Brief thoughts
1. As of right now it appears that Trey Burke is good for scoring but that's it. He's not exhibiting the floor awareness to punish a collapsing defense consistently and when his roll man is covered there's an instinct to just shoot.
2. Timmy's decision making was better last night but watching him jaw at Trey Burke and Enes Kanter wasn't cool to me. Either do it calmly or do it during time out but don't make a scene on the court midgame when you're the biggest culprit for going under screens and late help (leading to and-ones).
3. Kanter can either slow down the PnR ball handler or he can stop the roll man from getting the ball. But he can't do both simultaneously which means when guards go over screens, they get punished more often than not.
4. Frank runs the pick and roll really well. If you hone in on those plays, he's productive point blank. The past two games, he's still splitting time between SF who sits in the corner as a decoy and primary ball handler, but the additional opportunities have led to back to back 5 assist games. 5 assists on limited opportunities is pretty damned good. His three pointer is looking much improved too. But he still only takes what the defense gives him right now and could do with improvising more often for sure.
5. Dotson should start. Let Burke be the guy you sub in and keep in when he's hot, but otherwise let Dotson get out there. He has the best motor on the team, a pure form from range, flashes some handling and played better D than even Frank last night. It was a Khris Middleton-lite game for him. Oh yeah...10 boards too, how long have I been on about his rebounding?
6. I actually was ready to applaud Lance since he made three's and grabbed 6 boards...still a 15 mpg guy in an optimal situation but my God are the rest of our wings bad on defense (honestly that might be why the Frank at SF experiment started too)
7. Mario goes Wario and isn't good enough to do that. He needs a shorter leash when he presses.
8. I really like Vonleh but he'll be undersized against bigger C's and it showed last night.
9. Mitch needs minutes. The Frank/Mitch PnR was really effective but they went to giving Baker chances to run the offense.
10. Baker doesn't need to play imo.
Obviously Mudiay and Knox getting hurt has had an effect on the rotations.
[I found Kiid's comment about Fizdale queering Knox's mojo bizarre. Had just come off of a positive all-around rebound when he hurt his ankle. One may assume Fizz has triggered Kiid's snark mechanism.]
As soon as Emmanuel can show he's got 20 a night in him, got to figure Baker goes into cameo mode.
Your idea about Dotson is interesting, as is Frank more on the point with Robinson. Don't think Fizz is prepared to queer the confidence of Burke and Kanter off of a setback game, though a quicker sub may be coming.
I can recall numerous possessions where Trier was bringing the ball into play. Not sure about Dotson being effective in that mode. Me? I'd like to see how Frank starting at PG, with Timmy at SG and Demyean at SF, Vonleh at PF and Kanter at center works out, with some combo of Burke, Mudiay, Trier, Robinson, Thomas, Hezonja coming off the pine.
As for the long leash on Hezonja, Fizz went from the short leash to the long leash, and I don't think he is going to go back to the short leash anytime soon, with Knox out, as he is trying to find that balance between confidence, efficiency and decision making.
Certainly be interesting how our young guards respond to Steph Curry coming off of a nuclear performance, let alone how our thin front line responds to Durant, also playing at a high pitch.
Defense, which had been encouraging coming out of the gate, took a punch in the mouth last night in a rain of treys. And that was MIAMI, let alone GOLDEN STATE. Looking for some pride tonight. Interesting test for the team and our coaching staff.
Poll
