MAVS NEWS:

[Knutsen]

DJJ had the ability to guard the opponents best player, and that is not really in Naji’s repertoire at this point. I also am worried about how to get Grimes/Naji into the rotation consistently without making Klay feel threatened for minutes.

IF Grimes can cover guards POA and Naji get the assignment on forwards we should be better, but one or the other being relegated to cheerleader will have us wishing to get DJJ back.

The best way of doing this would be to strip Luka’s and maybe Kyrie‘s minutes during the regular season. That means that we would have to be good enough to win a lot of games against lesser competition without Luka having to go all-out. We kind of achieved that after the trades in the last quarter of the season, but in that phase we had to achieve cohesiveness as a team gearing up for the play-offs and the wear and tear with the nagging lower body injuries was already there for Luka. If we start out at that level or maybe even better with the new additions it could be the first time ever that we could combine winning a lot of games and reducing Luka’s usage, opening up a couple of minutes for Grimes and Naji.

Another way is of course injuries, that you never want to happen but that will happen through the course of a season, especially having a couple of injury-prone players like Kleber, Exum, Kyrie and maybe, but hopefully not, Lively in the rotation.