I’d say a lot of this question about rebuilding really misses the mark. We’re current way better than our performances. We can talk about roster building and the bones of this roster and say we’re not really there, but I don’t buy that. Nobody would have said the Celtics are there earlier this season and now people are talking about them as legitimate contenders. What’s different structurally? Nothing, really, aside from a deadline move. They just started winning and playing really good. I don’t buy the idea that such and such team does or doesn’t have formula when our takes on who’s a contender is based on how they play over a stretch.
If you look at all the games we were in that we couldn’t close out or the games we were up big and blew the lead, it’s a lot like looking at game outcomes on 50/50 balls. You can appeal to one or two games where you can say that the 50/50 balls didn’t go your way, but when you start piling those up, it suggests that there’s some other variable at play that’s making those 50/50 balls not really being about chance. We have flaws that get magnified if those defeats, but every team has flaws. I don’t believe our underachieving is simply that we can’t defend, though that’s definitely a variable. You have to find ways to win games and each game will be different. We find ways to lose games. I believe we have enough talent to find ways to win the majority of these games despite our weaknesses.
One weakness is the lack of rebounding when Rudy contests. How many games have been lost this way in the clutch? This is an easy remedy. Not a complete fix, but we can do a lot better. The first is the coaching staff recognizing this pattern. They have not. If they have, it hasn’t been addressed at all, whether through strategy or substitution. This is on the FO, as well. We can even see how getting a throw-in journeyman in a trade now magically gives you this possibility with Juancho. Does Quin close with him? No. He closes with 18 straight minutes of JC.
Then there’s the guard perimeter defense. We didn’t address it after Murray ended our season. We didn’t address it after Reggie Jackson became an all star. Both the FO and coaching staff pretended Royce was “good enough.” We see now that dumb luck of COVID forced their hand at landing a guy that was floating out there that nobody else picked up who we all see could come in and play a role that improves our weaknesses and doesn’t really give anything up in the trade off.
If you can find guys like Juancho and House when you’re not even looking for them, you can’t say we aren’t able to make improvements.
We are way better than how we’re performing. I think we definitely can be a legitimate contender without major acquisitions in player personnel. But the FO has handed a problem to the coach that he has exacerbated and made worse, and it leading to embarrassing losses has fed back onto the players to where the team psychology is poisoned from a learned helplessness facilitated by the FO and coaching staff.
I don’t think this is fully appreciated and I don’t think the FO or the coach realize how close we really are and how this unique opportunity is being squandered largely as a result of their own doing. Since we don’t recognize this, we’re prone to make dumb moves that lead to a really long stretch of not having championship hopes. It’s been 24 years since we’ve been to the finals. 15 years since we had a fluke WCF appearance. It could be a long, long time and I detest the “aw shucks” attitude of the FO and coaching staff and not taking this serious enough to recognize and address the issues, and for them to not realize how close we really are and settle for “well may we this will be good enough, we’ve got time, let’s just see how it goes.”
We can tank, retool, rebuild, whatever. We absolutely dumb-lucked into the talents that Rudy and Donovan are. Putting together a team is really easy to **** up and we got really lucky here. Odds are not in our favor trying it again. Make this ************* work or ****ing resign.
