpile wrote:khans2k5 wrote:The 4th quarter offense last night went to shit because of Thibs. He tried to beat Jokic's poor defense into the ground with Teague/Taj PnR's and that duo just isn't a great PnR duo. You're supposed to attack weak matchups when you have an advantage, but Taj offense just isn't an advantage even against a guy like Jokic. At that point you just have to know Towns is just too good for even Milsap to guard every play. Thibs just didn't adjust. The Butler iso turnaround jumper was garbage because they waited too long to initiate and again Taj set the pick and he's no threat to get a drop off pass for the win. The Crawford play was just garbage with 1 second left. A little adjustment and we win the game in regulation easily. We still won, but you just have to be better than that as a coach. He got too locked into to attacking their weakness to realize he didn't have the pieces on the floor who could execute that effectively.
Towns was being used as a floor spacer. That makes some sense but plenty of people aren't going to like using someone that good for that purpose. Ultimately Towns needs to get the ball and know how to beat Millsap. What he probably should have done is just shot long 2's over him instead of tried to back him down.
Also credit to Murray for being pretty solid defeively against Teague making things more difficult than expected for him and Taj.
One of the positives/negatives of this team offensively is it has a bunch of guys that can score and do a lot of different things all over the floor. Towns Butler Teague Wiggins Belly Crawford and even Tyus to some extent are a threat to do something positive from about any place on the floor. Taj isn't a 3 point threat but can score from various spots within 17 feet or so. Meanwhile you only have a couple of those guys that are really spot up 3 point threats and they are bigs in Towns and Belly. So anyway you have guys that can score or make plays at some level but all have some flaws in one way or another. These various somewhat diverse group is just talented enough as scorers to get themselves and the team in trouble. When do they attack? When do they differ? When should they be running sets and pick and roll etc? Plus most of these guys don't seem to have much interest in running up and down the floor so pace isn't a positive factor in getting easy buckets for the most part.
So at some point if these guys can get on the same page plus adding some more shooting...oh boy they could really be tough to stop and they are pretty good already...at least statistically. I think we would all agree the problem is later in the game. There is some potential for more chemistry between the players and also better coaching as well.
Our offense could be miles better even though we score a lot. As you mention, we have a lot of guys who can do a lot of things. That means you need to organize and attack based on what the defense is giving you and if that doesn't work you have to try something else. Not just last night, but down the stretch teams are doing what they can to force the ball to Taj and we've just let them run that strategy. We keep running PnR's with him sometimes multiple times in one possession and that's feeding right into what the other team wants. If Teague/Jimmy/Wiggins/Taj/Towns are on the floor, you want Taj with the ball in his hands if you are defending us and we've just played too much into that lately. At some point you have to realize there are about 4 guys in this league that can guard Towns so against everyone else you have to just get him involved in high PnR's and not worry about spacing or going after the weaker defender on Taj. Stick Taj on the baseline and he can make a cut to the basket on every drive for an easy layup if they are going to use his man as the help defender. That's better than feeding him the ball 15ft from the basket out of the PnR and having him look around for help. It's really just small adjustments that need to be made in the game that don't happen which is the frustrating part. For a team with as much talent as we have, we settle into what the defense actual wants to give us too often.
Well said Kahns.
