GymRat wrote:That's not surprising to me. Sam's idea of a defensive game plan is try hard. His principles are based on effort primarily. How about putting your players in a position to succeed initially with a proper game plan and taking advantage it with intense effort?
He has everyone sledding uphill on both ends of the court. Effort and talent can only overcome so much.
I don't know....they game-planned defensively by clearly trying to go over the top of screens. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Denver also made some tough-ass shots with guys in their face.
I wish I could put my finger on exactly what's wrong defensively, but I honestly don't know. At the end of the day though, yeah, the coach is ultimately accountable.
I think to your point they attempt the initial coverage consistently, but when it becomes a read and react situation after seeing how opposing guards and bigs work through it, rotations get confused and become slow or don't happen at all.
It seems the effort is there . Aside from some really lazy passes by Dieng and Lavine it seems they play hard. The IQ seems to be lacking and yes that does go back to coaching .
We have lots of holes. Our pg cant shoot. We cant defend the pick and roll. We dont shoot 3's and we always let the opposing teams reign 3's on us. We are young. Sam is terrible. Martin starts and does nothing most of the time. Our starting pf can only play 14mins a game and his backups are not good. We play lifeless at home. We are playing too many guys and trying to develop too many young guys at once. There appears to have no coherent game plan every game.
It might be a good idea to simplify things, shorten the rotation and focus on certain areas if we truly want to win games.
PorkChop wrote:It seems the effort is there . Aside from some really lazy passes by Dieng and Lavine it seems they play hard. The IQ seems to be lacking and yes that does go back to coaching .
Coaching and may be the collective lack of experience is finally catching up to us? I mean, we are still playing six 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year guys major minutes. KG, Prince, Martin, and Rubio are the only vets in the regular rotation and Martin has always been a liability on defense.
.....but then I look at how Skiles has taken a combination of vets and really young guys and gotten them to be a top 10 defense.
worldK wrote:We have lots of holes. Our pg cant shoot. We cant defend the pick and roll. We dont shoot 3's and we always let the opposing teams reign 3's on us. We are young. Sam is terrible. Martin starts and does nothing most of the time. Our starting pf can only play 14mins a game and his backups are not good. We play lifeless at home. We are playing too many guys and trying to develop too many young guys at once. There appears to have no coherent game plan every game.
It might be a good idea to simplify things, shorten the rotation and focus on certain areas if we truly want to win games.
It is tough when our only competent pick n roll player (kg ) can only play so many minutes . It's a testament to him but embarrassing for the players 15 years younger than him.
I hate to say it, but we just might have to go back to that original starting lineup Mitchell rolled out: Rubio-Wiggins-Prince-KG-Towns. KAT will certainly get more touches since he'd be the #2 option (instead of Martin).
worldK wrote:We have lots of holes. Our pg cant shoot. We cant defend the pick and roll. We dont shoot 3's and we always let the opposing teams reign 3's on us. We are young. Sam is terrible. Martin starts and does nothing most of the time. Our starting pf can only play 14mins a game and his backups are not good. We play lifeless at home. We are playing too many guys and trying to develop too many young guys at once. There appears to have no coherent game plan every game.
It might be a good idea to simplify things, shorten the rotation and focus on certain areas if we truly want to win games.
Excellent summary World. You can't have it all. We won already with effort and hustle, I think things do need to be simplified. My preference is to pull the plug on Martin now and give this team over a bit more to the kids. Martin is being leaned on too heavily and just not contributing consistently.
PorkChop wrote:It seems the effort is there . Aside from some really lazy passes by Dieng and Lavine it seems they play hard. The IQ seems to be lacking and yes that does go back to coaching .
Coaching and may be the collective lack of experience is finally catching up to us? I mean, we are still playing six 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year guys major minutes. KG, Prince, Martin, and Rubio are the only vets in the regular rotation and Martin has always been a liability on defense.
.....but then I look at how Skiles has taken a combination of vets and really young guys and gotten them to be a top 10 defense.
Tough to nail it down to one problem . That's why its probably a multitude of them. Hence why a lot of us felt this team was still a year or two out . I'm not completely discouraged because there's a lot of talent here. We're just not quite there yet . Martin's not a winning player on a team full of youngsters. He needs to be dealt for anything that's out there.IMO
