I know many of you all hoped my silence had predictive value. It’s my pleasure to disappoint . . .
- I’m happy with the offseason. There were flashier moves out there, but I don’t much care about that. The moves available to other teams were not available to the Pelicans, and that’s a fact that needs to be addressed, but this offseason can’t be penalized for not matching unrealistic fantasy.
- The single biggest issue on this team was perimeter defense. I’ve been beating the drum on that for years (not alone). What’s less widely held is an understanding of just how bad the defense was on the perimeter and how it affected the rest of the defense. The defense there was so bad that small changes will have a greater-than-commonly-expected effect on the entire team performance. It will be superadditive. The improvement due to Erman was clear, but it wasn’t quite enough to make it come together with the players available, nearly all of whom were inherited. This season, Erman should be set up for success. Even if he is over-credited, he could deserves a little shine. Watch this carefully, praise and criticize appropriately come January.
- Versatility is the new continuity, except it’s actually positive and appropriate. Jim Eichenhofer used the word (basically) in promoting the Terrance Jones signing, and he hit it on the nose. It would be remiss of the organization to not make this part of the marketing and promotion for the year. That’s “Versatility,” fellas. Pound it.
- “Young Vets” still in effect. For all the supposed change in strategy or tactics, I don’t see much. I see all that as an overreaction to overreaction to noise . . . the signals remains the same (here’s your Rush Zeppelin reference for the year, plus a video).
- Ferry is now officially involved, but what changed is a paycheck, it seems, and how some of the understaff gets their day-to-day. More than all this, it’s potentially another step toward building a real basketball culture internally that resonates externally. There are valid and invalid perceptions some media and fans perpetuate that keep the “Second Class” stink on the team. The organization is rightfully changing and growing (why perfection was expected from the jump, I don’t know), but others need to do their part, too.
3 responses to “Versatility”
I hope that the increased versatility is accompanied by a decrease in variability. Gordon and Anderson have to be two of the least versatile and most variable starters in the league. Gordon did not rebound, share, or defend well while a Pelican. Anderson did not rebound defensively, share, or defend at all while a Pelican. All they did is shoot, with an occasional offensive rebound by Anderson. That’s the lack of versatility. Hopefully their replacements will feel the need to do all of the basketball things, not just shoot.
Gordon rarely put together a whole game, scoring well for a quarter or two every 5 or 6 quarters, then going silent on his scoring the remainder of the time. Anderson’s inability to shoot on the road except on rare occasions was maddening. This variability made game planning (especially for road games) almost impossible even when these two were healthy. This was made worse by their lack of contribution in other areas. I don’t have any evidence that their replacements will be more consistent, other than the fact that they almost have to be….
I look forward to getting to know these new players, and with them the best of health. If we are in the bottom third in number of different starting lineups used (instead of setting records for the most), we will make the playoffs.
NOEngineer The only possible thing to add to that post is at the end of the first paragraph, adding: “Shooting would be nice, though.” 🙂
It may be a matter of semantics but I think that the versatility that was added to the roster came to us by way of defense. And while that is half of the game and there are many aspects to it, the primary takeaway to me is that we will likely be simplifying the defensive scheme even further. We will probably switch on every pick and roll because we have players who are versatile enough to defend multiple positions adequately.
I agree that will have a cumulative effect on the rest of the defense (the interior defense anyways) but I think that another takeaway is how much we just went all in on AD. He’s going to have to be a rock on defense and shoulder the primary scoring load as well. Jrue can create at times but unless Jones becomes the player he once was, AD and Jrue are the only consistent threats we have and they have played a combined 335 games in 3 years, an average of 56 games a year each of the last three years. If either go down I’m not confident (having not seen how some of the pieces fit yet obviously) that we can score well enough to make the improvement to the defense valuable enough to win us many more games than last year. So although we didn’t make risky moves in terms of flashy signings, I think we did make some risky moves in terms of winning this season, although I’m not sure what else was there to be done to improve on it tremendously.