since D- wasn't offered - I will give it a D which is an improvement from the big fat F from the season before. I would have maybe gone with C- had we not helped the lakers.
Positive:
Muss is gone, Bibby was traded, beaten lakers once. benched KT, swept the Pistons
Negative:
Mediocre draft pick. Failed to acquire any additional first round picks. Artest is still here, no defense, no rebounding, too many turnovers, iso - basketball, lost to the Heat, no clear perspective for the future, kids underdeveloped. Started A.J., Mikki Moore, beings Ron's hostages, lost season series to the Clippers, players pick and chose games and more which I will leave out because the day has been depressive enough.
I agree with just about that entire list, although I might have gone D+, rather than D-, were it an option.
I'll add a plus, too: fun to watch on nights when Beno and other youngsters played a bigger role in the game than Ron did.
As one of the resident stat geeks, I'll let some trends show a little more of what's on my mind.
These are some of our rankings over the last several years.
-------------------03-04---------04-05--------05-06--------06-07-------07-08
assists/gm-----1st-------------1st-----------5th----------22nd---------28th
TO/gm-----------9th-------------4th----------21st---------12th----------29th
A/TO ratio------1st-------------1st-----------5th----------20th----------30th
pt differential--5th-------------9th----------12th---------19th----------20th
opp 3pt %-----10th-----------15th---------10th---------23rd-----------25th
Rebounding and shotblocking stats are quite bad, but those are long-term constants; before we won games despite them because we were so strong in other areas -- which we aren't now. Our shooting numbers, whether FG%, 3%, or FT%, have declined from excellent to merely fair, but have recovered slightly from a sharp drop under Muss.
My tentative conclusions are that, while our shortage of defensive players makes the zone seem tempting, it is making our perimeter D very weak, and our lack of a defensive big makes it ineffective at any range. Ball hogging and iso are doing an excellent job of killing our ball movement, and our offense with it. The steady decline in our point differential just shows that you can't get better when both your offense and defense are slipping.
Looking at all of that, I think a D is pretty fair. It beats last year's F.