Q12543 wrote:khans2k5 wrote:lipoli390 wrote:khans2k5 wrote:If they can't shoot 3's and they aren't a Center we just shouldn't consider them at this point. This team needs shooting. We have non-shooting wings. We don't need more guys who can't shoot even if they may have a defensive role here. If the season started today who's scoring on this team? KAT and ? Wiggins right now is the second most proven scorer and he's an inefficient one at that. Teague? He's never been a consistent scorer in the league. He runs very hot and cold. The Raptors won because they had 7 guys who could drop 15-20 on any given night while the Warriors were really down to 1 consistent option with Steph at the end. If we roll out KAT, Wiggins and a bunch of role players next year we're in big trouble.
We have a lot of needs. Interestingly, better 3-point shooters is a need, but doesn't isn't a the top of that list statistically. We were 13th in points scored last season, but 23rd in points allowed. We were 25th in rebounding and 27th in defensive rebounding. By every metric, we were better offensively than defensively. And clearly rebounding, especially defensive rebounding, was our biggest weakness last season. As to 3-point shooting, we were 17th in 3-point percentage at 35.1%. Increasing that by just 1% and the Wolves would have been on par with teams like Portland and other successful playoff teams. The problem with the Wolves 3-point shooting last season is that we were near the bottom in 3-point attempts. That's what Rosas is talking about when he says three-point shooting is a mind-set. We have an elite 3-point shooter in KAT. Adding a good rebounding big inside and/or better rebounders at other positions would allow the Wolves get more 3-point shots out of KAT.
To improve the team's rebounding, the Wolves should consider signing Cheick Diallo as a lower-cost free agent PF. He's still young at 23 with a lot of upside. He's improved in each of his 3 seasons after only one season in college in which he played very little. Lots of room for growth. Yet, he's already a terrific rebounding, pulling down 5.2 boards in only 14 minutes per game last season. He also proved to be an efficient scorer down low with his 62% FG shooting. He shouldn't cost a lot.
We still need a guard who with high level ball-handling skills who can penetrate and score off the dribble. And yes, we could certainly use better 3-point shooters. But we have lots of needs. We were a 37-win team. This is not a team looking for a player or two as finishing touches. We're still building our core. That means acquiring the highest level talent available no matter what they're good at. Right now, statistically it looks like the greatest emphasis should be placed on upgrading the team's rebounding, especially on the defensive end.
I'll just respectfully disagree with this. When you have a bad defense your offensive numbers get inflated because you are getting more possessions on that end of the floor. When you go the other way and bring in more defenders and minimize possessions in the game who is grinding out efficient buckets on this team other than KAT? Our offense matched our pace both at 13th in the league while our shooting efficiencies were much lower (25th eFG and 22nd TS%). If we bring in defenders who can't shoot the defense will go up, but the offense will drop considerably more because games will have less possessions due to longer defensive possessions and our shooting percentage will start to matter more with those fewer possessions. The Bucks and the Thunder were the only 2 teams last year who had top 10 pace and top 10 defensive rating. It's not the norm to fit that club. The top defensive teams all played slower than us outside of those 2. That's the typical trade off. You play better defense you typically play slower and need even more efficient offense than high pace games where most everything is just made up in volume. You need Paul George and Giannis level players to be able to do both and we don't have that guy.
I'm trying to make sense of this Khansy. You are saying that bad defense leads to inflated offensive numbers? That makes absolutely no sense to me. If anything, bad defense can lead to worse offense because you are in bounding the ball underneath your own hoop so often and the opposing defense has a chance to get set. You also realize that we can't really make up for it in pace of play because it means the other team is getting the ball back quicker as well against our porous defense? So playing with pace impacts the other side of the court too.
The bottom line is that if we struggle to defend buckets on defense and make buckets on offense, it really doesn't matter what our pace of play is. We'll suck either way, but we'd probably suck less with a slower pace. Why? Because it in effect "shortens the game", so to speak, with fewer overall possessions for both teams and it therefore allows for better odds of an underdog to win the game.
Games with more possessions lead to inflated offensive numbers. If you suck at defense the ball is going in your bucket more frequently and more quickly than a possession where you grind down the shot clock with good defense. Your offense has a higher volume of opportunities to score thus it's inflated. If you lose 120-115 you look like you have a good offense and just need to defend better when the more likely reality when you have efficiency numbers like ours is you hit 115 because of the extra possessions to begin with more than actually having a good offense. If our offense matched our efficiency we would be a bottom 10 offense in the league and yet we were 13th. Why do you think that is the case? Less possessions means you need to rely more on efficiency and we were bottom 10 in the league in efficiency. So why would we not fall down the offensive charts if we needed to rely more on efficiency for offense than the volume we do now given those numbers?
If inbounding the ball under your hoop greatly affects offensive numbers then why don't we want to get players that put the ball in the hoop more to do the same to the other team? We're in the worst of both worlds right now. We can't defend well and we can't score well. That's why we get blown out frequently. If you go for defensive additions to this team you are left asking the question who scores for us versus if you get more guys who can put the ball in the bucket efficiently we're making the other team take the ball out from under their basket and gives our defense a chance to get set. If we're clanging shots off the rim they get in transition easier and get easy buckets and now we don't have the efficiency to catch up. In the era of offensive efficiency good defense is a bonus more than something you can expect to shut good offenses down. The best offense will always beat the best defense in this era.
The best example was the Warriors in the finals after each time Klay went down. They still had Draymond, Looney and Iggy as really good defenders playing next to Steph. They didn't have a chance in that game 3 and they couldn't hold on after Klay dropped 30 in game 6 before he went out. They needed every point KD gave them in game 5 to hold on. Their role players were mostly defenders and when the scorers went down they lost and we don't even have those level of scorers to begin with outside of KAT. Meanwhile Toronto had 7 guys who could drop double digits and the Warriors had no defensive answer for that depth of scoring and they rolled out several very good defenders. It's a lot easier to stop 1 guy than 7 and right now we have the 1 guy.
