Fare thee well

twslam07

twslam07

All-Star
#33
#33
FoxRocketFan said:
All right
I'll leave it at that.
Touch base again next offseason.

Good luck the rest of the way.
I continue to be a De'Aaron Fox fan.
And I hope you finish above the Lakers.
Click to expand...
I posted this in another thread, but if the majority of our supporting cast (Murray, Huerter, Monk, Lyles, McDermott) were shooting their 3s simply at their career averages (they are collectively shooting 30.3% from 3 thus far this year), we would go from 12th in PPG to 4th in PPG. And we’d go from 13th in point differential to 7th in point differential.

That’s a pretty darn sizeable shift in team performance/effectiveness simply if the supporting cast shoots their career averages. But there are other ways for this team to improve on top of those supporting players just being the shooters they have been for their careers…
  1. Stop over helping and over doubling on defense. We collapse our defense without forcing the offense to collapse our defense. This is a main reason why we are 28th in opponent 3PA and 30th in opponent corner 3PA (not to mention we’re 26th in opponent 3P%). We give up too many good 3PT looks because of this defensive philosophy.
  2. Start Keon Ellis over Kevin Huerter. We have 3 high usage offensive players in Fox, DeRozan, and Sabonis and we’d like to continue developing Murray offensively. That 5th starter ideally is a low usage, 3&D specialist. That is exactly what Ellis is. Not only is he one of the better guard defenders in the league but he’s also proving to be an excellent C&S 3PT shooter. We also have some lineup stats (although it’s a small sample at only 35 min) that indicate a Fox - Ellis - DeRozan - Murray - Sabonis lineup is very effective considering it has a +45.2 Net Rating.
  3. Give Huerter a higher usage bench role. We’re currently 28th in bench points per 100 possessions. Now part of that is because Monk has been injured but we could desperately use another bench player who can provide a bit of scoring punch off the bench. Huerter can do just that as he’s not just strictly a 3PT shooter. Huerter and Monk would be a solid 1-2 punch while at the same time we would be able to hide their defensive deficiencies against opposing team’s bench units.
  4. Trade for a bigger 3&D PF. Even if we do #1-3 above (on top of our supporting cast returning to their career averages), I still think we’d fall short of being a “contender” (although I think we’d be in that #3-#6 range). A frontcourt of DeRozan, Murray, and Sabonis is undersized. Sabonis isn’t going anywhere at C and having DeRozan guard SGs is a recipe for disaster so we really need to make sure 1) our PF has above average size/length for his position and 2) our SG has above average size/length for his position. We know that Murray can guard SGs (and even some PGs) very well and we know that DeRozan has really good offensive guard skills in his ball handling and passing. If we add a 3&D PF who has above average size/length while moving Murray to SG defensively (DeRozan can be the SG on offense), we all of a sudden have really good size and length surrounding Sabonis who has below average size and length for his position. This will help us on the defensive and offensive glass and it will help us protect the paint.

If we pull all of that off, I think we have an outside chance at making an NBA finals (the west is brutal). However, a lot of that will also depend on how much Fox continues to ascend and if he can become a superstar.

TLDR: No, it’s not time to rebuild. There are still many ways for us to improve and build a formidable team around Fox, DeRozan, and Sabonis. The main thing is for the supporting cast to shoot the ball like they have done for their entire careers but there are other things that we can pursue to continue to improve our performance (stop over helping/doubling, start Ellis, move Huerter into a higher usage bench role, and target a 3&D PF in the trade market).
 
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