FIRE MIKE BROWN
- Thread starter Vinny Basketballerino
- Start date
Mesh how? Usually meshing is offensive oriented. The Kings offense is still top 10 even with all they've gone through and the 3 point woes. The Kings don't lack 3 point shooting ability, it's the 3 point shooters they have aren't hitting like normal. However, defense isn't really about meshing, it's about you have defenders or you don't and from there you have a scheme that makes sense or you don't.
I agree about the first part. And I can't say you're wrong on the second part because how exactly does one know if he is being impatient or prudent? Sometimes it's nearly impossible to tell. All I can tell you is that if I were acting GM I'd be listening to offers about all Kings' players to see all available options. I wouldn't predetermine that I'd wait until the end of the season. If the offers are garbage, then being patient would be a lot easier for me to deal with (and sell to Vivek). If there are enticing offers, however, then BOOM, pull the pin.
Fox, Sabonis, and DeRozan are all below average defenders and none of them are major floor spacers. Unless Keegan not only turns it around, but improves significantly on last year as well, I don't see a way where this team works. There is no coach out there who is going to magically turn our 'big 3' into the things we need them to be at this point in their careers.
Are you sure that the defensive scheme is not Mike Brown's and Luke is hired to implement it? It is hard to believe that Brown has no input and gives an assistant carte blanche to fully run the team's defense. Maybe delegate some of the mundane tasks but to turn over the entire defensive philosophy to an underling doesn't seem likely.,,especially if it is not working.
Regardless of this or not, Brown as the "CEO" of the staff at some point has to step in and change something with our 3pt defense. We just aren't going to win games giving up the 2nd most 3PA and the 2nd worst 3pt %. No matter how well we play in other areas (which I think have been pretty solid for most of the year, our own shooting aside).
The more I think about it, this could be a multiple part thing going on. Clearly the philosophy is a Brown one or at least in some part OK with him since they've been using this defense since he got here. However, Luke is running the in game management of that philosophy and indeed, he might be falling short when calling out adjustments and what not. You can definitely see both DC and Loucks up off the bench more than a few times a quarter yelling out assignments.
We all want to pin the blame on that one person we didn’t already like.
This video – with interview clips from Mike Brown – suggest it’s the players who can’t / don’t execute. It’s a bit surprising to me that a team whose core has been together for more than 2 full seasons, under the same coaching staff, can be this bad at executing a game plan. Especially with the same issues seemingly present again and again and again.
Maybe they don’t understand the game plan/ it hasn’t been communicated to them effectively? They are not on the same page, or they don’t fully trust each other? They don’t have the attention span to play both sides of the ball for 48-minutes? Or is there is a lack of leadership on defence? We run a lot of the offence through Sabonis, Fox, Monk, and now DeMarr. But the guys we rely on for defence (Keegan, Keon) are younger and quieter. Do we need a Draymond (ugh) style defensive captain?
This video – with interview clips from Mike Brown – suggest it’s the players who can’t / don’t execute. It’s a bit surprising to me that a team whose core has been together for more than 2 full seasons, under the same coaching staff, can be this bad at executing a game plan. Especially with the same issues seemingly present again and again and again.
Maybe they don’t understand the game plan/ it hasn’t been communicated to them effectively? They are not on the same page, or they don’t fully trust each other? They don’t have the attention span to play both sides of the ball for 48-minutes? Or is there is a lack of leadership on defence? We run a lot of the offence through Sabonis, Fox, Monk, and now DeMarr. But the guys we rely on for defence (Keegan, Keon) are younger and quieter. Do we need a Draymond (ugh) style defensive captain?
I think the players start out running the defensive gameplan but during the course of the game they make mistakes from play to play and a disciplined offensive team like the Spurs is good at exploiting the extra space created by that lack of focus. Things can snowball pretty fast when the open shots are threes instead of twos.
This defensive scheme does ask a lot of the players but with so many shooters on the floor now, there's really no better way to do this. In an ideal world all 5 players on the floor will rotate defensively to deny passing/driving lanes and fill up open space like they share the same brain. In the real world where there are 3 or 4 games a week often with flights in between, guys are in and out of the lineup because of injuries, and there has been very little time to run through these schemes in practice and reinforce the way the rotations should work there are going to be mistakes. Maybe even a lot of mistakes. Part of what this group is doing wrong from my point of view is that they react poorly to those mistakes and end up giving the other team confidence because they aren't able to let it go and re-sharpen their focus in the moment.
Where I think this team in particular gets themselves into trouble is that we do have a lot of players who love to score the basketball. And because of that we slip into this mentality that we will dig ourselves out of these holes we get into by outscoring our opponent first and then we'll recommit to playing defense the right way. That's just not going to work. Get the defensive stop first to keep the other team's score where it is then convert your possessions into points. That will gradually eat into the other team's lead. Bottom line is we need to evolve from playing fast and loose to playing fast and tight. And that starts with recognizing that a stop is just as important as a made basket.
This defensive scheme does ask a lot of the players but with so many shooters on the floor now, there's really no better way to do this. In an ideal world all 5 players on the floor will rotate defensively to deny passing/driving lanes and fill up open space like they share the same brain. In the real world where there are 3 or 4 games a week often with flights in between, guys are in and out of the lineup because of injuries, and there has been very little time to run through these schemes in practice and reinforce the way the rotations should work there are going to be mistakes. Maybe even a lot of mistakes. Part of what this group is doing wrong from my point of view is that they react poorly to those mistakes and end up giving the other team confidence because they aren't able to let it go and re-sharpen their focus in the moment.
Where I think this team in particular gets themselves into trouble is that we do have a lot of players who love to score the basketball. And because of that we slip into this mentality that we will dig ourselves out of these holes we get into by outscoring our opponent first and then we'll recommit to playing defense the right way. That's just not going to work. Get the defensive stop first to keep the other team's score where it is then convert your possessions into points. That will gradually eat into the other team's lead. Bottom line is we need to evolve from playing fast and loose to playing fast and tight. And that starts with recognizing that a stop is just as important as a made basket.