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Given our current lineup, there's no successful version of this. Not without a useful post player. Landry was supposed to be that guy, but he hasn't delivered, and I think that's crapped out much of what we can do. This bench has been a relative failure, with brief sparks of competency sprinkled in.
When Cousins returns, hopefully he can platoon his starters a little better, but he's at a lack for options right now. I do agree that he needs to rotate the starters in better, but I wonder how much of it is him being in a holding pattern until Cousins returns. Had it been something with a more definitive time frame, I'm wondering if he wouldn't grab bag as much off the bench.
SacKings384
Starter
You are correct. But that's when you need to get creative. If Gay is getting rest, then Collison and B-Mac need to be on the floor. If Collison gets rest, then Rudy needs to be on the floor. Essentially you need two of three to be on the floor at all times or as close to at all times as you can. Maybe it ends up being a lot of minutes. That's fine. It's not for 82 games. It's just until Cousins gets back. But Malone hasn't made any adjustments for Cousins being out on the floor. Hell, we still throw Reggie the ball like he's Cousins. It's insane.
I'm in agreement here, but, putting my coaching hat on:
You want players off the bench to be able to run the offense should a starter go down. Ideally, they should all be able to fill in. Unfortunately, the main cog in the machine is DMC, and the drop off to the next person is...well, we're seeing it.
If we can't continue our regular offense, we should be able to run a secondary offense with our big guy out, but that again also requires bench players with the ability to do so. I think Landry's disappearance has hurt us in this regard - when he's been even just satisfactory, the bench looks a little different, but Sessions not being Sessions has also done so.
In terms of rotations, you do have to get really creative, and I think that's where going without an experienced assistant hurts. If Collison and B-Mac are on the floor, who are your posts? None of them really help our guards get good looks. You do need two of them, but you also need another JT (the good version) to help defensively, and we just don't have that body. Landry isn't it. Evans gobbles rebounds, but still not great defensively. Hollins? Well.
Hell, I'd almost be convinced to go super small ball with Collison/Sessions/BMac/Casspi/D-Will...ugh and just try and outrun the other team for 5 minutes or so. There's no real solution here, even after DMC returns.
I just don't see a lot of these expectations aligning with reality. The Warriors are where they are currently because they made some nice roster moves (Ellis for Bogut, signing Igoudala and Speights, drafting Curry, Thompson, Barnes, and Green) and then gave them time to come together as a team. They're now coming off two successful playoff seasons in a row and they've made the necessary tweaks to get better. We're still at the beginning of that process. We've assembled the core and we need to sign a couple key free agents or make a couple of key trades to fill in the holes. In the meantime, I think Malone is getting a lot out of the roster we currently have. I don't think Malone is coaching for short-term gains like some of our recent coaches have been. I think he's thinking big picture -- get everybody comfortable with their roles even if they aren't currently there yet, and teach them what they need to know. That takes time. You can micro-manage every minute of a basketball game and you can question why certain decisions were made, but maybe the answer is simple -- we play Reggie and Carl and Ryan because that's what he have right now. All of them have been alternately effective and ineffective in different stretches. I don't see an undiscovered savior waiting on the bench.
We are a borderline playoff team with Cousins healthy. Without him, we are a talented group of players without an identity. That's just the reality of our situation this year. I'm enjoying being competitive night in and night out. The nit-picky stuff over roster roles is missing the forest for the trees if you ask me.
We are a borderline playoff team with Cousins healthy. Without him, we are a talented group of players without an identity. That's just the reality of our situation this year. I'm enjoying being competitive night in and night out. The nit-picky stuff over roster roles is missing the forest for the trees if you ask me.
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gunks
Hall of Famer
+1
Malone's hands are tied until PDA gets us a decent bench player (or two). PDA has given us a great, balanced, starting 5 and Malone has them playing awesome defense. Our starters are dominant. When Cousins was healthy we were BLOWING OUT top teams in the first quarter, every game! Then the bench came in and crapped all over everything.
We have to hope that Sessions can get back to the player he should be. Landry is a lost cause. I hated him in his first stint with us, I hated the signing, and now he's as useless as he's ever been. The dude just doesnt do anything we need from a player to win. Nik is....Hopefully going to improve next year. He just isnt ready. Omri being hurt doesnt help either.
Malone isnt perfect, he's new at being a head coach and I agree that his rotations are iffy at times. He takes too long to sub in starters and call time outs when we are giving up leads (I think this is him taking a page out of Pop's book...Popovich is known for letting his guys "figure it out" when the other team makes a run)...BUT...Putting it all on Malone is BS. This roster isnt complete, and we lost the guy that everything is built around.
Debatable? I don't know who on this team, besides Cousins, you think is better than Gay, but if you can wait five hours for me to get off work (when I'll have access to a full sized keyboard, and can type faster, I'll be happy to explain why you're wrong.
gunks
Hall of Famer
I think Collison has been great for us... But really, I'm still just mad at Rudy for last night's Toronto-ness. Give me time to cool off, and I'll admit he's a good Robin. He just sucks at being Batman.
I put that about sixty percent on the player, and forty percent on the head coach. Gay needs to accept responsibility, and recognize that he's having an off night, and just focus on making his teammates better. At the same time, Malone deserves blame for putting him in that situation. You don't bench your only proven offensive option, even if he doesn't have it that night, but it's the coach's job to say, "Okay Rudy, we're going to run the offense through Darren, and see if he get the guys going."
SacKings384
Starter
Agreed big time.
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
I was thinking something similar. From now on, this is how Cuz should deal with the public.
randymoss1881
Starter
Those fire is spreading like a disease now we got people comparing our offense to GS. Look at there damn roster we have one of the best starting group lets wait till we get a bench.
And to answer the question gay/Collison are having there best year under malone. But that's none of my business.
And to answer the question gay/Collison are having there best year under malone. But that's none of my business.
notoriousBEN3
Bench
And to answer the question gay/Collison are having there best year under malone. But that's none of my business.[/quote]
Yup, they are having career years. That's why i don't understand why we don't have them in to start the 4th usually. The bench plays until they lose all of the momentum that we built up in the first 3 quarters, which is right when good teams strike, and right when we fall apart. Our starters get back in and are trying to pick up the pieces, not continuing the momentum. Nik should not be in the 4th if it's a tight game, which they have all been. He just shouldn't be in, and i have faith in Malone, but its hard to understand why he keeps making the same mistakes.
Yup, they are having career years. That's why i don't understand why we don't have them in to start the 4th usually. The bench plays until they lose all of the momentum that we built up in the first 3 quarters, which is right when good teams strike, and right when we fall apart. Our starters get back in and are trying to pick up the pieces, not continuing the momentum. Nik should not be in the 4th if it's a tight game, which they have all been. He just shouldn't be in, and i have faith in Malone, but its hard to understand why he keeps making the same mistakes.
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
This isn't all about Malone. I agree with the argument that Cuz is covering up some of Malone's faults as head coach. That's clear. However, Cuz when healthy he also covered up how poor our bench is which is a significant problem, if not our biggest problem. Our bench is terrible, any way you slice it.
While not a great stat, the overall net rating is clear evidence of what's holding this roster back the most.
Our starters:
Cuz: +27.9
Rudy: +19
DC: +19.7
Ben: + 17.1
JT: +2.4
Then we get to the bench. Oy vey:
Omri: -17.7
Evans: -7.1
Landry: -6.7
DWill: -14.5
Ray: -21.4
Sessions: -12.3
Nik: -18.8
Hollins: -36.7
Is there a bigger drop off around the league? Our starters when healthy with Cuz, were outplaying just about anyone and everyone they went up against. Our bench night after night, no matter the opponent has absolutely killed us. That's the root of our problem.While Malone shoots himself and us in the foot with his sub patterns at times, he's got a whole lot of garbage to work with as soon as he looks at our bench. He has no idea what he's going to get. We have no proven bench players where we can point to "if Malone only did this or Malone only did that" we'd somehow be that much more successful. Actually, that's an attempt to deflect away from the real issue, which is we might have the worst bench in the conference. That's on PDA and our FO, although I don't think anyone thought Sessions would look this incompetent, Landry would resemble more of what you'll see at the local YMCA than and NBA player and Nik would look this shaky. A number of us had concerns but I don't think anyone thought our bench would bottom out to this extent. It's putrid. And many times we're arguing Ray vs Sessions or Hollins vs Carl/Landry, yet the underlying theme is it's mostly hope, there's no tangible evidence that either route will work better. They've all been terrible.
Our bench isn't capable of guarding anyone on the perimeter or inside, aside from Omri on the wing at times. Our bench lacks any 3pt threat which kills spacing/ability to spread the floor. Our bench lacks a ballhandler who can get into the paint and create good looks for others. It's defense, both inside and out, it's a lack of a 3pt threat across the board, it's the inability to space due to the open invitation to sag off into the paint and not having the ability to make opponents pay, and it's been a problem since the season tipped.
Our quickest route to fixing this problem is acquiring a 3rd big who has a defensive presence and a 3rd guard who can handle, defend against penetration and hit the 3. Those are our biggest holes. But the bottom line is when we have a Rudy/Cuz pairing who's shown they can compete with anyone in this league along with our starters, they not only need but they deserve a far better bench. Even when Cuz was healthy is was his MVP level talent which covered that up and fought off the holes our bench put us into, night after night after night. We might have the worst bench in the conference and that's entirely on our GM and FO.
Time for PDA to once again roll up his sleeves and get to work.
EDIT!!! God damnit! Can we stop merging threads? I just lost my entire post. This has happened a few times when it's decided that threads should be suddenly merged. It's pretty damn annoying and becomes a waste of time to post. If you haven't clicked "post reply" by the time the thread is merged, your entire post evaporates upon clicking "post reply". And when you're writing a long post, it turns into a big waste of time! I had to type all this twice, and the second version is worse/shorter than the first. I don't have all day to sit here and re-type posts.
I didn't just suddenly decide to merge the thread. I'm very sorry you got caught in the shuffle.
For what it's worth, I think you made some very good points in the body of your post. I'm actually liking the post even with the "EDIT".
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
Well if we're going to keep merging threads, how about making sure posts don't get deleted? If a new thread pops us, it's more likely people are replying to the new topic than an older one. Increasingly, when a new thread is posted I start writing a response and when I hit "post reply", boom, it's gone.
You got caught in a rare occurrence. I've said I'm sorry. I don't know what more you want. We merge very few threads in the grand scheme of things. I guess I could promise to check and make sure you're not on the board before I (or any other mod) take any actions.
Yes! I liked your entire post, but this part in particular I couldn't agree more! To really take advantage of how good our starting unit has played this season, we need to minimize the difference between the starting lineup and the bench. Aggregating a bunch of decent (at their best) players together and swapping them in and out like musical chairs depending on who happens to be playing well at any given time or what the match-ups are isn't a coherent plan, it's just chaos. We get better by shortening the bench -- (1) a reliable third guard, (2) a reliable third big, (3) a sixth-man type, and (4) a jack of all trades who can split minutes at PF, SF or SG when needed. Everyone else is either a development project or injury depth.
Derrick and Omri show some potential in filling numbers 3 and 4. Ray is acceptable as a backup PG for injury depth. The third big and third guard roles are not luxuries though, they are necessities. And right now we don't have anyone who fits the bill. That's the problem Pete and co. need to solve. They've taken us a long way from the team they inherited. I don't expect these changes to happen over-night, but there should be some sense of urgency considering how well our starters have been. A playoff spot is there for the taking if we can find the right two players to finish the rotation.
It's obviously difficult to impossible to guarantee that nobody is actively writing a response when threads are being merged.
One possible solution (and I don't know for certain this would work) might be the following: If you now you are going to write a long post, simply write a very short post that says something like "Long Post Coming". Then, you can edit that short post. If it gets moved in the meantime I suspect (though I am not certain) that the edit may follow the post through the merge.
Another possible solution is what we used to recommend, back when we were still on vBulletin: type long posts in a text editor (WordPad, Notepad, etc), so if something happens, the post is not lost.
D13
Bench
I'm gonna blame part of this on Sessions running things when most of our bench is on floor. He's usually shoot first or turning it over. I don't think I've ever seen him run a play.
Glenn
Hall of Famer
I would rather they tried something else or at least made it appear as if they were trying something else. Rudy is a good if not great iso player and the fact it hasn't worked as well as we would all like, I still think handing the ball to a seasoned vet is certainly not the worst of ideas. If Boogie was healthy, it would probably help Rudy besides giving a 2nd iso player. Don't have a clue where the screen went except I do not fault Rudy or Malone.
rainmaker
Hall of Famer
The suggestions above are duly noted.
Typing in a word document might make the most sense.
Put Ramon next to an at least average backup 2 who can defend some and hit the 3 and have a true defensive 3rd big with the bench crew and we've probably got 3-4 more wins. I'd say Omri has been our only real positive off the bench this year consistently, and while Ramon is a problem, so is the other 60% of our bench at times. 80% of our bench has a negative impact most nights. Sometimes more.
For a team which plays its bench largely together, all five at once, they fit together and answer our problems about as well as this shoe would during #HellaStorm.
Typing in a word document might make the most sense.
Ramon's tunnel vision is an issue, as is his handle but that it a fraction of the bench issue. Perimeter defense, no 3pt threats, poor interior defense and a lack of size weigh more heavily when considering the overall impact our bench is having. Our bench doesn't even have a solid screener.
Put Ramon next to an at least average backup 2 who can defend some and hit the 3 and have a true defensive 3rd big with the bench crew and we've probably got 3-4 more wins. I'd say Omri has been our only real positive off the bench this year consistently, and while Ramon is a problem, so is the other 60% of our bench at times. 80% of our bench has a negative impact most nights. Sometimes more.
For a team which plays its bench largely together, all five at once, they fit together and answer our problems about as well as this shoe would during #HellaStorm.
Chubbs
Starter
Malone isn't perfect. But there's a reality here in that he can shuffle the bench and mix it up 10 different ways. It still just isn't very good.
I'm not sure I understand the focus on sessions as the reason for the bench struggles. He might not even be in the top 3 of problems on the bench right now. I'd go with the lack of rebounding (even with evans), no shooters at all, and seriously bad post defense. 2 of those 3 are basically the same. No size. The only guy with size is Hollins, and he's just not very good and never will be. No size or shooting is not much for a PG to work with.
Surround sessions with guys that fit better, he'd be just fine as the backup PG. If Nik makes strides, the whole thing works a lot better. Try to be patient. I'm not quite as high on him as I was Ben, but I think he'll be a player at some point.
I'm not sure I understand the focus on sessions as the reason for the bench struggles. He might not even be in the top 3 of problems on the bench right now. I'd go with the lack of rebounding (even with evans), no shooters at all, and seriously bad post defense. 2 of those 3 are basically the same. No size. The only guy with size is Hollins, and he's just not very good and never will be. No size or shooting is not much for a PG to work with.
Surround sessions with guys that fit better, he'd be just fine as the backup PG. If Nik makes strides, the whole thing works a lot better. Try to be patient. I'm not quite as high on him as I was Ben, but I think he'll be a player at some point.
lawlman91
Starter
i blame malone for not thinking about this safety precautionI was thinking something similar. From now on, this is how Cuz should deal with the public.
KingsFanGER
Starter
For me it`s basically the turnovers, that cost us all those close games. The rotations may be not optimal, the bench may throw away our lead, still we are competitive in almost every game and it comes down to frustrating close defeats.
And I don't blame the coach for the turnovers, because a good amount of them are unforced errors or the result of sloppy play. The only guy, who has "the right" to make a ton of mistakes like these is Nik (and to some extend Ben, cause his handle is still shaky) and that's the price you pay, when you play a rookie for major minutes.
But all the other guys are seasoned veterans, yet they commit a ton of loseball fouls by pushing their man in the back while fighting for the rebound, they are commiting offensive fouls, when setting screens, they screw up simple dribble handoffs, which really shouldn't happen at all, cause there is a reason you handoff the ball instead of making a pass, they don't see double teams coming or dribble right into a trap defense, they don't seal the post position the moment the entry pass is coming, they fumble the ball a lot, they don't pay attention to the shotclock and so on.
We are playing at a reasonable slow pace. There is no excuse for those mistakes, if you don't play at a tremendous high pace, resulting in making risky plays like GS. A coach shouldn't be in a position to teach veterans how to rebound without fouling, how to set legal screens or how to handoff the ball correctly or seal your man in the post. Therefore I can't blame Malone in this case.
The sheer amount of these mental mistakes is concerning.
Btw. is there any rule in the NBA, that forbids to put your body into your man to get the correct position for the rebound? To me it often looks like Hollins, Landry or Thompson are just trying to outjump their man. The only guy, who is really sealing his position to get the rebound with his whole body is Reggie atm.
And I don't blame the coach for the turnovers, because a good amount of them are unforced errors or the result of sloppy play. The only guy, who has "the right" to make a ton of mistakes like these is Nik (and to some extend Ben, cause his handle is still shaky) and that's the price you pay, when you play a rookie for major minutes.
But all the other guys are seasoned veterans, yet they commit a ton of loseball fouls by pushing their man in the back while fighting for the rebound, they are commiting offensive fouls, when setting screens, they screw up simple dribble handoffs, which really shouldn't happen at all, cause there is a reason you handoff the ball instead of making a pass, they don't see double teams coming or dribble right into a trap defense, they don't seal the post position the moment the entry pass is coming, they fumble the ball a lot, they don't pay attention to the shotclock and so on.
We are playing at a reasonable slow pace. There is no excuse for those mistakes, if you don't play at a tremendous high pace, resulting in making risky plays like GS. A coach shouldn't be in a position to teach veterans how to rebound without fouling, how to set legal screens or how to handoff the ball correctly or seal your man in the post. Therefore I can't blame Malone in this case.
The sheer amount of these mental mistakes is concerning.
Btw. is there any rule in the NBA, that forbids to put your body into your man to get the correct position for the rebound? To me it often looks like Hollins, Landry or Thompson are just trying to outjump their man. The only guy, who is really sealing his position to get the rebound with his whole body is Reggie atm.
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