MAVS 114, WOLVES 102

[omahen]

I was a bit surprised at the people yesterday who were wondering why we didn't just promote guys from Frisco.  By now, we know what those guys can/can't do.  Why not take this opportunity to get a peak at similar talent on other G-League teams.  

I am one of those people. Aren't those guys in Frisco because we believe in them? So why jump them when it comes to actual opportunity? It is obvious it means the world to guys. I think all these players will soon be forgotten (difficult for any of them to get a roster spot), but I think this is where term continuity would be important. Motivating the guys - come to Frisco, work hard with us and you might get a chance. The message now is - come work with us but when the opportunity comes we will give it to someone else to have a look at someone else.

I agree with take from one other poster, that MacLaughlin doesn't look great. 

What are we getting for our investment in KP's happiness?  .388 from 3-10 feet and .382 from 10-16 feet (oh yeah, and his 3% has totally gone to crap).   Meanwhile, Luka has lost 47 basis points off his TS% because KP's flashing into the lane while Luka is trying to drive.  Hardaway's TS% is over 70 basis points worse than each of the last two seasons.   Bullock's TS% is a full percentage point worse than his career average.  The payoff of Kidd letting KP "just be a basketball player" is a hugely diminished team offense. 

Totally agree with this. Mavs have failed in whatever they tried to do with KP. Even if the goal was just to showcase him, the result is showing only that RC was actually totally correct what is the best way to use him. KP is not a star, he can't create for himself. He can be good if he receives ball on the move near the basket or as a CnS. Everything else is suboptimal. So RC was not the problem, it is the KP perception of himself. Not to mention that the reason to play another center is to save KP health. But he is missing games anyway, quite a lot of them. I would much rather see they play him only every second game but use rotations that make sense than this crap we have to watch now.

We have very scattered data regarding KP as the only big. Lots of different lineups with 30 minutes for most used one THJ-DFS-Luka_Brunson-DFS. Not surprisingly this lineup is bad defensively, what is surprising is they were very bad on the offense. Other than that most of the remaining lineups with KP as the only big (counting Kleber as a non-big as he can spread the floor) are doing ok on a very small sample.

The only scheme that imho makes sense with KP is to have him as the screener in the Luka PnR with three floor spreading wings. The one thing they basically refuse to play for three years now. Since it is so obvious they should at least try to do this, the only logical reason they don't do it can be, that one of the players doesn't want to do it.