Capital New York

bf8200 commented on The mysterious case of Kris Humphries and the ailing Nets

Howard you hit the nail on the head but not hard enough. Blatch and Evans are pleasant surprise additions to the bench. Remember they both were team-less and that is not by accident. With limited back-up minutes they can be great assets to this or any team but not with significant minutes. That brings us to the issue of roles. To be successful a team needs ALL of its parts (players) pulling in the same direction. This happens when each player knows and embraces his role. The Nets do not have roles established for each player yet. Coach is over-coaching and as such putting people in positions to fail instead of having each player know, understand, and fulfill his role. The Nets starting lineup of Lopez at the 5, Humphries at the 4, Wallace at the 3, Johnson at the 2, and Williams at the 1 is as good as any team in the league. This is becasue each player is extremely good at doing the things that are needed to fill their specific positions needs. You have it all on offense with 4 guys who can score 30 on any given night plus the 5th who can score in double figures. Where the real plus comes in is on defense. Humphries, Wallace, and Williams can help enough on defense to make up for Lopez and Johnson's defensive shortcomings thereby giving the team an advantage over most other teams. Not many have 3 real tough defenders in their starting lineup. Then we have to look at the substitution patterns. The starters need to know they are getting their minutes so they can be comfortable playing their game. The back-ups need to fill in and then be comfortable going back to the bench to let the team do what it was designed to do. I went to the Heat game in Miami and must tell you that it was obvious that we threw that game away just like many of the other loses. These are not machine parts that work perfectly on demand when installed. Coach is too enamored with "small ball" and it costs the team victories. Wallace is one of the better small forwards in the league but only a mediocre power forward. Johnson is one of the best shooting guards in the league but only a mediocre small forward. Stay with the team as designed and built and the victories will pile up. Keep over-coaching and think we are smarter than all of the other teams and the losses will continue to mount up AGAIN. Williams on the bench until 4 minutes left in a close game is absurd. The team paid him for a reason and coach needs to trust the GM knew what he was doing when the team was put together. Remember that Coach of the Year got fired because small ball did not work in Dallas just like it has not worked in the vast majority of the time in the NBA. Miami was an exception but that experiment is proving to be short lived as teams see you can beat the Heat with big's playing tough. An old time New York basketball junkie.

Posted on December 17th, 2012 9:05pm