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Game Thread Nov 08, 2023 05:00PM MT: Jazz at Pacers

Added to Calendar: 11-08-23

best spaced lineup so far. Better movement, faster, also shot better from 3 41%. Rebounding is ok. I would like to give this another try. Hopefully keyonte takes more shots. And maybe try yurt7? He had a good 4mins last time.
 
Tremendous Upside said:
Takes:

- Will Hardy's gimmick **** is infuriating. Kessler goes out, so he flat out refuses to play our best remaining rim protector / post defender AND makes Lauri, an honest-to-God 7 footer and only the most important scorer on this team by far, use up all his energy by trying to cover the point of attack (which is something he obviously can't do against a powerful offensive team like the Pacers). Meanwhile, the low post behind Lauri is "defended" by guys like THT and Fontecchio. What a clown show.

- Speaking of Fontecchio – another guy who wants to shoot every time he touches the ball and can't stop anyone – the decision to play him instead of the human brick wall Yurt7 in this game is absolutely bizarre. Nether of them may have a future on this team (or in the NBA for that matter) but I refuse to believe Yurt would have allowed Turner to go crazy like that.

- Collins is 6'5''. Max.

- Clarkson with the 26 shots and 6 official turnovers (plus a ton he caused by throwing guys hand grenades, as usual). Sure he scored a lot. Give a rotation NBA player 26 shots and they're likely to do that. Anyway, I give up. It's the full JC experience. Not sure there's much more to say at this point.

- Key once again showed why he's BY FAR the best natural point guard on this team. He's not a "pure" PG by any means, but he recognizes when players are moving toward the basket and is willing & able to get them the ball in stride. Incredibly, none of the vet guards we have can do this with any consistency. Keyonte's biggest rookie flaw is telegraphing his cross court passes, but that's something playing in the NBA will cure pretty quickly I think. Guys are simply much longer and quicker than what he's seen before.

- Someone needs to tell Lauri this isn't the NBA Finals. The way he keeps sacrificing his body in early season games like this – on a tank-level team no less – is part commendable, part insane. Several times a hard stint on defense up top left him so exhausted that my guy looked like he was about to drop dead lumbering up court. I don't think that's really what we want.

- I've revised my earlier estimate. Collins is probably really 6'4''. Dude must have the most inflated official height in the League. Anyway, he was pretty good on offense again (and is still a rebounding beast) but his defense has been a huge disappointment, even knowing he was never a stopper. Collins can't do anything about his lack of size and length, but his effort on D leaves a lot to be desired. He's just a weak presence under the rim, avoiding contact and gifting guys layups. I don't really understand where he should be defending. His footspeed is OK for a 6'10' guy (which is is not) but meh for a SF size dude (which he is).

- Ochai was given an opportunity to redeem himself and failed utterly. So disappointing. I don't think it's out of the question that he's already marked as "expendable" in Danny's Excel sheet.
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You are made weird lieds about collins
 
Tremendous Upside said:
Someone needs to tell Lauri this isn't the NBA Finals. The way he keeps sacrificing his body in early season games like this – on a tank-level team no less – is part commendable, part insane. Several times a hard stint on defense up top left him so exhausted that my guy looked like he was about to drop dead lumbering up court. I don't think that's really what we want.
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We could use a small one month injury to Lauri to keel the top 3 draft pick good and healthy with a chance for the top pick. Keep it up Lauri!!
 
The people who say at least JC scored a lot infuriate me. He took 26 shots to put up 30!! Had Lauri put up 26 shots he gets 40-50 points. JC is still IMO the main reason we lost this game. We had control of the game till JC decided to completely go off script and go kamikaze on offense. We had a 3-4 minute stretch mid way through the second quarter where he’d drive out of control and turn the ball over. He was awful plain and simple. I don’t care that he scored 30. He shot 26 times. Anyone can do that if anyone else had done what he did not named Lauri Markkanen would’ve been benched but he seems to have a never ending get out of jail free card.
 
Thee Idiotic Minivan K said:
The people who say at least JC scored a lot infuriate me. He took 26 shots to put up 30!! Had Lauri put up 26 shots he gets 40-50 points. JC is still IMO the main reason we lost this game. We had control of the game till JC decided to completely go off script and go kamikaze on offense. We had a 3-4 minute stretch mid way through the second quarter where he’d drive out of control and turn the ball over. He was awful plain and simple. I don’t care that he scored 30. He shot 26 times. Anyone can do that if anyone else had done what he did not named Lauri Markkanen would’ve been benched but he seems to have a never ending get out of jail free card.
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Few JC facts from last game:
  • He had a pass differential of -27 (he received 54 and made 27 passes). Lauri was +10 (29 to 39) and Keyonte -3 (57 to 54)
  • THT made 1 more pass than Clarkson while playing 14.2 less minutes (he was -1)
  • Only 7 of Clarksons 26 FGA came in late or very late clock (so within 7 last seconds). All others were early or average clock attempts.
  • His rim finishes were 7/9 which saved his shooting percentages big time. He was 5/17 from 5+ feet out
He was an absolute black hole, and shot clock aint no excuse for his volume. He also dribbled the clock down on some of the instances.
 
Lauri was 8/16 with 24 points. If you give him 10 more shots he’s definitely not getting 50 but likely ends up somewhere around 35-37.

Just kind of a weird thing to be mad about.
 
Elizah Huge said:
It’s hard for me to get upset at someone who scored 33 points on 26 shots when our creation is very limited at best right now.

I agree Lauri needs more touches but his self creation isn’t the best.
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His offensive efficiency rating is 16th in the NBA this season, even with an utter clown show around him. When you're that good at converting your opportunities into points, the ball simply needs to find you again and again.

And it's not like Lauri is getting spoon fed. Many of his makes are tough as hell.
 
Tremendous Upside said:
His offensive efficiency rating is 16th in the NBA this season, even with an utter clown show around him. When you're that good at converting your opportunities into points, the ball simply needs to find you again and again.

And it's not like Lauri is getting spoon fed. Many of his makes are tough as hell.
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He’s not getting spoon fed but I bet a very high % of his made shots are assisted.
 
Elizah Huge said:
He’s not getting spoon fed but I bet a very high % of his made shots are assisted.
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That's true, but it's also true for a surprising number of upper-tier stars in this league. Efficient volume scoring is the holy grail, and that's hard to do if you're "self-creating" all the time. As usage goes up, efficiency normally goes down. Only the best of the best can combine super high usage with super high efficiency.
 
Tremendous Upside said:
That's true, but it's also true for a surprising number of upper-tier stars in this league. Efficient volume scoring is the holy grail, and that's hard to do if you're "self-creating" all the time. As usage goes up, efficiency normally goes down. Only the best of the best can combine super high usage with super high efficiency.
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For sure. I’d like to see Lauri get more shots every game for sure. What people think should or act like should happen is we should give Lauri the ball every possession and get out of his way. That’s just not who he is at the moment and that’s perfectly fine.

He’s unequivocally our best player and I literally compared him to a 7’0 version of Klay Thompson who was the second best player on a championship team. I think he’s a top-25 player in the league as well. We just have to be honest and realistic.
 
Elizah Huge said:
For sure. I’d like to see Lauri get more shots every game for sure. What people think should or act like should happen is we should give Lauri the ball every possession and get out of his way. That’s just not who he is at the moment and that’s perfectly fine.

He’s unequivocally our best player and I literally compared him to a 7’0 version of Klay Thompson who was the second best player on a championship team. I think he’s a top-25 player in the league as well. We just have to be honest and realistic.
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Agree, but he also has to get the ball if he's open.
 
Elizah Huge said:
It’s hard for me to get upset at someone who scored 33 points on 26 shots when our creation is very limited at best right now.

I agree Lauri needs more touches but his self creation isn’t the best.
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Clarkson is one reason why our creation is very limited. He is just not a facilitator kind of player, it's not in him and has never been. Compare this to what we saw in Haliburton, it's night and day - Haliburton has his head up, looking around, when he moves with the ball whereas Clarkson's focus is entirely on himself alone doing iso. He is a cool dude, but in today's basketball, too limited to be given big minutes.
 
Elizah Huge said:
What people think should or act like should happen is we should give Lauri the ball every possession and get out of his way.
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I don't think people are saying that. I mean it's easy to see Lauri is not an ISO scorer or efficient creator off the dribble. However, what we should do on almost every trip is try to get him the ball on the move to start the possession. Not because he'd necessarily score or shoot off that play, but because his gravity would force the defense to react.

Lately, Lauri has flashed some good passing off plays where he has a step on his defender. That's something that hasn't been exploited nearly enough. We have very few guys who worry teams to such an extent that they'll even think about doubling or running them off the perimeter. That's valuable.

I'm not saying Lauri should turn into a facilitator – that would be wasting his efficient finishing, something we don't have enough of as it is – but his gravity should be utilized in more creative ways than just parking him in the corner. Just passively "spacing the floor" leads to Clarkson, Sexton & co dribbling headfirst into the trees. They're not good enough to score like that consistently.
 
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underdog said:
Clarkson is one reason why our creation is very limited. He is just not a facilitator kind of player, it's not in him and has never been. Compare this to what we saw in Haliburton, it's night and day - Haliburton has his head up, looking around, when he moves with the ball whereas Clarkson's focus is entirely on himself alone doing iso. He is a cool dude, but in today's basketball, too limited to be given big minutes.
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Yeah, I’m cool with trading him. He is one of our best self creators at the moment though as far as scoring goes.
 
Elizah Huge said:
It’s hard for me to get upset at someone who scored 33 points on 26 shots when our creation is very limited at best right now.

I agree Lauri needs more touches but his self creation isn’t the best.
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JCs own self-creation has been **** all season, but we have managed to score decent nonetheless.

Lauri gets the exact same horizontal perimeter pass and just does more with it.

You call one self creation and other not, but they both got the same pass to begin with.
 
HermanG said:
JCs own self-creation has been **** all season, but we have managed to score decent nonetheless.

Lauri gets the exact same horizontal perimeter pass and just does more with it.

You call one self creation and other not, but they both got the same pass to begin with.
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I’m not going to let a bad set of 10 games skew what we know about Clarkson as a player as a whole. He was awesome for an entire season last year.
 
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