Aloha,
Last night was a glaring example of our biggest problem we have had this year. Lack of size. We had Dennis and PatBev trying to guard PG and Kawahi a lot. When we sent a double team they found the open man for a 3. When we didn’t, they took our puny guys inside and shot over them. Hopefully we won’t see those kind of mismatches often moving forward.
Signing Rui was a big step in the right direction. He is 6’ 8” with a 7’ 2” wing span that will definitely be harder to shoot over. While it’s hard to stop a super star you can make it more difficult.
AD coming back will also be huge, besides being a premier rim protector he also excels at switching on D. And with TB playing well it just adds more size to the rotation. Whether TB starts with AD or comes off the bench and plays with him there will be a domino effect all the way down the rotation. Add in minutes for Gabriel and now Troy can guard wing 3’s again instead of 4’s. Lonnie and Austin can play more 2 and less 3 and PatBev hopefully will no longer have to guard the KD’s and PG’s of the league.
If there is another trade to be made I hope they can find another defender. While 3 point snipers are nice, they will be wasted in this offense. We just don’t run a lot of plays for 3 point shots. It’s a drive and kick style of offense and the open man takes the shot, even if it’s Westbrook. As I have written before, take out LeBron and Russ and our 3 point shooting as a team is 36%. That in the upper half of the league. The problem is LeBron and Russ take over a 3rd of our 3’s. Even with Lebron’s 9 for 14 night, it elevated him all the way up to…30%. Russ sits at 28%. My question to those that want to trade for sniper is always this, in this offense how many looks will they get a game? 5? Maybe 6? Lonnie shoots 38% and gets 5. Thomas shoots 44% and gets a couple.
If there is another trade to be made I would like it to be for another defender, with some size. And if he can shoot 35% from 3. That would be better than a 40% shooter that doesn’t defend. You want to surround LeBron with shooters but they don’t have to be snipers. 35/36% is just fine if they can defend.
We currently are 5th in the league in scoring at 117 points a game. That’s enough to win a championship. But we are 27th in points allowed at 118. That will never win a championship.
I’m looking forward to having everyone back. Even without AD we would have one a few more games with just Austin and Lonnie. I am eager to see how Rui fits over the next few weeks and how they use TB and AD together. I have a good feeling about this team. Maybe not as good as Pat Riley saying they could win it all but I do think they will make some noise. And I would love to eliminate the Clippers in the playoffs. We can beat them at full strength.
Good post, Michael. I think it’s obvious any players we add need to be able to play defense. I still feel we need a big trade to upgrade out backcourt. So tired of Schröder and Beverley backcourt. We need legitimate NBA starters in the backcourt to seriously compete for a championship.
But we’re closer than the rest of league thinks. Think they’re going to start finding that our beginning this 5-game road trip. There will be a different storyline after that trip. Frankly, we need a couple of trades to clear out some flotsam. Beverley needs to go and maybe Lonnie depending on our cap space situation.