For starters, I hate how reactionary everyone’s become since we made the Finals run. We nearly were Champions and suddenly we’re not allowed to have a bad stretch without – no joke – people begging online to trade one or both of our star players.

Its insane.

I get that we’re eleven games in and we would expect to be (at worst) 7-4, but there’s a lot of moving pieces, a lot of changes to chemistry, and a clearly under-warmed up Luka trying to A) find his shot again and B) play a totally different brand of basketball. It’s bad, but not end of the world, and we’ll only improve.

However, I do want to address the two main reasons we’ve been losing. And no, they’re NOT because Luka plays hero ball in the final seconds of the game (most of “the greats” almost always have that dog in them and take that shot, and Luka usually makes those shots), and it’s not because we’ve gone up against three of the four best teams in the West, though both are also contributing factors.

Reason 1: Bench / Role Players

This photograph/stat above shows the contrast between each team’s top three scorers last night and makes it abundantly clear what our first issue is.. It wasn’t Kyrie taking a while to get active, or Luka’s awful final shot.

It was a lack of DEPTH.

Role players / bench not sinking anything remotely meaningful, wasting passes, turnovers, missing rebounds and stacking up fouls. The big two here are NOT SINKING SHOTS and NOT GETTING REBOUNDS. Inversely, the GSW had exactly that from their role players on and off the bench.

I know some will argue that the role players we have don’t get enough time with the ball because of Luka or Kyrie, but that’s not true. Both Luka and Kyrie are showing career low’s when it comes to possessing the ball (not possessing live grenades), which means the rest of the team is getting their time to shine and still falling short.

IF we can get guys like Naji, Lively, and Grimes to meaningfully contribute with buckets every time they play, and IF we can get Gafford to rebound, we wouldn’t have been even close these last three games.

This leads us to:

Reason 2: JASON KIDD

Coach led us to two playoff runs and a final run. He gets some leeway, but boy has he been frustrating this season.

Awful rotations just to experiment and tinker, inability to push players on issues they need to fix (Luka and his moaning, Kyrie being more aggressive, Gafford and his.. everything, etc), ruining momentum, and never taking blame.

Worst of all, however, is his need to change the dynamic of the team. Last year, we fell short because we relied so heavily on Luka in the finals and no one else stepped up. Luka has since improved on his defense, marginally, but really that wasn’t the big issue. So instead of surrounding Luka with a team that lets him dominate as PG, we have Kidd forcing LD (and even Kyrie) to work more off ball and let others bring it up unless they’re in a crunch situation, in which he chucks it to Luka and prays. This is… odd. Now, I see why he thinks this opens up avenues for the team in the long run, and how other teams may have adapted to our old strategy if we kept at it, but I think being aware of something and being able to stop it are totally different things.

Not every team is going to have insane defense and 3pt makers like Boston. If we surrounded Luka and Kyrie with solid hitters and defenders and let them do their thing that they did last season, trading on and off when they’re hot, we would definitely be 9-2 or better right now.

Instead, Kidd wants to tinker and find a different path forward. Maybe he’ll pay off in the long run, maybe it won’t, but it’s been a real cultural shock to witness.

16 comments
  1. the anger with the rotations would mean more to me if the Mavs weren’t without 4 key rotation players for a 5 game stretch

    hard to hammer down rotations when that’s the case

  2. Champions of what?

    Luka shot 27 TIMES to score only 31 pts.

    You know how many shots Dinwiddie, Grimes, and Hardy had? 7. SEVEN.

  3. I’ll bite. With our current injuries, what exactly would you be doing differently in the rotations?

  4. it’s a bit odd what they’re trying to do to say the least… they went and got klay to fit in the system that took them once to semi finals and once to finals, and now they changed the system

  5. Maxi being out always hurts us more than people realize, this year the issue has been compounded more with Lively, PJ and Exum all being out at the same time Maxi has been.

    All of those players have the ability to guard multiple positions. If you watch our defense we always have either Luka or Klay hidden on defense under the basket. This works when they are surrounded by players that can rotate and guard multiple positions. As a result Luka and Klay are above average rebounders for their respective positions.

    With Maxi Lively, PJ and Exum all out our rebounds are down and people are scoring big on us.

    It’s as simple as that. All the slander Kidd gets is outrageous, yes he may be tinkering but it is out of necessity.

    Once Maxi is back everything will be fine

  6. It’s early in the season and we’re missing several key role players.

    Doesn’t Kidd usually experiment with lineups in the beginning of the season? I keep up with the team and watch games when I can, but I’m not the most avid watcher, so I could be wrong. But I definitely thought that was a thing.

    At the end of the day, it’s basketball. There’s 82 games, and not every game is “important”. I’m fine with toying with rotations and lineups, especially when dealing with injuries.

    The only thing I’m truly annoyed by/disappointed about is Luka’s complaining. I can deal with complaining, but not when he takes himself out of plays to do it. At this point, I doubt he’ll ever change, so it’s something to unfortunately live with.

    If we go another 11 games and we’re still below .500 after a quarter of the season, then I’ll start to worry.

  7. i actually have no complains with the warriors games aside from that weakass offensive foul and the no gameplan after that. i can see luka adjusted from the previous game. its just hurts ti lose 3 consecutive games in the clutch. only way to destress is to complain lol

  8. This is just my personal opinion, but i miss the grittyness of DJJ…Marshall, Grimes, Klay are all good in their own ways, but something about the length and athleticism of DJJ is missed.

  9. I think we have been losing because the coin has just been landing on the wrong side in a lot of these. No need to be too high or too low about it.

    Personally, I think the rotations are going to be a gradual thing right now. I think you have to tinker if you’re Kidd. I think that helps you see what you have. They need to see the different situations to help them gel.

    I don’t really see the need to panic at all at this point. The last three games have been tough as far as taking an L, but they are playing long stretches of good basketball in each of those games.

    It’s not even Christmas, we’ve got guys hurt, and we are in all of these games. Last year, we won so many clutch games. This season, we’re just coming up short too often. That is going to level out. We have too much talent for it not too.

    Luka needs to do some things better, but it’s good that he is playing off ball this year some. He was gassed last year in the playoffs and he still carried us to the finals. It was great to see him getting to the rim last night.

    Kyrie has been playing great, Klay got going last night, Naji is fun to watch, and it was Lively’s first game back.

    The season is long. 82 games is a lot. We didn’t really click until the trade deadline last year anyway. It won’t take that long this year. We’re about to get rolling and get on a hot streak and it will all level back out. That’s how it goes. Basketball is a game of runs. That’s true for individual games and true during a season.

  10. I made a post about this earlier today and most of the people acted like I was crazy to even Insinuate we had no bench. lol

  11. Watching Warriors game right now, halfway through 4th. Grimes has been fucking awesome. Luka’s defense atrocious. Literally just getting out of the way. Kyrie somehow finished the game 8-13 but sucked most of the game. Kidd has been awful all year. We need Exum back so Dinwiddie and Hardy can stay on the bench. Naji really good defense.

    This team will be dangerous, but I hate Jason Kidd.

  12. There is way more positive than negative at this point. Consistency and attention to detail will make the vibes much better. The heart is there. The talent is there. 

  13. How reactionary people have become since the Finals? Are you new? 😂 People have been overreacting to losses since the beginning of time

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