KG was abysmal on offense tonight but he looked wonderful on defense. Why? Energy.
We've been running Ray off screens far too much. It worked when we simply out-talented our opponents but not anymore. We cannot expect 4 30+ year old players to fend off everybody on a nightly basis.
What the big 3 and JO bring to the table now is the know-how. JO sucks all the energy out of us when we play him too much. In our last meeting with Orlando we played him in small doses and he had one of his best games this season. (I thought we hit the sweet spot in terms of time management and we got doses of 10 minutes of great team defense.)
Tonight we struggled in the beginning when we were forced to play bench players but it was them who brought us right back. In fact it was Wilcox and Moore who led the comeback and Doc never plays either one of them.
The point is we can no longer hope to "be better" than our opponent. Opposing teams' gameplans are beginning to be more and more effective and playing the starters more certainly does not help that. Top that off with the wear and tear on our starters.
Unpredictability and energy coming from the bench might be, in my opinion, what pushes us forward. Hopefully Doc recognizes that.
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Topic: Broken record: is Doc's stubbornness the cause of our struggles? (Read 882 times)