25 comments

1. Some quick observations for the late night (degen) crew –

   * RJs been off for this road trip. Bad D and some really terrible shot selection. He needs to focus on what he’s good at and stick to that.

   * Ochai’s improvement from 3 is hugely impressive. Shot looks great. He can get a nice role player multi year deal here if that is here to stay.

   * Yak gets way too much criticism on this sub. He isnt an elite centre but he does so much of the fundamental things that our defense relies on. Lakers went on a huge run when he sat to end the third and into the fourth.

   * Darko deserves credit for the development of these guys but he also deserves some criticism for some of the in game management stuff. We sat Yak far too long. Game was out of reach by the time he got back in during the 4th.

   * 0 – 4 on this west coast road trip. I’m not mad at it. Some great development reps and further consolidation of our draft position. Make no mistake, even with Scottie back, this is a bottom 5 team.

2. someone tell our players to stop switching so easily on defense

   you’re making it so easy for the other team to abuse mismatches. it’s basically every game like this.

3. Yeah that was a second night of a B2B alright. Chuck it in the toilet and move on.

   Big concerns from me in this game was how selfish IQ and RJ played. IQ especially – lots of ball stopping and slow to run the offence. I also have felt that he’s overcomplicating his offence, not taking good looks from 3 to drive and then take a harder shot. Some of it is rust as he works his way back from injury but the way he played tonight wasn’t great. RJ just felt like some tunnel vision on his drives. Also felt he was taking too many 3s. At one point in the first half he was 1/6 from 3 and 3/9 overall. Not liking him having that many 3s in his shot diet.

   Gradey made two 3s to start the third and I don’t think he got another shot the rest of the half. I know defenses are starting to lock in on him but that can’t happen.

   Players with the archetype of Jaxon Hayes (high energy and athletic bigs) really give us trouble. Need to figure out an answer to that as we build this roster out.

4. That one just plain ugly at the end of the 3rd Q. Tank mode engaged hard with this one. Also fuck Tony Brothers.

5. Another L in the bag for the tank I guess

6. #AIRIOUS “ACE” BAILEY, YOU ARE A TORONTO RAPTOR 🔥🔥🗣️🗣️🦖🦖

7. Bad loss in a lot of ways. IQ and RJ reverting to bad habits with how they ran the offense. Killed the flow a ton and often had tunnel vision. Teams are adjusting to how they’re defending RJ and Gradey and we need to adjust to that. IQ was supposed to come in and take some of that pressure off but he was horrible.

   Hope this was just the case of a back to back lazy game and not a sign of the novelty wearing off from being the underdog team catching guys by surprise.

   Also, please fire pat delaney as defensive coach already. Wtf does he even do

8. Even in a down year, still extremely hard to stomach getting swept by the Lakers of all teams.

9. Just nothing working tonight. JJs defence had our guys questioning instead of confident and Lebron picked our defence apart, making sure we couldn’t run. Lakers played a great game and we were in mud.

10. RJ with a putrid game both offensively and defensively. I hope he gets his game together. The rebuild needs him to become a core player.

    The backup PG spot continues to be a problem because of a lack of shooting. It’s hard to initiate offense if the other team won’t even guard you on the perimeter.

11. Tuesday vs the Bucks is a must-lose

12. We have one helluva a bad good team. We’re 2-9. We’re just going to keep sliding without Scottie. Also Shead and Mitchell need to make threes or we don’t have a good backup guard.

13. GGs my canadian brothers. See yall next year

    Dick a monster

14. Second half was not fun, specially fourth quarter. Almost everyone shooting bad, fouling all the time, and it looked like there was no strategy during a stretch. Gradey was open for so many shots and yet IQ and Barrett would ignore him.

15. Gradey getting back to back threes to start the 2nd half and getting ignored the rest of the game was fucking brutal to watch.

    IQ and Barrett bricking up a storm you gotta go to some other guys.

16. Fantastic road trip

17. this wasn’t a very ethical tank game

18. I really liked the passing that Boucher showed. All three of the assists were quality reads he made.

19. I’m fine with critiquing bad play, but can we take it easy on writing off IQ’s place on the team? He’s barely had a chance to play with the team this year and he literally just returned from a bad lower back injury.

20. IQ coming off an injury, playing a back-to-back, caveats apply, but holy shit, that was a disgusting performance. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Not what the team needs from him at all. Darko needs to have a long sit-down with him, the shit he wad doing today cannot become habits, especially when Scottie is back. Awful defense, awful shot diet (10 tough twos, only four threes), holding the ball too long, missing Gradey for a wide open three pointer on the wing just one pass away, turning down threes when it’s passed to him only to dribble into nowhere and turn it over. Unacceptable stuff.

21. It sucks watching losing basketball but the bigger picture is what keeps me sane. Hope the basketball gods bless us in spring at the lottery

22. Sixers won today, so we are now officially the worst team in the NBA

23. Gradey and Ochai getting iced out in the second half really bothered me … That’s all. 

24. Wondering watching comments: Did everyone demanding a teardown last year not think there’d be nights like this (and probably more than we’ve seen so far)?

    Every other game, minus their best player, they’ve been competitive. Even tonight, they were the better team in first half, largely because they were winning most battles. Second half was ugly, which isn’t totally shocking on a back to back during a west-coast swing.

    The most obvious cause for worry was IQ, and if he’s still playing like that in a couple weeks I’ll get worried, but for now nobody should be tearing their hair out about any of this.

25. I just got some things to say.

    1. Not getting the ball to Gradey after hitting back to back 3’s was horrible and Darko should have yelled at IQ and RJ for that. This offense is built on being selfless. Tunnel vision shouldn’t be a thing.

    2. Ochai has been our best player the last 3 games and his improvement has been nothing short of a blessing.

    3. I recall some people on this Reddit ready to give the reigns to RJ. Still want to do that now?

    4. IQ I give it up to rust but RJ has been horrible offensively and defensively the last few games. If Scottie was having these games, certain people would be crapping on him. Keep the same energy.