Mazzulla will be like “nah Kornet is good enough”.
If he wises up and lets Tillman play that’ll improve our defense a ton out there, even if he may be limited offensively himself. We got other guys who can score in bunches anyways
The primary role of any bench player is to not lose the lead or not make the deficit worse while you're in there. Kornet was a +2 last game which isn't bad. Yes he was abused on defense but offense counts too.
I'm more worried about Pritchard and Hauser. PP was -15 and we know how bad Hauser was. You need your bench to play well in the playoffs.
What good did he do on offense? His only skill is to guide a lob into the basket which even a guy with stone hands can do. Beyond that, a good +/- is not always an indicator of good individual performance on the floor, especially when the player is surrounded by all-stars.
Kornet almost never plays with 4 starters. Point being despite the narrative of many, he held his own. Kornet, if you haven't noticed, moves pretty well without the ball and gets himself into positions where he gets some easy buckets off passes from teammates or on putbacks. He runs the pick and roll reasonably well and he's a decent passer.
We'd all rather he doesn't have to play a ton of minutes in the playoffs, but he wasn't the reason they nearly lost the game.
If you go small and play Brissett instead, defensive rebounds are going to be a problem if you've got Siakam & Turner out there together. Nesmith too is active as hell. It'll be hard to keep those guys from getting 2nd chance points.
So I take that to mean you believe +/- is a reliable indicator. Otherwise what objective criteria are you using for that statement? I don’t think there is one, so I use the eye-test.
Look, it’s obvious that I think Kornet is not very good NBA player and I think Joe is incorrect in playing him so much. I have a right those opinions.
Kornet was surprisingly good in the regular season and ate up minutes in a positive way. I have been hard on him in the past and he proved me wrong.
That being said, anybody with eyes can see that Luke is basically getting played off the floor in the last 5 games. Maybe in a couple of those games, the guys he is playing with are hitting shots (to help with plus/minus), but defensively, he's being attacked and giving little to no resistance.
At least with Al, he is out there on the perimeter with a hand in guys' faces and they are still knocking them down. With Luke, he is already in drop, and it still doesn't matter. If he can't defend other bigs and he can't protect the rim, then he is a detriment. It's not like he is out there for his killer offense.
Topic: Pacers (0-1) at Celtics (1-0) ECF Game 2 5/23/24 (Read 53063 times)