The season has been up and down. We’re seeing great positives recently as:
- Zion and Ingram are playing much better
- Role players are showing competence
- Team is getting healthier
- We show in stretches (and some games) that we can battle with the best
- Herb Jones 🛑
But even so, I can’t get over how we can battle elite teams regarding our front court. Even when CJ and TM3 get back, the problem still lingers. We’re about to face off against Philly who are rolling with Joel playing great. Even if they’re in the East so it’s not as much of a concern, I don’t see how we can overcome Western elite teams with good bigs (Lakers, Nuggets) as Zion, JV, Nance, etc do not match up well defensively. On the other hand, the elite teams who’s bigs aren’t as notably skilled still run circles around us with ball movement (Warriors, Kings) and our bigs often lose out in these rotations. The elite teams we fare fine against are iso-heavy teams where the center isn’t as involved in making plays (Suns, Mavericks).
Nance is honestly too small against certain lineups. Zion and JV have narrow versatility on defense. Offensively, these two have spacing issues so the half court set needs to pick one or the other; this ultimately gives an advantage to the other team in the half court.
Obviously, this is the missing piece that mgmt needs to seek out externally (trade, free agency/drafting). I honestly don’t even know what feasible trades or free agents we can look into over 2024 that will fix this issue. Until then, I wonder if there are any ways we can overcome this consistently as we have had good stretches so far against the teams I listed.
That’s a good point…but The nuggets and Jokic are essentially top boss and we still have to game against many contending teams before them. So while Jarrett Allen may not individually be an upgrade over JV, he is an upgrade for the team because he fills our voids by complementing Zion and Ingram better.
Shooting is currently killing us, but I think the shooting will get better as we get healthier and increase quantity. We have two elite shooters who will play a lot (TM3 and CJ) and one elite shooter who will play in spurts (Hawkins). We then have good catch and shoot shooters in Ingram, Jose, Naji, and Herb (improving). Ingram will have to eventually take the next step and attempt 5 threes a game, even if he shoots sub league average because we need the quantity of attempts. So, we can fix our shooting from within but the frontcourt issue requires external adjustments.
That being said, I am definitely interested in scoping out another shooter alongside reloading the frontcourt.