Look at our rotation and then tell me this is Doc's fault.
We're missing four of our starters. Let me say that again: our starting PG, SG, PF and C are all injured.
We gave 40 minutes to a guy who couldn't get on the court in Washington. The worst part is that he deserved it - not because he's so good, but because he's the best of a bad situation.
No coach in the league could win with the squad we suited up tonight.
Not if they went 3 sgs and 2 sf for a large portion of the game.
That sounds insane. Some might not think much of our new bigs, but they are big. Basketball has not changed that much in the last 50 years. Big men are an important part of the game. You play who you got, in their right positions, and then outcoach the other team.
Doc is trying to reinvent the wheel. Right now he's got a triangle.
Basketball has changed drastically in the last 50 years.
This article from Zach Lowe, just the other day, highlights that as well as anything (and, really, any work Lowe has done this year shows how much the game has changed and evolved):
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9098417/how-miami-heat-went-historic-winning-streak-came-dominate-league
To say that a team, missing 4/5ths of its starting lineup just needs to play some bigs to right the ship seems to be putting a bit too much faith in the strength of an antiquated system.
It works when you have the greatest player on the planet. We don't.
That doesn't mean you go back to a system that isn't working for anyone. Defenses are so wildly more sophisticated now. And, yes, Lowe was looking at The Heat but he has written numerous other articles on a variety of teams, all of which pinpoint how the game has developed and changed. The Heat in that article are an example, the best one, of how offenses, and defenses, have changed. If you really think the answer to a team's woes, any teams, is to regress to an offensive or defensive scheme that most every team has figured out how to stop, or succeed against, well, we think fundamentally differently.
I think Indiana and Memphis play a very similar style as the 1980s Celtics. Seems to be working there.
I would still say those offenses and defenses run very differently from the 80's C's. Indiana suffers when they try and utilize Hibbert as a classic post-up big man (though he is playing better than the beginning of the year, but that was abysmal). Memphis's center, Gasol, plays best from the elbow. He is a terrific basketball player but hardly a "throwback." I would say he is a very modern player.
What this discussion has gone away from is the players we had available. The calls for size are great but the available size in last nights game was all picked up from the scrapheap from China.
Putting a system in place that you have none of the pieces to make work makes zero sense. How did the roster the C's had available last night lend itself to playing that kind of game?
It is fine to take Doc to task for certain moves but with the injuries this team has had the roster is a mess (and that isn't blaming Danny). 4 out of the 5 starters on this team were out last night. No NBA team, barring The Spurs, can see any success with that. I just don't get killing Doc for the bad luck this team has had.