The entire core we are building around including the coach is the problem, but for Rondo, Gay and cuz to get outplayed by Grant/Noel and Smith are you kidding me.
We disagree on this one and I respectfully disagree, because I understand, that people will start looking at everything with the season playing out the way it has.
But from my point of view each NBA player brings something to the table. Each player has his strengths and weaknesses. There are no scrubs in the NBA and no team you can expect to dominate. The 76ers always play hard. You certainly know that.
But tonight we played right into their strengths.
Noel is a mobile defender, but makes a living on putbacks, lobs and rim runs on offense. DMC has around 40 pounds on him. Of course Noel will beat him up the floor at times. That's what should be expected and it's up to us to cover this weakness by not turning the ball over and play efficiently on offense to allow as few rim runs as possible. We did a horrible job as a team.
With Grant and Smith it's pretty much the same. At some point our broadcasting crew asked, why Smith is available all the time. Well he is, because he is not a very good half court player. He may be the quickest guy in the league, but if you don't let him run, he won't hurt you as much.
When fans, that follow the NBA closely know those type of things - why do we as a team play right into the strengths of the 76ers? Why do we allow open looks for all their good 3 point shooters, while we cover their bad ones out on the perimeter? We have someone to make scouting reports do we?
Now I don't think DMC played well. He was impatient inside, had trouble with his FT's and had a few defensive let downs in the first half. But that doesn't cover my impression, that we didn't use him to our advantage.
Of course we can debate, if it's possible to built a team around a versatile, but groundbounded and pretty slow big guy nowadays, where everyone wants to play fast, wants to play through his guards and wings, wants to shoot 3's and uses the centerposition almost solely for defense, rebounding and dunks.
I did think the attempt to built an uptempo team able to fall back to a very good half court option sounded promising. But so far I have been proven wrong. But I'm not sure, if this is, because it was a bad idea from the start, because we did a poor job establishing it or because the players didn't buy into it.