Odd Thoughts: 1, 2, 3?Cancun
Written by Peck
Link
The title of tonight’s odd thoughts comes courtesy of Nick Van Excel when on the last huddle of a game before the season ended without a playoff appearance this was his huddle cadence demonstrating his desire to end the season and be off to his summer vacation.
I give you the 2010-2011 Indiana Pacers.
As they are currently playing they will also soon be able to join Nick for an early spring trip to the Mexican vacation spot and with their performance vs. the Nuggets I believe that Danny Granger pushed O’Brien to the side at half time and tried to sell time shares instead of attempting any form of play diagramming. To his credit nothing that was going to come out of O’Brien’s mouth would have been worth listening to so who could blame him.
We just played game 41 of an 82 game season, which means that officially we are now at the half way mark and traditionally this is the time where we all take a moment to reflect on the team and evaluate the first half of the season.
Tradition will go out the window today as I can not bring myself to actually go back and review what has occurred. We all know the story so saying anything else would just be pretty much wasting our time.
The good news is that we are 2 games better at this point in time than we were just one season ago. The bad news is that we are only 2 games better at this point in time than we were just one season ago when we were absolutely horrid.
So instead of making us all hold our noses and dive head first into the manure pile that was the first half of our season I would like to look forward.
On that note I want to talk about a couple of positive things.
1. Paul George looks like a real live basketball player. How good can he be? I don’t have the answer to that but I will give you the totally unscientific non-statistical analysis of him. He looks like a ball player. I haven’t made up my mind yet who he looks like but at this point in time I’m willing to say he doesn’t have to look like anybody other than Paul George and I think that will be a good thing.
2. Tyler when he is not over thinking and is just going out and playing his game of aggression and hustle is a pretty good player. Is he the answer for our power forward problems? My guess is no not ultimately but I’m not saying he can’t be. When his mid range game is falling and he is in the middle of everything he is a handful for other teams. He is going to be over matched often in height and straight up jumping ability but so far he manages to overcome that more often than he is not able to.
3. Since Collison has been given more of a free reign in running the offense I believe more and more that he can run a traditionally coached team and be effective at both ball distribution and scoring. Now if we could improve on his ball gawking habits on defense we would be talking about a pretty good point guard. To his credit for the most part he has improved on that end since the beginning of the season, however on the west coast trip he has back slid a little.
4. Dahntay Jones has nice suits.
Ok, that’s it. That is all of the happy good times I can talk about.
Now let’s get to the heart of the issue and no I don’t mean Jim O’Brien (we’ll talk about him briefly in a bit).
I mean let’s talk about*is this season, only at the mid way point mind you, already over? As it stands now we are in 10th place in the Eastern Conference with the Detroit Pistons only a game and a half back from us for 11th. Don’t let anybody fool you into believing that we are tied with the Buck’s for 9th because we have the same record. Milwaukee has a better record vs. the Conference, the Division and not to mention they have 2-0 record vs. us and the best we could hope for is to tie them at 2. So no we are not tied, they are ahead of us in the playoff race.
So what does all of this mean? Well right now it means that as you read this the team needs to be heavily scouting the upcoming college recruit class because we are lottery bound. Yes I know, once again you all expect the same old same old of a late season surge to drop our lottery chances and of course you would be right to think this.
But overall can this ship be righted? Is it to late to turn this around? Are we guaranteed to have our 5th consecutive year out of the playoffs?
Well if you ask me right now, I will say yes. I think this thing is going down like the Hindenburg and I see no way short of a couple of thing righting it.
Well what are those couple of things you might ask?
Obviously my first statement is going to be we need a coaching change and we need it now. Not at the end of the season, not when the money comes off of the salary cap, not when the moon is full over Parador. In fact we needed this change a long time ago (two seasons but who’s counting).
I know this cliché’ is and overused and people get sick of reading it but dang it I want to overuse it myself. Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
How many times in the past four years have we heard the terms “spread the floor”, “open up driving lanes”, “play small to get better spacing”. If nothing else Jim is persistent in the fact that he knows what he knows and he’ll be damned if you are anyone else is going to tell him something different.
By the way all of the above are perfectly sound basketball principles, many coach’s probably even all coaches use them. However this is Jim’s answer to all problems.
A show of hands for those of you who thought at the beginning of the season that it was just a matter of time before Jim would abandon the traditional lineup and go to his great white whale?
Before I leave Jim I want to give him another less quoted Albert Einstein quote. “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be”.
But that’s it, that is all the time I am going to waste on him. It serves no purpose other than to raise my blood pressure. He is here and my belief is that he will be here the rest of the year; I just pray that he is not here beyond that.
However for all of my Jim O’Brien loving friends out there, you know who you are, I’m going to throw you a bone.
It’s not all on Jim. Oh believe me I could go on for days on end about how it’s mostly on Jim but there are certain issues that I believe he has little to no control over.
With that in mind the only other way I see us righting the ship is to have a fast injection of talent and by talent I don’t mean another Solomon Jones, Earl Watson, Flip Murray type player. I’m talking about someone to bring in that will be the starter at their position within a couple of weeks of being on the club (if not on the first night). Who is that player and at what position? I have no idea and frankly as far as positions go I am up for upgrading any position. Sure some of our players are better than others but overall if you can upgrade you should do it.
So what does that mean overall? Well simple it means that while I feel our coaching is sub par and he should be able to get a better record out of the players he has I will be the first to admit that we still lack serious fire power and mostly star power on our club.
So there O’Brien backers I have given you your treat for the day, savor it like ambrosia because most likely there won’t be much more of that as the season goes on. In particular if I have to see James (curse word that rhymes with trucken) Posey play more min. in the second half of the season at the power forward spot than anyone else on the team. Yes, that’s right boy’s & girl’s James Posey a career small forward who is now so old, slow and out of shape he can no longer cover the position has played more minutes at the power forward than anyone else on the club.
So while I would love nothing more than to come to you with a proud grandiose prediction of second half season glory followed by bold playoff domination talk I just can’t do it.
I think we will struggle the rest of the season but we will have a few games here and there where everyone will want to believe that things have changed when in fact our jump shot is just falling for that game or two. But overall we have already dug ourselves a hole that this current coach and this current set of players will most likely not be able to overcome. We will have a stretch again at the end where we will catch teams who have already packed it in and will once again find ourselves in the hell of being one of the higher level lower ping pong ball non playoff teams.
I want to leave tonight with yet another quote from Mr. Einstein but this time for Larry Bird.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.
Written by Peck
Link
The title of tonight’s odd thoughts comes courtesy of Nick Van Excel when on the last huddle of a game before the season ended without a playoff appearance this was his huddle cadence demonstrating his desire to end the season and be off to his summer vacation.
I give you the 2010-2011 Indiana Pacers.
As they are currently playing they will also soon be able to join Nick for an early spring trip to the Mexican vacation spot and with their performance vs. the Nuggets I believe that Danny Granger pushed O’Brien to the side at half time and tried to sell time shares instead of attempting any form of play diagramming. To his credit nothing that was going to come out of O’Brien’s mouth would have been worth listening to so who could blame him.
We just played game 41 of an 82 game season, which means that officially we are now at the half way mark and traditionally this is the time where we all take a moment to reflect on the team and evaluate the first half of the season.
Tradition will go out the window today as I can not bring myself to actually go back and review what has occurred. We all know the story so saying anything else would just be pretty much wasting our time.
The good news is that we are 2 games better at this point in time than we were just one season ago. The bad news is that we are only 2 games better at this point in time than we were just one season ago when we were absolutely horrid.
So instead of making us all hold our noses and dive head first into the manure pile that was the first half of our season I would like to look forward.
On that note I want to talk about a couple of positive things.
1. Paul George looks like a real live basketball player. How good can he be? I don’t have the answer to that but I will give you the totally unscientific non-statistical analysis of him. He looks like a ball player. I haven’t made up my mind yet who he looks like but at this point in time I’m willing to say he doesn’t have to look like anybody other than Paul George and I think that will be a good thing.
2. Tyler when he is not over thinking and is just going out and playing his game of aggression and hustle is a pretty good player. Is he the answer for our power forward problems? My guess is no not ultimately but I’m not saying he can’t be. When his mid range game is falling and he is in the middle of everything he is a handful for other teams. He is going to be over matched often in height and straight up jumping ability but so far he manages to overcome that more often than he is not able to.
3. Since Collison has been given more of a free reign in running the offense I believe more and more that he can run a traditionally coached team and be effective at both ball distribution and scoring. Now if we could improve on his ball gawking habits on defense we would be talking about a pretty good point guard. To his credit for the most part he has improved on that end since the beginning of the season, however on the west coast trip he has back slid a little.
4. Dahntay Jones has nice suits.
Ok, that’s it. That is all of the happy good times I can talk about.
Now let’s get to the heart of the issue and no I don’t mean Jim O’Brien (we’ll talk about him briefly in a bit).
I mean let’s talk about*is this season, only at the mid way point mind you, already over? As it stands now we are in 10th place in the Eastern Conference with the Detroit Pistons only a game and a half back from us for 11th. Don’t let anybody fool you into believing that we are tied with the Buck’s for 9th because we have the same record. Milwaukee has a better record vs. the Conference, the Division and not to mention they have 2-0 record vs. us and the best we could hope for is to tie them at 2. So no we are not tied, they are ahead of us in the playoff race.
So what does all of this mean? Well right now it means that as you read this the team needs to be heavily scouting the upcoming college recruit class because we are lottery bound. Yes I know, once again you all expect the same old same old of a late season surge to drop our lottery chances and of course you would be right to think this.
But overall can this ship be righted? Is it to late to turn this around? Are we guaranteed to have our 5th consecutive year out of the playoffs?
Well if you ask me right now, I will say yes. I think this thing is going down like the Hindenburg and I see no way short of a couple of thing righting it.
Well what are those couple of things you might ask?
Obviously my first statement is going to be we need a coaching change and we need it now. Not at the end of the season, not when the money comes off of the salary cap, not when the moon is full over Parador. In fact we needed this change a long time ago (two seasons but who’s counting).
I know this cliché’ is and overused and people get sick of reading it but dang it I want to overuse it myself. Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
How many times in the past four years have we heard the terms “spread the floor”, “open up driving lanes”, “play small to get better spacing”. If nothing else Jim is persistent in the fact that he knows what he knows and he’ll be damned if you are anyone else is going to tell him something different.
By the way all of the above are perfectly sound basketball principles, many coach’s probably even all coaches use them. However this is Jim’s answer to all problems.
A show of hands for those of you who thought at the beginning of the season that it was just a matter of time before Jim would abandon the traditional lineup and go to his great white whale?
Before I leave Jim I want to give him another less quoted Albert Einstein quote. “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be”.
But that’s it, that is all the time I am going to waste on him. It serves no purpose other than to raise my blood pressure. He is here and my belief is that he will be here the rest of the year; I just pray that he is not here beyond that.
However for all of my Jim O’Brien loving friends out there, you know who you are, I’m going to throw you a bone.
It’s not all on Jim. Oh believe me I could go on for days on end about how it’s mostly on Jim but there are certain issues that I believe he has little to no control over.
With that in mind the only other way I see us righting the ship is to have a fast injection of talent and by talent I don’t mean another Solomon Jones, Earl Watson, Flip Murray type player. I’m talking about someone to bring in that will be the starter at their position within a couple of weeks of being on the club (if not on the first night). Who is that player and at what position? I have no idea and frankly as far as positions go I am up for upgrading any position. Sure some of our players are better than others but overall if you can upgrade you should do it.
So what does that mean overall? Well simple it means that while I feel our coaching is sub par and he should be able to get a better record out of the players he has I will be the first to admit that we still lack serious fire power and mostly star power on our club.
So there O’Brien backers I have given you your treat for the day, savor it like ambrosia because most likely there won’t be much more of that as the season goes on. In particular if I have to see James (curse word that rhymes with trucken) Posey play more min. in the second half of the season at the power forward spot than anyone else on the team. Yes, that’s right boy’s & girl’s James Posey a career small forward who is now so old, slow and out of shape he can no longer cover the position has played more minutes at the power forward than anyone else on the club.
So while I would love nothing more than to come to you with a proud grandiose prediction of second half season glory followed by bold playoff domination talk I just can’t do it.
I think we will struggle the rest of the season but we will have a few games here and there where everyone will want to believe that things have changed when in fact our jump shot is just falling for that game or two. But overall we have already dug ourselves a hole that this current coach and this current set of players will most likely not be able to overcome. We will have a stretch again at the end where we will catch teams who have already packed it in and will once again find ourselves in the hell of being one of the higher level lower ping pong ball non playoff teams.
I want to leave tonight with yet another quote from Mr. Einstein but this time for Larry Bird.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.
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