i dont think we'll see anything as crazy as trading away our centers, and totally abandoning rebounds and rim protection... while trying to shoot 50+ 3s a game - even though we dont really have many good shooters... but folks were onboard for that mess... lol
The Tom Thibodeau special. Have your starting line-up lead the league in minutes played to squeak out a few more regular season wins, so that they are tired and injured in the playoffs.
I appreciate Stone hasn't overpaid for shooters but the "this team can't shoot" reality is 5 years old at least. This isn't a new problem - we have to address it at some point and Stone continues to try to try to treat the symptoms instead of solving the root cause and Udoka hasn't really changed the offense to generate better opportunities either. Bringing the best shooter of all time in helps - but KD is one player who is a poor playmaker so it doesn't do much for the rest of roster - especially when the whole offense is "get KD the ball". The offense has been exposed for multiple bad shooters, the defense has been exposed for poor rim protection and we continue to point to the guy who is both a bad shooter and a bad defender as the future of our franchise. Fred and Stevo would both help and we can say we are better team when healthy but at some point Stone is going to have to take some risk because the risk averse approach to team building is just putting us in a smaller and smaller box where the only way we are legit contenders is: - we get meaningful playoff contributions from aging injury prone players. Fred, Steven, KD, DFS - none were available when we needed them the most and the way the current roster is constructed - we need them ALL. - we see total transformations from players who have never even hinted they had those new skill sets - Alpi's shooting, and defense, Reeds defense, Amen's shooting, Tari's still making boneheaded plays in year 4. Jabari learning to generate offense 1v1 is like the only legit new thing any of our young guys have brought into their skill sets. - we see evidence Udoka can dynamically adapt to personnel changes in his coaching style - not like 15 games from now, but like "after halftime once we have been completely exposed in a half of basketball". If ^^^ are the things necessary to make us legit contenders then you probably aren't a legit contender to begin with.
