If they play like they played a few games this yr where they had great Ball movement, cutting to the basket, hitting their open shots, rebounded and played tenacious D ,then they have a shot at a game or 2 but I'm not holding my breath that they won't revert back to Hero Ball that's been allowed by Brad all yr. If that happens, then it will be a Sweep and the Games won't even be close. I'm hoping the Former.
I would love to see the analytics on this. Good ball movement is prettier, but I wonder: is it more effective on this team as currently constructed?
Part of me thinks that our best chance at winning is just to give Tatum the ball on every possession and have him make something happen. I am at the point where I prefer a contested Tatum shot to a wide open one from anybody other than Kemba or Fornier.
The analytics on this would answer that it depends on team construction. If you're a team with one or two MVP-level quarterbacks (basically players who can get into that band of players who're above your typical All-NBA player like Kyrie or Lillard with just their offence) and not much else, you should really play through them and mould your supporting cast around them to optimise their strengths (there are different ways to build a heliocentric system, eg. with Jokic you want a lot of players who can cut and move off the ball while you'd want spot up shooters and rim finishers around LeBron) because this style of play can consistently create high quality looks compared to other ways with the same cast of players.
But if your MVP-level quarterback is a bit special like Bird or Curry who can create a 'frictionless offence' with fantastic on-ball work and amazing off-ball abilities or you don't have that type of guy but have multiple stars (our Celtics team says hello), you try and build a more 'balanced' offence where the best player doesn't hold the ball all the time to let multiple players on the court make reads and attack favourable angles/matchups to grind out high quality looks (obviously a team with Bird/Curry would still run a lot of things through them, but a combination of heliocentrism and letting other teammates make reads at times would get the most out of the team as their mix of on and off-ball skills would be optimised). This is especially important for the latter because their best player isn't getting the offence to the heights needed to win a title by himself (unless the team is defensively-slanted and doesn't need a top offence to win titles), so he needs co-stars to share the offensive load and give the team multiple threats who can score and create so that opposing defences can't load up on one player, ensuring that the team can consistently create quality looks.
One major gripe I have with Brad this season is that he hasn't been utilising Brown all that well. It was common this year to see him have a huge quarter of feeding off of scraps (and he'll get a few possessions on the ball because teammates sense that he's hot) and proceed to stand in the corner the next 1-2 quarters in a way that almost looks instructed. This wasn't even because Tatum and Kemba were in front of him in the pecking order - we could have Smart, Teague or FastPP out there and they can still be running PnRs over and over while Jaylen is either in the corner or at the wing as an emergency bailout isolation scorer.
Topic: Brads comments on series vs Nets (Read 16160 times)