One thing I’ve realized since the Raptors game (Ivey’s first game starting) is that the starters actually seem to play the other starters relatively even, and then the bench just gets the doors blown off them, or at least loses minutes

This was very evident in the Raptors game where they went down by 20 after a 5 min bench stretch in the first half, but has continued to be true in the 3 games since. This is cherry picking but to illustrate

Burks +/-: -29, -13, -8, -12 Ivey +/-: +0, +8, -15, +2

Yes you got that right, even though single game plus minus isn’t that relevant in the lowest point of our NBA season where we got blown out 3 times in 4 games - Ivey was basically a positive in 3 of them.

Our starters are incredibly young and do not have the juice or winning habits to have come from behind victories in the 4th quarter.

But they shouldn’t have to. One of the only roster benefits to having young rookie contract starters is that you can use your cap space on veterans that just based on asset value alone should be able to win battles against other weak benches (whose benches are weak because their cap space is tied up in their starters)

In our case, Weaver and Monty (but mostly Weaver) completely screwed us. This Hayes/Sasser/Burks/Livers/Wiseman thing from yesterday is basically one of the shittiest benches imaginable - a bunch of young players who are not really above average in offense or defense , except for when Burks is on a hot streak. Of course Monte would have helped a lot but I think more and more that this was the cardinal sin of this offseason. I was hoodwinked into believing our team was going to be deeper with our talent improvements and cap space/trade gets but actually staring at those names I realize what a mistake that was.

I think if our bench was winning minutes and our starters were keeping it even but maybe still got burnt out by the 4th quarter we might have 4-5 wins right now. Nothing to write home about, but at least more in line with what our season was supposed to look like. And that was an entirely controllable, and not very difficult, thing in our offseason and rotational decisions (unlike eg Cades ascension to superstardom or Durens ascension to stardom)