Can't see it happening. No Avery, no Bayless.
It's Rondo, Chris Johnson and Phil Pressey as our guard rotation. Vs OKC we had Gerald Wallace starting as the shooting guard.
The opposing teams ball handlers are going to make mince meat out of our perimeter defense like Reggie Jackson and Lamb did.
Rondo can't stay in front of anyone and will be that way for a good month or two and with Avery out there is no enforcer on the perimeter.
We've got Deron Williams and Raymond Felton then Carter Williams and Jameer Nelson/Oladipo.
I'm predicting Oladipo will simply torch us when we play the Magic because Green will be covering Afflalo.
We might win one of the Philly games if Avery is back but I can't see us coming close in the other 4 of the next 5.
We are just complete trash with Jeff Green and Pressey as our three point shooters lol.
I'd say we lose 5 in a row and get lucky to win 1 of them.
Choo chooooooooooo
Yeah, we got abused a little bit by the OKC guards last night, but, overall, I expect our defense to remain solid. Wallace has been playing with a lot of good energy lately, and I see signs that Rondo is starting to get his legs back. Hump remains really solid on the interior.
Most, importantly, this team shows a penchant for continuing to work hard and not hanging their heads. In my view, that's the key ingredient to playing defense.
I'm not making any guarantees, but I'd love to see this team keep competing and start to garner a few wins. Again, most of the upcoming games are winnable.
Let's go get some.
I agree Wallace has looked better out there lately- we were always going to have to get lucky to avoid injuries to anyone else other than Rondo and slowly but surely the toll has started to set in on guys carrying the workload like Sully and AB.
We've slowly declined defensively as other teams have played together more and started to get their offenses going and opposing coaches have scouted Stephens' line ups and sets. We've gone from being a top 5 defense with a bottom 5 offense to an average defensive team (15th best defensive rating in the NBA) and that's with AB out there. Our points allowed per game is great at 9th in the league but our offense is the 5th worst in the league.
But yeah, with no AB and no Courtney Lee it doesn't look good for the next 10 days until AB gets back as far as stopping dribble penetration from aggressive 1 and 2 guards.
Chris Johnson, Phil Pressey, Olynyk and Humphries are going to get an old school lesson in defending the pick and roll vs the Nets and the Knicks.
I'm expecting Bass and possibly Green to be traded by the deadline which will only make it tougher when Humphries and Sully come off. If Green goes then we are going to have to watch games with a bottle of vodka in one hand because it will be simply miserable out there.
I do love the fact that you want us to win. You love the team just as much as I do.
The only bright spot I can see is if Rondo gets his legs back to 90% quickly and the team adjusts to his style (which they are working on) and they start capitalizing on his passing. Hard part for him is he is about as mobile as a cement block with lateral movement whilst the knee builds muscle memory, and he doesn't have ANY shooters to pass to other than Jeff Green and Bass- and it looks like Danny is trying his best to ship both of them out of town ASAP.
The other part of this bright spot is that Sully and Olynyk will be receiving those passes from and getting into a rhythm with Rondo, and Chris Johnson and Pressey will be learning from one of the best. Chris Johnson is the new Steimsma feel good story for us and hopefully he can etch out some respect in the league and be a great 3rd string guard.
We are over half way and with 37 games left anything can happen, but seeing how tough Rondo is doing- I'm pretty convinced that Danny will make sure we don't win more than 10 of those games- by trading away Bass and Green or Bass and Humphries. If Rondo is 90% by the middle of March (one and a half months away from now) then he'll only get 14 or 15 games at that level anyway.
The brightest spark is that I'm pretty convinced that Ainge is keeping Rondo now and we'll probably get a really good pick in the top 6 in the draft which could potentially land us a co-star for Rondo for the next 5 years. If Danny doesn't like any of the kids available when we pick, then that pick is probably the best trade chip we've had since Al Jefferson and Jeff Green's pick.
Topic: I think a nice little winning streak is coming (Read 10063 times)