Grades v. Hawks 11/16/2012

[UK_King]

Yeah the rotations aren't helping but there is no way Smart is responsable for the lax effort on D tonight, that was just inexcusable for me. Players jogging around sulking, I don't care if you're going to lose you don't just give up baskets, that was down right shameful at the end, letting them walk in and help themselves like it was a run meet.

Even if you think it's the wrong group on the floor EVERY single player should be busting their *** on defence and that simply didn't happen. You could find a roundabout way to blame the coach and I'm sure most on this board will, but i won't. Players need to step up their effort, even with the questionable rotations that we saw out there.

[Gilles]

Maloofs will be extremely patient with the coach, who just got extended so be ready to endure this for a while. Too bad players cannot vote owners out.

[LPKingsFan]

Not even Adelman could teach these guys how to play right, or make a bunch of ill-fitting pieces mesh. Fixing the coaching may be necessary, but it's far from sufficient to fix this mess.

[CaminoChaos]

Has anyone else noticed how lazy DMC has gotten. The guy literally walks up and down the court on just about every possesion pouting and being a baby. Good example. The whole roster is garbage IMO. There is not one player I'd be willing to keep.

[UK_King]

Has anyone else noticed how lazy DMC has gotten. The guy literally walks up and down the court on just about every possesion pouting and being a baby. Good example. The whole roster is garbage IMO. There is not one player I'd be willing to keep.

I didn't like his effort at all last night, you could use the excuse.. "oh he's had 2 off he's gonna be rusty" but it went beyond "rust" It was flagrant disregard for the game and taking plays off down the stretch, I'm not bothered if we're down 40, i don't want to see people leaving their man on purpose so they can lay it in.

[pshn80]

I think the remaining players and our team and our coach would have been better served if the team had done what I asked and traded away both Thornton and Fredette before the season started. We would miss two very good scores and two ill equipped defenders. Seeing the points pour is fun but seeing a tight defense in action is my preference. Our record might be the same but I believed the team would be playing better ball and we would be farther along towards solving our problem. One could say hogwash to all this....... But still..........

[Gary]

I hate to say this but if the right deal came around I would trade everyone on this team. EVERYONE including Cousins. We need more position players. We don't really have that and it's screwing up the lineups.

[Bricklayer]

I hate to say this but if the right deal came around I would trade everyone on this team. EVERYONE including Cousins. We need more position players. We don't really have that and it's screwing up the lineups.

Can't panic and do that. Well...yes you can panic. And we maybe should. But if we make rash decisions in our panic then not only is the rebuild over and we have to start form scratch, but the losing will stretch to 10 straight years with a good chance of the corner not being turned until they are playing in fornt of fans in another city, ala the Seattle/OKC scenario.

Do agree though that we have hit kind of a perfect storm here of clueless GM with dumb philosophy of just picking up "good basketball players" with no regards to fit or role, and a coach unwilling to make tough calls and instill that discipline himself. In fact really as a Nellie disicple who picks and chooses his Pop lessons, maybe a guy who loves the mess too. Jerry Reynolds is dead wrong, as he often is. Its not about putting together "good" basketball players. Its about putting together basketball players who fit and understand their roles. Thabo Seflalosha can't create, Kendrick Perkins can't do much of anything but defend, the best thing you can say about Nick Collison is that he works hard, yet these are major rotation components of the Western Conference champs. Why? They work hard, stay out of the way, know their limitations, accept their roles. And because of it the whole team works better. Geoff has never gotten that. Never seemed to understand roleplayers. And its increasingly evident Smart is clueless on that front as well.

[rainmaker]

I don't see how cleaning house of the players solves our problems. That's faulty logic to me. What would make anyone think whoever we bring in would be managed well or used correctly? Two biggest issues for me pertaining to that line of thinking are:

1) Just about every single one of our players has poor value right now. We're not getting what we should in return. We've killed the value of just about every player on our roster. Selling low won't solve many issues. This is one of the biggest problems with Smart and how he manages games. No one is getting into a rhythm and keeping that rhythm. No one looks confident. What happens because of that? Everyones numbers are down. No one is playing up to their potential. The only player who might fetch something close to his value now is JT. how exactly will that get us something in return which will help our roster?

2) Smart doesn't use Cuz/Reke/MT/IT/Jimmer/JJ/Chuck/Trob correctly. So say for arguments sake(I wouldn't do this) we trade Cuz for Horford and Reke for Jared Dudley(I know salaries don't match), where is any evidence those players would be used correctly? If as an organization you completely mismanage the assets you have, simply swapping assets doesn't fix the problem.

I also question what exactly we could get for our players. An example would be MT.Was there interest in him this summer? Did Petrie turn down deals? MT played well last year, better than this year, yet did we have any opportunities to move him for a SF? It's possible Petrie decided this roster fits well and didn't seek moves this past summer, but the other side might be that he did try to move pieces to help the roster and a 2nd for JJ was the best he could get. With such a poorly constructed roster, if our guys had value you'd think a trade wouldn't have been too hard to come by this summer to improve our roster.

Of course there was the rumored option for Lowry, but I think people overrate how easy it is to simply move our pieces for pieces which will help us.

But even if we did trade for Lowry, we'd probably see Smart play him at SG and SF in Brooks/MT/Lowry or IT/Lowry lineups. It all goes back to even if we do trade players it won't matter a whole lot if we're not managing any of our players correctly.

[DesertFox]

Can't panic and do that. Well...yes you can panic. And we maybe should. But if we make rash decisions in our panic then not only is the rebuild over and we have to start form scratch, but the losing will stretch to 10 straight years with a good chance of the corner not being turned until they are playing in fornt of fans in another city, ala the Seattle/OKC scenario.

Do agree though that we have hit kind of a perfect storm here of clueless GM with dumb philosophy of just picking up "good basketball players" with no regards to fit or role, and a coach unwilling to make tough calls and instill that discipline himself. In fact really as a Nellie disicple who picks and chooses his Pop lessons, maybe a guy who loves the mess too. Jerry Reynolds is dead wrong, as he often is. Its not about putting together "good" basketball players. Its about putting together basketball players who fit and understand their roles. Thabo Seflalosha can't create, Kendrick Perkins can't do much of anything but defend, the best thing you can say about Nick Collison is that he works hard, yet these are major rotation components of the Western Conference champs. Why? They work hard, stay out of the way, know their limitations, accept their roles. And because of it the whole team works better. Geoff has never gotten that. Never seemed to understand roleplayers. And its increasingly evident Smart is clueless on that front as well.

What confuses me the most is I once thought Petrie understood those things. He signed relative unknowns Pollard and Bobby J to long term deals, traded for Christie, and always had at least one tough vet at the end of the bench.

[Henkel]

The biggest thing that separates us from the OKC's of the world is talent. The rotations suck and the role players aren't utilized, but the problem is much deeper then that. Cousins has a chance to be elite, yet mentally he's so far off that you have to wonder if he'll ever get there. Petrie is just as responsible, if not more so, for this mess. I hope we clean house before another disastrous off season.

[hrdboild]

Of course there was the rumored option for Lowry, but I think people overrate how easy it is to simply move our pieces for pieces which will help us.

But even if we did trade for Lowry, we'd probably see Smart play him at SG and SF in Brooks/MT/Lowry or IT/Lowry lineups. It all goes back to even if we do trade players it won't matter a whole lot if we're not managing any of our players correctly.

Top 5 picks have value. Last year's draft was an excellent opportunity to trade down and still pick up a solid player. There were guys that were picked in the late teens that will probably end up being starters in the league. But I think you're right -- even if Petrie pulled off a solid deal over the summer, Smart doesn't have a clue when it comes to assigning roles so we're probably in the same situation regardless. I'd feel better though if Smart were the only problem. He's near the top of the list, but that's getting to be a pretty long list.