Head Coach JJ Redick Discussion: Spazzing Out

If you’re LavarBall’sDad, then every year you seem to throw out the same defensive mechanisms when we lose where you dunk on the team, look for someone to blame, go off the rails and post all these “hehehe” in your comments acting like the joker from the dark knight on your way out.

The NBA is about matchups, we don’t matchup well with the Wolves because we can’t really play Gabe or Goodwin due to their size and we don’t have a big to help keep Gobert, Randle and Naz off the boards. It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have matched up well with GSW in the next round or OKC / Clippers / Denver in the WCF who can’t as easily exploit those two things.

 

2nd time, at least, in this series that he doesn't own his strategy and gaslights it. (1st was when he didn't blame the defensive approach in game 1). He worked in media and knows better what to say and don't say so it may be PR strategy, but I prefer a coach that is direct and honest, owning up their flaws.
He seems to enjoy those coaches too, from his comments in the podcast, so not sure what to make of this but it's pissing me off.

To be fair, since game 1 we have adjusted the defensive approach so maybe it's really just him playing the PR role

 

If we lose this series - I would put a lot of the blame on JJ's coaching.

He's still a good coach, but he's getting badly outcoached this series

You gotta play Vando more, play Knecht...and stop yanking Hayes for the ENTIRE GAME. Give him spot minutes...10-15 minutes is good enough

4 minutes, 7 minutes, 5 minutes, 8 minutes. WAY too low annd it takes a toll on our guys having to battle the physical bigs all night

And if ur not playing Hayes..>PLAY VANDO.

If we need more offense...GET KNECHT IN THE GAME

Either way - any changes he makes now may be too little too late

 

To me, it hasn't been so simple. The way we have been generating wide open 3's is getting them into rotation and the way we achieve that is by attacking the rim. If we play Hayes, Gobert is at the rim and the Wolves don't bother to collapse the paint because they trust him to erase our attempts at the rim. So with Hayes on the floor, we end up getting into the teeth of the defence, they don't collapse and we just kind of dribble around or pass out and reset.

I don't know the solution to that, I mentioned before that I'd like to see Luka use his mid game to force Gobert to help. But JJ has elected just to play 5-0 and force Gobert off the floor instead. In the 3rd quarter of Game 4, it worked beautifully, we blew them out. I just don't know how to bottle that for 4 quarters. The other problem is, when we hunt switches onto Gobert, we haven't managed to capitalise - Luka is 5/14 when Gobert switches onto him. Other posters like abeer and pioneer have mentioned we should be switching onto DDV, Conley or NAW instead. I think that's a good play if you can get them into the post and clear out.

Honestly, their size has just been tough to exploit so far, Gobert, Reid, Randle and McDaniels are all bigger than our rotation. I don't know how we get out of this hole.

 

i believe he spoke to them because i believe he's a good communicator. i don't believe that it's not an issue. at all. your actions spoke. and you may have been right not to trust any of them, but you didn't.

personally, i felt like vando and goodwin both did enough to warrant at least a brief chance. maybe not hayes and gabe in that one, but those two were out there doing positive things that maybe don't show up in box scores.

whatever, water under the bridge. guessing we'll never see it again.

 

make open threes at a very high rate. otherwise, cooked. finch knows it, gambled, and won.

 

Man go get me some wins!! I don't really care what he has to say. Win or go home. We still have LeBron and Luka, JJJ was touted to be, a potential offensive X and O Guru.

SHOW ME.

 

i think not subbing was partly his way of saying he's looked at the chess board, and he has one play. i'm not sure he's wrong, either. i don't think this negates the idea that he knows what he's doing. finch also knows what he's doing. he's pressing his advantages. we've tried to press ours and come up short.

again, we had to rebuild the team on the fly at midseason and obviously (based on the williams stuff) didn't think we had the right pieces. well, we didn't.

 

I think we underestimated the benefit of chemistry that the Wolves have on their side.
Reid-6th season
Finch, Ant, McDaniels-5th season
Gobert, NAW, Garza - 3rd season

We drastically changed the entire fiber of the team at the deadline on a team with a rookie coach. I think we REALLY need a camp under our belts, build some cohesion and familiarity after we flip the roster again this summer. I thought the collective basketball IQ between Bron and Luka was enough to patch the hole until camp and maybe if we didn't have so many misfit toys.

JJ is catch a lot of flack for the daring second half choice he made. Had the refs made the call they later admitted they blew, there's a very good chance this is a different conversation we're having today. That puts Luka on the line, we either tie or take the lead and don't lose our timeout. I'm not saying it was a good decision, there's a reason it's never been done before. But it was the refs not f***ing us on a play away from working.


I don't think he'll lose the players he sat. They're all adults. He's good at communicating. I'm not sure they'll be back next year though, cause if coach can't play you when we need you...why are we rostering you? I think we could have used a couple minutes of Goodwin and maybe a couple of Gabe, but I get it of why not even risking that. IF you buy 4-5 minutes, you're still playing them insane minutes and if either of those two or Vando or Jax come in and let go of the rope, Minny rips off a 7-0 run what was the point of playing the death lineup the 20 minutes together that half instead of 24. If you're going in, you're going ALL in. I would've had more problems with it if that was in the Friday game and we had the short turnaround for Sunday, but he also did this in a situation we were going to be off until Wednesday. That's the time to do it rest wise.

 

It’s been really hard to play Gabe and Goodwin this series… Minnesota is basically running one of Conley, DDV or NAW at a time. So we hide Reaves on them mostly.

That means that they have Ant at the 2 basically for 44-45 mins a game. We’re defending him with Luka or Reaves - already not great.

They have McDaniels at the 3 for 38-40 mins. Randle takes the rest of those minutes. Then they got Randle, Reid and Gobert taking the other 96 mins at the 4 and 5. So we are asking Lebron, Rui and DFS to check those guys.

If we bring on Gabe, he is the smallest guy on the floor being asked to guard Antman… or we put Reaves or Luka on him instead.

Goodwin I think you have to play a few minutes more to spell Luka and have Reaves and Lebron create.

As for spelling Lebron, it’s either Vando or Hayes that’s done that so far. And in their minutes we’ve been out scored significantly. If we had Kleber alive. I think this is a different series.

 

Kleber is washed, we have Luka and Lebron, and we are down 3-1. Whatever his original gameplan was, it hasn't worked. Again..show me something different. This is what gurus, geniuses do. We might not win the series, but going out in the next game or two, that's going to be disappointing. We can squabble about why it happened, after the series is over

 

I said somewhere a few weeks ago that basketball is a conundrum, in no other team sport can a single player make such an impact, while simultaneously having to rely on the contributions of the other 6 or 7 guys in the rotation.

Kleber may be washed, but he is still 6'10 and knows how to defend and can shoot an open 3. If he could have spelled 10-15 mins a game, Lebron probably has more gas to finish the 4th quarters and as a result we are in a better position to win games 3 and 4.

When you say show me something different? What are you actually saying? JJ can only play whats on his roster, he can't make them grow, or get quicker, or become defensive minded or hit shots from outside.

 

Lebron ball has always been ugly. Too much pounding the ball and iso, waiting to the last minute, and if he can't create a mismatch, tosses it to a poor soul unqualified to shoot with 0.5 on the clock because it's the "right play".

Then along comes Luka, and the balls stops completely. Zero ball movement on most possessions. We are looking for the mismatch and his dribble penetration, and if it doesn't happen, we just don't get a good look. I detested watching that brand of ball in the last few minutes. It was ugly. It was ineffective. It wasn't championship basketball. It failed us.

Hopefully changes are coming, and the ball moves around a little more.

 

yeah, even with luka, the ball still needs to move, as do the players. guys like him are so good you get seduced into lazy strategy, imo.

 

Superstars play the way they want to play .. Luka and Lebron play a similar style in the 4th quarter which I'd describe as " turtle target ball" especially when their team is leading .

This is why you have to defend and control the boards because they're just milking the clock and mainly taking low % contested long 3s

 

Yeah. Our roster is what it is at this point and there are going to be clear flaws with anyone put in there. But we have to work with what we have. I'd try to use Gabe, Goodwin, and Vando to steal some minutes for our stars and live with the results.

 

but it truly doesn't have to be this way, imo. it takes everyone--coaches and star players--to tacitly agree to it.

 

It's not going to change anytime soon , structurally at least

 

JJ Dantoni at least you can say you done it your way. Small ball 4 life