I am sad.

[Purple Pile Driver]

Yeah but that’s on Collins and his recruiting. Agreed Turner will be much better when he’s playing the right position. I think the football team will still be OK if Hunter goes down because we’ve recruited well at QB. Lathon was something that is a compete rarity but the offense still has no creativity.

Yes, our offense is brutal. The program is paying the price for missing on PG’s. That is on CCC, but he sure got a horrendous bad break with the Lathon situation. It basically sunk this season.

Also, i sure hope we don’t need to find out, but IMO if Hunter went down, the football team would see similar results to the basketball team, a lot of close losses.

 

[NUCat320]

Actually, there were very few well crafted sets today. The problem is obvious. We are reduced to a screen and cut team that frankly doesn’t consistently cut hard.

This is what drives me crazy - it feels like they rest on offense. There is so little happening when nu has the ball, and whatever off-ball actions there are lack any urgency.

Who could have imagined that I’d miss directionless bail-out floaters so much.

 

[Secho99]

Yes, our offense is brutal. The program is paying the price for missing on PG’s. That is on CCC, but he sure got a horrendous bad break with the Lathon situation. It basically sunk this season.

Lathon may end up being a good college player in the long run, but I'm not sure we'd really be better off with him this year. He has an 86 offensive rating in 8 games in Conference USA, and he's shooting 32% from the field (27% from 3) in those games against much much weaker competition than the B1G. His raw stats of 10 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists per game in conference play don't look too bad and he had a really nice game against Marquette (26 points), but his overall body of work isn't that great. He'd be better than Greer, but far from a difference maker at this point.

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

Lathon may end up being a good college player in the long run, but I'm not sure we'd really be better off with him this year. He has an 86 offensive rating in 8 games in Conference USA, and he's shooting 32% from the field (27% from 3) in those games against much much weaker competition than the B1G. His raw stats of 10 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists per game in conference play don't look too bad and he had a really nice game against Marquette (26 points), but his overall body of work isn't that great. He'd be better than Greer, but far from a difference maker at this point.

Disagree. I think he would have similar numbers because he would have more help. More importantly, the other players would have better numbers due to playing the right position and getting the ball where and when they should.

 

[Jeffrey Cat]

Disagree. I think he would have similar numbers because he would have more help. More importantly, the other players would have better numbers due to playing the right position and getting the ball where and when they should.

This is one of those everybody’s right deals. The problem with no point guard is Turner is playing out of position. He should be in the 3 spot or a wing however you want to describe it. I think he is a pretty decent 25 minutes a game three but he is not a distributor the way McIntosh or Juice Thompson were. This puts everyone out of position. Taylor is probably the only guy playing what would be his normal position at a 3 spot but they can’t get him the ball in the right spot.

If you will also recall when Mac or Juice got the ball to the right man, he not only had the ball in the right spot but in the right spot of his body to shoot the ball correctly and quickly. In other words you didn’t have to reach down to the right or left of your lower leg to get it, you got it in the shooting position.

Would Lathon have helped. Of course he would have but he would have had his growing moments just like Juice and Mac.

 

[Mr Wickerpark]

Don't know about Turner, but EVERYBODY and his brother wanted Taylor. So it it was a Collins miss, it was a miss for half the coaches in the league...

Taylor shows signs. I think its more of a team psyche. Sorta like last year.

 

[TheC]

And I stand by mine, Gaines is a stud in the making. Greer should be playing in high school, this year, yet he has still contributed in spots. Agree to disagree I guess.

Obviously, I hope you're right!

 

[TheC]

Yes, our offense is brutal. The program is paying the price for missing on PG’s. That is on CCC, but he sure got a horrendous bad break with the Lathon situation. It basically sunk this season.

Also, i sure hope we don’t need to find out, but IMO if Hunter went down, the football team would see similar results to the basketball team, a lot of close losses.

Why do people keep thinking a middle of the road 3 star recruit freshman was going to be the savior of this offense? Lathon would have helped, but this still would be a terrible offense.

 

[IGNORE]

Disagree. I think he would have similar numbers because he would have more help. More importantly, the other players would have better numbers due to playing the right position and getting the ball where and when they should.

Sure, the help from the great players we now see tearing up the B1G. Oh, wait...

No, he would have been the magical catalyst unlocking the great missing potential of our squad and lead them to a national championship.

Can he play back up QB too?

 

[IGNORE]

Guards - Lathon, Ash, Gaines
Wings - Turner, Taylor, Law, Kopp
S4 - Falzon, Nance
C - Pardon, Benson

Even w Lathom, we have a true frosh LG, a non B1G guard and a non LG type. Lathom would not have saved this team. Might not have even started and would have had the same short leash as Kopp and Nance, less CCC lose his team.

At wing, Law still would have gotten too much time. Turner may have been fractionally better. No reason to expect difference from Taylor or Kopp, though Kopp should be taking minutes from Law.

This team was a disaster from the get go unless weird stars aligned. They did not. Gotta stop depending on outliers - frosh stars, 35+ mpg producers, out of position production.

Need to recruit for a system and execute the system.

 

[catsattackfor3]

Uh no, but thanks for playing! Collins didn't miss all those layups and other easy shots tonight. When a team simply cannot put the ball in the hoop with open looks, that's not on the coach...

Serious question though is CC done the best he can here because both the play and recruiting seems to have regressed. His counterpart up 94 Wojo for what its worth is not only getting it done on the court but they are pulling in some really good recruits at Marquette. And al lot of those are higher academic kids

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

Sure, the help from the great players we now see tearing up the B1G. Oh, wait...

No, he would have been the magical catalyst unlocking the great missing potential of our squad and lead them to a national championship.

Can he play back up QB too?

Where did I say he was a magical catalyst? I don’t believe I implied a Natty either.

It is a pretty easy to see this team has one giant hole. Lathon doesn’t make us conference contenders, but I will stand my my thought that he dramatically improves the balance of the team. As maddening as the quick hook on the Freshman is, CCC would realize he has little choice but to play Lathon.

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

Guards - Lathon, Ash, Gaines
Wings - Turner, Taylor, Law, Kopp
S4 - Falzon, Nance
C - Pardon, Benson

Even w Lathom, we have a true frosh LG, a non B1G guard and a non LG type. Lathom would not have saved this team. Might not have even started and would have had the same short leash as Kopp and Nance, less CCC lose his team.

At wing, Law still would have gotten too much time. Turner may have been fractionally better. No reason to expect difference from Taylor or Kopp, though Kopp should be taking minutes from Law.

This team was a disaster from the get go unless weird stars aligned. They did not. Gotta stop depending on outliers - frosh stars, 35+ mpg producers, out of position production.

Need to recruit for a system and execute the system.

Players win. What system does Duke, Kentucky or MSU play? System teams like our Princeton offense or Walkers initial spread offense are implemented to cover for talent deficient squads. Can work initially, but are eventually figuring out. You need players to win! Red Auerbach isn’t leading this group to the Natty.

 

[NJCat]

Red Auerbach isn’t leading this group to the Natty.

Not the least of which being, he's dead!

 

[willycat]

Yeah but that’s on Collins and his recruiting. Agreed Turner will be much better when he’s playing the right position. I think the football team will still be OK if Hunter goes down because we’ve recruited well at QB. Lathon was something that is a compete rarity but the offense still has no creativity.

If Hunter goes down , so will the season. Don't think that any of the requited QB's saw a minute of playing time and the back-up appears to be a walk-on and we witnessed his capabilities last season.

 

[Hungry Jack]

Let's look on the bright side: Gordon Lightfoot, 80 years young, is working on a new album.

 

[Sec_112]

... it feels like they rest on offense. There is so little happening when nu has the ball ...

... Would Lathon have helped. Of course he would have but he would have had his growing moments just like Juice and Mac.

... The problem with no point guard is Turner is playing out of position ... I think he is a pretty decent 25 minutes a game three but he is not a distributor the way McIntosh or Juice Thompson were. This puts everyone out of position.

Why do people keep thinking a middle of the road 3 star recruit freshman was going to be the savior of this offense? ...

Ahhh, the beginning of some real discussion. Unlike the last few days, there's a lot in this thread that starts to approach an answer.

There's nowhere near a single problem with this team. With a point guard, Taylor wouldn't suddenly play reasonable defense, hit his shot consistently or even making those little, wiiiiiiiiide open 2s.

With a new offense, Turner wouldn't suddenly become aggressive or find his shot either.

Law is one of the guys you needed and he's dying out there. What exactly would get Law going? I love the guy but whether it's an injury or not, he's been streaky his entire career.

Who even comes close to shooting 3s consistently to open things up?

Pardon desperately needs some help on defense.

There's absolutely no aspect of the game that this group dominates - or that you can simply rely on nightly. And you're foolish if you think Coach K/ Self/ Calapari would come in here and have this group fighting with - let's lower the bar - Maryland and Wisconsin.

Hell, they pretty desperately need Gaines on offense. That's a sad statement because his game is nothing to write home about. He should be your last option on offense or the first guy off the bench.

The talent of this group leaves a lot to be desired. For those of you who are so obviously going out of your way to shred Collins, there's a lot to play with. But if you're not focused on how this staff evaluates talent - and I've only seen one person do that - then you're just talking out of your ... (if that isn't obvious).

Freewillie, I appreciate your initial sentiment. I'm with ya.

It's a sad, sad, sad feeling when you're living on those in betweens. But it's okay.

 

[ricko6543211]

Vic is one of my favorite NU athletes of all time. That said, if he really is that injured, it is not helpful for him to tough it out. He was 3 for 16 with six turnovers. You just can't have that sort of liability on the floor. I'd rather give those minutes to Turner, Taylor, Falzon or Kopp.

However I'm not sure the injury is entirely to blame as he was able to grab 10 boards. I think it's a combination of him pressing and just general frustration with this season.

Yeah it's hard to say. The thing I've noticed for him during this stretch is he seems to be off balance, losing his footing, stumbling on D, losing his dribble much more often. His movement was always slightly off kilter, but it's gotten way worse. So that seems to me to be related to a possible injury? But if he has a knee injury, then by all rights he shouldn't be playing, because competitive basketball has gotta be one of the top 3 worst things in creation to do on a knee injury. And when he goes down on all these weird stumbles, it never really looks like he is in pain. Also, while his shots aren't going down, for the most part they are close, and he's getting good elevation and rotation on the ball as near as I can tell. Also the point you make about his rebounding - he still seems to be able to jump just as well, it's sort of the lateral movement that might be worse.

I'm inclined to say it's partly due to some lower body injury, because while his lift is good it seems like his legs aren't quite reacting how he expects, but I'm just not sure. It might be general weariness as well, it's gotten to the point where it's probably impacting his confidence.

 

[eastbaycat99]

Players win. What system does Duke, Kentucky or MSU play? System teams like our Princeton offense or Walkers initial spread offense are implemented to cover for talent deficient squads. Can work initially, but are eventually figuring out. You need players to win! Red Auerbach isn’t leading this group to the Natty.

I agree that players win, the rich get richer and the poor...

It’s interesting to check out when the teams in the B1G last won a regular season title. First of all, the 4 newcomers (PSU, UNL, RU and MD) have yet to win.
Among the prior 10 teams, 6 have won in this decade (MSU, Pur, Ind, Wisconsin, OSU and Mich.)
The Illini won in ‘05.
So 3 of the 10 (Minn, Iowa, NU) have not won in this century. You could include PSU as they played that whole stretch.

Minnesota last won in 97, Iowa in 79, and the Cats in 31. If you did the same lookback in 2000, you would find that 7 teams had won in the last 15 years and 3 had not. 2 are obvious: Iowa and NU. The other is Wisconsin, whose last title as of 2000 was 1947.

Arguably, since 1980, the only team to win a title that did not have some recent history of winning the title was Wisconsin, when they won in ‘02. They subsequently won in ‘03, ‘08, and ‘15.

I’ve argued before, and will argue here that Wisconsin’s leap came based on building a team with a physically strong interior defense, layered with enough enough pattern based offense and excellent free throw shooting to slow the game down, reduce overall scoring and win close games. It may be boring basketball, but it can produce a team that wins with talent rated below the talent the current consistent winners get.

Kudos to Wisconsin for pulling this off. It clearly is hard, takes commitment, acumen and luck on the part of the AD, and rarely happens.

I hope it happens at NU someday. While I’m wishing, I hope Collins is the unicorn who can attract the talent and win a title, breaking a historical trend that goes back to 1931.

 

[ricko6543211]

Yup, I do, They actually have a lot of well-crafted sets. It's really quite simple, when Law goes 3-17, we are not terribly likely to win. He is in a terrible funk due to injury or something, and the rest of our season depends on him coming out of it. Look at it this way-- ig Lamar Stevens suddenly forgot how to score, how many points do you think we would have beaten Penn St. by tonight? Double digits, easily. Law scoring even decently opens up so many things for other players.

I see a few problems on offense / have a few comments.

1. Not starting a set until 15 or less seconds to go on about half our possessions. That means we only get 1 chance to run something before it reverts to someone forcing a 1 on 1. This is partly due to lack of PG, partly due to teams realizing this and now everyone does the 3/4 court press on us which perpetually disrupts us, partly due to not having a dynamic guy who can bust a press himself and make them pay (at least Kopp tried to shoot that wing 3 once...), all these things are inter-related.
2. Poor shooting. Even when we get good shots (which isn't often enough) we aren't making them. Lack of confidence can get contagious. So then teams sag down on us and kill the lane. We've not gotten the benefit of the doubt from the refs either, but that's also because we often aren't putting ourselves in positions to be successful. Think we maybe need to try more pump fakes when in the lane.
3. If we are going to throw up our hands and say "if Vic doesn't score we can't win" then at this point we might as well give up the conference season. It's been about 6 games now, either it's something to do with an injury or else this slump is prolonged enough that it's already cost us our season. It's past time that we need to figure out something different our O has been terrible for 3 straight games (and bad for longer than that, though we squeezed out a couple wins) - just saying "well if he doesn't make shots we can't win" is not a valid excuse. Also, while he missed shots, he took too many long contested looks, not high % shots.

I actually think we got most of our best shots from relatively simple drive and kicks (well, and Pardon post ups but we've discussed that plenty). Vic set up a few 3s that way that others caught in rhythm and made. Think he (and others - Gaines Turner Taylor at times too) tend to put their heads down too much and force it once they start driving, teams are helping and then we aren't hitting the open guy. Could say the same thing on cutters - it doesn't happen all the time, but we do get a guy open on those back cuts a handful of times a game, and with few exceptions we rarely make the pass.

So this is grasping at straws a bit, but I think I would almost try to simplify the offense - just go to a drive and kick, drive and kick, drive and kick to try to get everyone moving and establish some flow. Continue to mix that in with the Pardon post sets. We need more player movement and ball movement. Seems like everyone is thinking too much and no longer playing basketball.

 

[IGNORE]

I see a few problems on offense / have a few comments.

1. Not starting a set until 15 or less seconds to go on about half our possessions. That means we only get 1 chance to run something before it reverts to someone forcing a 1 on 1. This is partly due to lack of PG, partly due to teams realizing this and now everyone does the 3/4 court press on us which perpetually disrupts us, partly due to not having a dynamic guy who can bust a press himself and make them pay (at least Kopp tried to shoot that wing 3 once...), all these things are inter-related.
2. Poor shooting. Even when we get good shots (which isn't often enough) we aren't making them. Lack of confidence can get contagious. So then teams sag down on us and kill the lane. We've not gotten the benefit of the doubt from the refs either, but that's also because we often aren't putting ourselves in positions to be successful. Think we maybe need to try more pump fakes when in the lane.
3. If we are going to throw up our hands and say "if Vic doesn't score we can't win" then at this point we might as well give up the conference season. It's been about 6 games now, either it's something to do with an injury or else this slump is prolonged enough that it's already cost us our season. It's past time that we need to figure out something different our O has been terrible for 3 straight games (and bad for longer than that, though we squeezed out a couple wins) - just saying "well if he doesn't make shots we can't win" is not a valid excuse. Also, while he missed shots, he took too many long contested looks, not high % shots.

I actually think we got most of our best shots from relatively simple drive and kicks (well, and Pardon post ups but we've discussed that plenty). Vic set up a few 3s that way that others caught in rhythm and made. Think he (and others - Gaines Turner Taylor at times too) tend to put their heads down too much and force it once they start driving, teams are helping and then we aren't hitting the open guy. Could say the same thing on cutters - it doesn't happen all the time, but we do get a guy open on those back cuts a handful of times a game, and with few exceptions we rarely make the pass.

So this is grasping at straws a bit, but I think I would almost try to simplify the offense - just go to a drive and kick, drive and kick, drive and kick to try to get everyone moving and establish some flow. Continue to mix that in with the Pardon post sets. We need more player movement and ball movement. Seems like everyone is thinking too much and no longer playing basketball.

Wait, we get pressed by everybody? But Mike said that would never happen.

 

[ricko6543211]

Ahhh, the beginning of some real discussion. Unlike the last few days, there's a lot in this thread that starts to approach an answer.

There's nowhere near a single problem with this team. With a point guard, Taylor wouldn't suddenly play reasonable defense, hit his shot consistently or even making those little, wiiiiiiiiide open 2s.

With a new offense, Turner wouldn't suddenly become aggressive or find his shot either.

Law is one of the guys you needed and he's dying out there. What exactly would get Law going? I love the guy but whether it's an injury or not, he's been streaky his entire career.

Who even comes close to shooting 3s consistently to open things up?

Pardon desperately needs some help on defense.

There's absolutely no aspect of the game that this group dominates - or that you can simply rely on nightly. And you're foolish if you think Coach K/ Self/ Calapari would come in here and have this group fighting with - let's lower the bar - Maryland and Wisconsin.

Hell, they pretty desperately need Gaines on offense. That's a sad statement because his game is nothing to write home about. He should be your last option on offense or the first guy off the bench.

The talent of this group leaves a lot to be desired. For those of you who are so obviously going out of your way to shred Collins, there's a lot to play with. But if you're not focused on how this staff evaluates talent - and I've only seen one person do that - then you're just talking out of your ... (if that isn't obvious).

Freewillie, I appreciate your initial sentiment. I'm with ya.

It's a sad, sad, sad feeling when you're living on those in betweens. But it's okay.

Yeah some good points in there.

As an addendum, a broader problem that really worries me is no one on this team is having fun (ex that one stretch from Falzon), it just feels like they are going through a death march out there, which filters through to make it a very frustrating experience to watch. Pardon brings some energy but even he and Vic look forced right now, Dererk always does the "gather round" hand motion after every whistle to the guys but they look like their heart isn't in it. Somehow we need to make basketball great, or at least fun again for this team. Stevens is a heck of a player, and was nails to close it out but it's somewhat of an indictment that down the stretch last night it looked like he wanted it more than our entire team combined.

 

[zeek55]

If you want to compare the Lathon situation to football, the best comparison is either post-Larkin injury RB situation or to think of what the 2018 campaign would've been like if Thorson hadn't come back.

Team depth is often a lot more frail than it seems; the difference between a great season and a poor one is not that large at this level in either sport.

Look at football, the difference between a 5 win season and a 10 win season is a handful of plays that lets you either win most or all of the close ones or lose most or all of them. That's our history in that sport over the past quarter century.

Compare our 10 win 2017 team to our 5 win 2013 team. If you lined those 2 teams up to play each other, maybe the 2017 team is a 2-3 point favorite at most. Why? Because they weren't all that different seasons, in 2013 we lost 4 straight games with 2 of those in OT and another 2 by 3 points. In 2017 we won 3 straight OT games.

A handful of plays separates those seasons.



Depth on paper sounds great and comforting, but until guys actually play you don't know what you have.


Sometimes you have a great player like Bowser waiting in the wings to take over. But keep in mind he was a freshman and nobody else was able to generate much. All that depth whittles down to one guy we could count on...

Other times (our QB situation this past season), you may not be so lucky. If CT hadn't come back, our football boards would not have been a fun place to be...


While there's reason to believe we should have better depth behind Hunter in 2019 than we did Thorson this past year, you never know what you really have and you certainly hope we don't need to find out...

 

[Sec_112]

...1. Not starting a set until 15 or less seconds to go on about half our possessions. That means we only get 1 chance to run something before it reverts to someone forcing a 1 on 1. This is partly due to lack of PG ... 3/4 court press ... dynamic guy ...

I don't disagree with your direction, but I think you're leaving out one key component (although it falls under the "lack of a PG" category).

There's only been a minor problem with any press. It takes some time off the clock, but it's still workable.

However, when these guys get in their half court sets, their first inclination is to back the ball out and start over ... multiple times. They are so tentative. There's nobody who poses a threat after the press is broken and the defense resets. There's also nobody who can attack, and the ball is perpetually above the 3-pt line extended.

Turner is the king of this, and it's the main reason he's handling the ball less and less. However, Law does this also.

 

[ColumbusCatFan1_rivals]

This is the first bad loss of the season.

Agreed.

You can’t lose at home to an 0-10 conference opponent (no matter the strength of said conference) and call it anything other than a bad loss.

 

[ricko6543211]

I don't disagree with your direction, but I think you're leaving out one key component (although it falls under the "lack of a PG" category).

There's only been a minor problem with any press. It takes some time off the clock, but it's still workable.

However, when these guys get in their half court sets, their first inclination is to back the ball out and start over ... multiple times. They are so tentative. There's nobody who poses a threat after the press is broken and the defense resets. There's also nobody who can attack, and the ball is perpetually above the 3-pt line extended.

Turner is the king of this, and it's the main reason he's handling the ball less and less. However, Law does this also.

Well yeah these are all derivatives of the same thing. Press takes time off shot clock and also busts up our flow. But your point is true too. Perhaps the underlying problem is that it’s far too easy to bust up our offensive flow because it rarely exists. If you deny one pass we get gummed up. Everyone is thinking and directing instead of just moving. It’s partly due to the no PG thing, and the Vic slump thing, but whatever you want to blame it on it’s become a mission critical problem and by now it’s sort of cost us our season which is unfortunate.

Doing more simple drive and kick stuff to get the call and players moving is my current best idea, but I dunno. If there were an easy solution we probably would have found it by now...

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

I see a few problems on offense / have a few comments.

1. Not starting a set until 15 or less seconds to go on about half our possessions. That means we only get 1 chance to run something before it reverts to someone forcing a 1 on 1. This is partly due to lack of PG, partly due to teams realizing this and now everyone does the 3/4 court press on us which perpetually disrupts us, partly due to not having a dynamic guy who can bust a press himself and make them pay (at least Kopp tried to shoot that wing 3 once...), all these things are inter-related.
2. Poor shooting. Even when we get good shots (which isn't often enough) we aren't making them. Lack of confidence can get contagious. So then teams sag down on us and kill the lane. We've not gotten the benefit of the doubt from the refs either, but that's also because we often aren't putting ourselves in positions to be successful. Think we maybe need to try more pump fakes when in the lane.
3. If we are going to throw up our hands and say "if Vic doesn't score we can't win" then at this point we might as well give up the conference season. It's been about 6 games now, either it's something to do with an injury or else this slump is prolonged enough that it's already cost us our season. It's past time that we need to figure out something different our O has been terrible for 3 straight games (and bad for longer than that, though we squeezed out a couple wins) - just saying "well if he doesn't make shots we can't win" is not a valid excuse. Also, while he missed shots, he took too many long contested looks, not high % shots.

I actually think we got most of our best shots from relatively simple drive and kicks (well, and Pardon post ups but we've discussed that plenty). Vic set up a few 3s that way that others caught in rhythm and made. Think he (and others - Gaines Turner Taylor at times too) tend to put their heads down too much and force it once they start driving, teams are helping and then we aren't hitting the open guy. Could say the same thing on cutters - it doesn't happen all the time, but we do get a guy open on those back cuts a handful of times a game, and with few exceptions we rarely make the pass.

So this is grasping at straws a bit, but I think I would almost try to simplify the offense - just go to a drive and kick, drive and kick, drive and kick to try to get everyone moving and establish some flow. Continue to mix that in with the Pardon post sets. We need more player movement and ball movement. Seems like everyone is thinking too much and no longer playing basketball.

Who can consistently drive and kick?

 

[Purple Pile Driver]

I don't disagree with your direction, but I think you're leaving out one key component (although it falls under the "lack of a PG" category).

There's only been a minor problem with any press. It takes some time off the clock, but it's still workable.

However, when these guys get in their half court sets, their first inclination is to back the ball out and start over ... multiple times. They are so tentative. There's nobody who poses a threat after the press is broken and the defense resets. There's also nobody who can attack, and the ball is perpetually above the 3-pt line extended.

Turner is the king of this, and it's the main reason he's handling the ball less and less. However, Law does this also.

We have a winner!

 

[mikewebb68]

Let's look on the bright side: Gordon Lightfoot, 80 years young, is working on a new album.

Wow that is simply amazing what an accomplishm--wait, wut? I thought he already sang every song ever written...why would he need to work on a new album then?

 

[freewillie07]

I don't disagree with your direction, but I think you're leaving out one key component (although it falls under the "lack of a PG" category).

There's only been a minor problem with any press. It takes some time off the clock, but it's still workable.

However, when these guys get in their half court sets, their first inclination is to back the ball out and start over ... multiple times. They are so tentative. There's nobody who poses a threat after the press is broken and the defense resets. There's also nobody who can attack, and the ball is perpetually above the 3-pt line extended.

Turner is the king of this, and it's the main reason he's handling the ball less and less. However, Law does this also.

Nice post. This is so true.