Friday, November 18, 2005
Rotations
This shit isn’t working.
Merely eight games into the season, it’s already time to declare these rotations totally fucked. Beyond the mindless benching of our only inside presence, Doc’s combinations are just not effective. The starters are playing entirely too much, which shows on the defensive end and on the glass. There is absolutely no flow to the second unit.
Thing is, the rotations don’t look too egregious on paper. The first unit has played together for over a year now (on the same team that is), and the Ricky/AJ duo should be able to anchor the second team. So either Doc is a horrible coach, unable to get these guys to fill the role he has envisioned for him, or they are entirely incapable of fulfilling those roles.
Rotation talk inevitably hinges on the Ricky start/sit argument. While he remains one of my favorite players, I’m firmly in the bench Ricky camp. As it stands, Ricky never seems fully integrated with the starters. He sits for one timeout, maybe a minute or two, and then presses on an extremely clumsy second team.
The other immediate change I would make would be to move Blount, out of town preferably, but at least to the second unit, and perhaps to the power forward position. When you consider that many think our current starting center is having a renaissance start, chew on the following:
- Among Celtic starters, Blount is last in rebounding. In fact, our starting center has 10 fewer rebounds than our starting point guard, who is fourth amongst starters in rebounding.
- In approximately 200 fewer minutes, Perkins has only 6 fewer rebounds than Blount.
- To date, there are 44 centers in the league who average more rebounds a game.
- Overall, Mark Blount is 139th in rebounding, tied with Marbury, Arenas, Etan Thomas (in 12 minutes a game) and fucking SMUSH PARKER!
Fine, you want to showcase him for a trade, move him to the 4, where he can continue to take those fifteen footers (his layup according to an increasingly drunk Tommy), and team him on the frontcourt with someone who can board, Perk.
Accordingly, I would move AJ and Gomes to the starting unit. The first unit would still be Pierce-oriented, with AJ being the second offensive option. He’ll do better on the boards than Blount, and Gomes will battle underneath to give the first unit a needed jolt. The second unit would feature Ricky and Blount, with Perk hitting the glass, Reed playing D, and Dickau throwing the ball away.
Starters: C-Raef, PF-Jefferson, SF-Gomes, SG-Pierce, PG-West
Second unit: C-Perk, PF-Blount, SF-Reed, SG-Davis, PG-Dickau
Sure, there are holes in these rotations, please feel free to rip them apart. But they can’t be much worse than what we’re doing right now.
