We had to fix our top 8 guys first.
That’s not really related to why are talking about. They could have signed zeller for the minimum or many other players at the time we were signing all the stiffs. Is this like a new thing thing we can’t have even mild criticism of stevens even if completely valid? I like his trades, the coach selection. I’m hardly a negative fan of our team. Acting like we couldn’t have possibly done anything slightly difference when we have a bunch of guys we don’t play in desperation and don’t have upside clearly something we could have done better on. Tp to roy and others for being able to have a nuanced view of this.
I'm more in the boat of - if we don't manage the finals this year, I won't lose my head. I also think you can't really optimize every single thing, because you only have so much time and resources, and you're working with people not cogs in a machine.
There's one of Ime, and several of Tatum, Brown and Smart, to a lesser extent Grant and TimeLord, who, despite all they've accomplished, were coming off a couple down years of underperformance (relatively) and COVID games. (My feeling is that) these guys needed a lot of attention - to stop whining to the refs, to play focused, to lead, to stop chucking 3's, stop iso'ing and play as a team.
Fans keep talking about "oh Ime should have sat him earlier" or "oh he should have brought them out earlier". But if Jaylen is used to getting a break 5 minutes into the quarter, and any change to that schedule might mess up his rhythm, then he has to take that break. By the same token, (I feel) Ime ran a tight rotation to instill more accountability - as in, Tatum you're going to play these 40 minutes, and you're responsible for whatever happens - and even at the expense of losing a game or 2, having that consistency and cutting out variables is helpful.
I am a huge fan of Brad, and I wish it'd worked out. But maybe getting too cute with putting mad scientist lineups out there was what hurt the growth of the team in a way. Players didn't know what to expect, there was no structure. I think Brad coaching would have worked better with a Tim Duncan or an Al Horford type - someone to right the ship.
That's why (in my opinion), when people call Ime out for not being inventive enough, I'm kind of ok with it. This is a year of getting rid of bad habits. I'm fine with Ime focusing on these guys, rather than having to integrate someone with role player upside and having additional narratives to have to deal with. I'm fine with sticking with a known quantity in Kornet, or perhaps someone like Stauskas who's humbled and willing to just be a warm body in our practices or whatever.
Maybe Ime gets more creative next year. I'm excited to see what happens. Maybe our rotation gets deeper.
Ironically, we might have actually gotten rid of some depth that people are calling for in this very thread. Schroeder would have probably won us that Heat game too. But (felt like) he was a distraction - it's like he's the anti-Derrick White, scores a ton, but is a sieve on D and doesn't pass the ball - he could have won that Heat game but lost us the series.
On the flip side - even though we might have missed out on an additional rotation player our young role players are playing out of their freaking minds - Grant with huge games, Pritchard has become an extremely consistent microwave scorer after things seemingly not having clicked for him. Funnily enough people act surprised about Pritchard's emergance, I think Ime was always leaning on him from the very start - I think he even said so in some of his interviews. Pritchard just got injured. So again there's that consistency.
A lot of speculation on my part but there you go.
Topic: Should we / could we have developed more depth? (Read 7304 times)