If you want to get the most out of Rondo you pair him up with more athletic guys or more shooters.
If you want to get the most out of a post player, you need shooters at the other 4 positions or a 3 shooters and a high post big guy who can hit the 15-18 footer.
a) why do those two things have to be mutually exclusive? the big 3 are all great shooters, and our bench could have other good shooters too (delonte, wafer, etc)
b)with big al in the post, we'd have great shooters at 3 of the other 4 positions on the court. how is that not a good setup?
since when is it bad to have a top post-up threat for your passing pg to feed? just because big al is great at posting up, and probably would do so atleast 10-12 times a game, doesn't mean rondo would stop creating great looks for the other guys on the court.
I am more looking further into the future when the Big 3 are gone.
I don't know how realistic it is to be able afford the Big 3, Rondo and Big Al.
To me, having another body take more shots and offensive focus away from the Big 3 is not the correct path to take.
If Big Al was our 6th man, that's a different story.
now that the big 3 are older, they are less capable of carrying the offensive burden. that's why the team so often hits scoring droughts in the 4th quarter. they run out of gas. their jumpshots stop falling.
that's precisely why there needs to be another body to take more shots and get the offensive focus away from the big 3 at times in the game when the big 3 aren't able to score consistently.
that, btw, was the primary reason to bring in shaq last season, but he was too old to stay healthy and fill that role for most of the season, and he was unavailable in the playoffs. but when he was healthy, our team was very good.
Shaq was not brought in for the end of games. He can't shoot foul shots. He was brought in because we needed another center and he could also help get teams in foul trouble.
Has Al been taking over 4th quarters for his other teams? Or have they all just been losing? I think Doc is more concerned with shutting opponents down at the end of games. I don't see bringing in offense only guys to close out games as a common strategy.
I am not against having Al around while rebuilding if he has a reasonable contract, but I do not see him as a guy who helps you win much. Then again, Zach Randolph managed to turn around his image this past season.
i think zach randolph is a very good comparison with al jefferson. put him on a team that can cover up his defensive shortcomings and that doesn't require him to be the absolute focal point of the offense, but still lets him get into a rhythm, and he could be great. keep in mind, too, that al jefferson has never been accused of being the kind of lazy, thuggish ballhog that randolph was consistently accused of being prior to his time in memphis.
all it takes is the right situation for a player to turn around the narrative surrounding him.
whether or not it has been the strategy in the past, it's time to start bringing in players who can create their own shot in crunch time. this team may have been built to shut down the opponent in crunch time, but time and time against we've seen this team falter down the stretch against good teams (and not so good teams) because they fail to score hardly at all in the last 5-10 minutes of a game. it's really difficult to win a championship that way.
i'm absolutely sick of hearing "the celtics led most of the way, carrying a double digit lead into the fourth quarter . . . " prefacing a loss. let's put that behind us. please.
in '08, we at least had pierce to create shots 1 on 1 for himself, and ray was more likely to have his legs underneath him to hit a few big shots. neither of them can really do that anymore. we can't expect the big 3 to carry the majority of the offensive load over the course of 4 quarters anymore.