TDL Archived: The 2nd Rnd Pick Yankee Swap

[mvossman]

As soon as Wood is out, Luka is doubled, we cant score, and play horrible D, and we lose. Its showing up directly. In the games where Luka and Wood have been the best on offense, its exactly the games where they were best on the D side as well.

For other historic teams, you would need to refer to a specific case. Perhaps they were not that great defensive players but only good offensive players?  Luka and Wood are great defensive and offensive players, when the offensive scheme is roling, when not and the D is not set in transition, and they are out of position, then not. Of course there are players that are only one way, it is not how to understand my post. We need two way players. If you get one way players, lets say defense first, you wont be able to play offense, and when offense is not rolling, the defense wont as well. And vice verca. We need two way players. My point is that we need to find offensive players, that are underrated defenders and that have the wrong label being bad defenders. Just like people were wrong about Luka and CWood on that part.

When our 3&D players got hurt. DFS, Maxi etc. I think we got the longest running streak in 2011. Correct me if i wrong? Why? We started to play CWood which means better offense. THJ had some impact as well. But the impact would be far far greater if it had been Brunson or some other skilled player.

I think the recent run of won games clearly demonstrates how much better out offense and record was once we lower the one dimensional players and place multi offensive skillset around Luka. We need offensive skillset and underarted defenders. Once the offense is rolling, all these players will perform even more on defensive side.

P.S. An example is last season also when we started playing far better D when Brunson playing along Luka. Both not known to be great defensive players. But defense excelled at many points. But when you score on offense with ease, get back, you can get the most out of your defensive abilities. They were fantastic on both ends and it is the lack of multi skill level of the other positions that held us from going all the way.

That seven game win streak is almost entirely due to playing against bottom feeding tanking teams, and a lot of those wins were due to Luka having historic 50 point games.  Before the injuries, this team had some maddening losses to bad teams, but they had one of the best records against good teams in the league.  Since the injuries they are getting trucked by any good team they play.  This team has been significantly worse since the injuries by any metric you look at, and a 7 game win streak against a bunch of turds does not change that.