KiwiMatt wrote:I'm more optimistic about this teams future than others.
Finishing at .500 in a tough Western Conference is nothing to be disappointed about, especially with all the new faces on this roster. Look at all the teams ahead of us, they're established teams with low player turnovers and established cores.
We are not as far off as most people think. Look at Portland's transformation from last season to this season. It's the path we need to follow and a realistic one at that, without having to blow up the roster again.
These are the things that need to happen in the offseason for us to make the next step:
* Hire a defensive minded coach good at developing players (Hollins, Skiles etc).
* The continued development of Muhammad and Dieng.
* Draft the BPA with 1st round pick (provided we keep it).
* Upgrade the backup PG and PF's spots.
* Rubio becoming more of an scoring threat.
Matt - I like your optimism. I also think your analysis is reasonable and I agree with the five key steps you've identified. But I still don't think we can improve enough with Brewer and Martin as our starting wings for several reasons.
1. First, neither one is a good ball handler at their position and one of them, Brewer, is a terrible ball handler. So neither one scores well on dribble penetration and Ricky is forced to bear the starting unit's entire ball handling burden. A starting lineup with no good dribble penetration scorers is generally not a winning formula in the NBA and we have repeatedly seen the results down the stretch in close games. Meanwhile, bearing the entire ballhandling burden stresses Ricky's stamina, which I think negatively impacts his shooting and defense.
2. Second, Martin is a good overall scorer, but he's a terrible defender at a position that typically matches up against many of the best scorers in the League. It would be one thing if he were an average or slightly below average defender, but he's a really bad defender. And even on the offensive end, he's very inconsistent game to game. Even worse, he often becomes passive and actually hides in the offense or passes up shots in crunch time. I'd love him as a 6th man, but I think we need to improve over him at the starting SG spot if possible. I might see things differently if we had a better paint defender up front next to Love, but the lack of a stellar defender at the center position magnifies Martin's poor defense.
3. Third, Brewer is the reverse of Martin. He's a good defender, but poor offensive player. And his defense, while good, isn't great. I really like Brewer and can definitely see him as an important rotation player, but as a starting SF he falls short of what we need given the other players in our starting lineup.
So while I agree that improving our bench and hiring a better, defensive-minded head coach would definitely improve this team, I still think we have a fundamental flaw in our starting lineup that needs to be fixed. And I'm not confident that we can expect Shabazz and Dieng to become positive impact players next season. Meanwhile we have no cap room and limited trade prospects other than Love and Ricky unless we trade Pekovic.
Bottom line is this. You are right that there are reasons to be optimistic about this team's prospects. But I think it will take some really smart decisions by our front office this summer and a healthy dose of plain old luck to turn your optimistic vision into reality. Let's keep our fingers crossed.
