I don't see how IT has been elevated to a point detrimental to the team. He's doing his role and doing it fine. He's no more in the way of others than TWill is right now. The only player on a higher scale is Cousins, who gets away with not running the floor more than others.
Seriously, how does IT get in the way of Cousins? He's helped Cousins more than any other player. IT is the first PG on the team to feed his big man the ball. The two man game of IT & Cuz on the pick n roll is one of the best plays this team has. How has IT gotten in the way of Reke? By taking over PG duty? That was never Reke's future to begin with. Tyreke needs to learn to play off the ball. The only player in Evans way is Evans right now. Tyreke has major issues in his game that he needs to resolve. Letting him dribble-death the ball has only let him off the hook.
And why would you expect .400 ball from a roster so misaligned and imbalanced? 1 undersized PG, way too many SGs, no decent, reliable NBA sized SF and not one shotblocking big man. No veterans on the team to get people together. Very few consistent players. Very little leadership. There's a lot of young talent but very little of it fits together.
again, i think you're conflating a couple of competing ideas. thomas is, indeed, "doing his role and doing it fine." he's not explicitly "in the way" of other players. but the kings' gameplan has changed to put the ball in his hands and take it out of the hands of cousins and evans. i think this is a mistake. and there has simply not been a consistent pick and roll game with cousins
at all. they show flashes of what a cousins-centric pick and roll offense might look like (and it does look brilliant), but its not the first option, and it should be. instead, keith smart does very little to make his life easier. and i cannot for the life of me believe that people are still arguing that tyreke will only dribble the clock out. you all realize that this is a flaw in offensive schema, rather than a flaw in a singular player, correct? evans may not have won over the lot of you, but you certainly cannot deny his versatility. scoring, passing, rebounding, on-ball, off-ball, whatever. he's proved he can do many things on the court. putting the ball in his hands doesn't mean he has to be playing point guard, if you're so caught up in such distinctions...
if paul westphal or keith smart were capable of drawing up anything more sophisticated than a clear-out iso play for tyreke evans, we would not have seen so much of the "dribble-death" kind of basketball we've seen the last couple of seasons. iso play can be really effective, but it should be one weapon in a larger arsenal. one only need look at a rick adelman offense to understand how to effectively approach the half court set. you mix it up. iso play for evans to draw defenders towards the basket. then a pick and pop with cousins to pull the defenders back. cousins with the ball in the high post, cutters toward the basket to create passing lanes. drive and kicks to thornton. cousins on the low block. ****, play evans at SG and post him up on smaller guards, similar to how adelman would occasionally use bonzi wells. see what evans can come up with. neither westphal nor smart has
attempted to exercise this kind of creative, thoughtful coaching. they experiment in
all of the wrong ways. and make no mistake, it absolutely is a head coach's job to
coach his team into a position to succeed. yes, the occasional fast break is useful, as well. yes, there is a time to run and gun. but you cannot concentrate all your team's effort on one side of the ball, and in a one-dimensional way. its about dynamism. adelman's offenses have it. phil jackson's offenses have it. gregg popovich's offenses have it. did anybody watch the spurs/lakers game last night? holy ****. the spurs are playing some incredible offensive basketball right now. watching so many kings games, i had forgotten what a truly creative coach can do to enhance a team's plan of attack...
sure, its nice to score a lotta points. it looks pretty, and it gives fans a false sense of
team progress. keith smart's offensive attitude focuses all of his team's mental and physical energy on one side of the court. but when was the last time the kings held an opponent under 100 points? in april, the kings have given up 108, 109, 93, 109, 104, 110, 105, 115, and 103, and they're not scoring nearly enough to keep up with this atrocious defensive pace. of those nine games, the kings scored less than 100 in five of them. once you figure out how to stop a team that tries to score quickly and on the break, you've taken away their entire game plan, especially if the refs are feeling trigger-happy on your reach-in tactics. but either way, you're really telling me that the kings can't play at the level of minnesota, a similarly guard-heavy team without a consistent contributing SF and very little defensive help down low? adelman has done wonders with that team, with rubio and without. detroit may be in the eastern conference, but they're still playing .377 ball right now as a team with very little impact talent. do you think the kings can't manage
that? i don't care how mismatched this roster is, there is enough talent here to see much more improvement than we've seen. a better coach would squeeze
so much more out of these players. however, right now, the kings are playing like the wizards, and i scoff at anybody who thinks this is acceptable. cousins/evans/thornton alone is enough talent to get any team to .375, at the very least, provided a coach knows how to use them correctly...