Great pod, love the points about us matching up with other teams instead of forcing other teams to matchup with us, this was a big gripe I had last year also. Thought the playin game against the Hawks last year was a great example of this. We played Okoro a bunch of minutes because JBB wanted him on Trae, who ended up cooking us anyways. Cedi got a DNP and Love had 10 minutes. The minutes Okoro was on him Trae could just chill on defense saving all his energy for the 4th while our offense stagnated in the second half partly due to having a to play 4-5, (Levert was also having a really bad game and played 40 minutes) They also had Capella out which meant they had no rim protection.
Thought an obvious gameplan would be to have shooters out there to give space for Garland and Allen/Mobley to run the pick n roll, since the hawks didn’t have anybody to guard the paint. Lauri was also super hot from 3 that game so one more shooter would have been perfect. Instead JBB goes with Okoro to “counter” Trae. We give Love 10 minutes and Cedi doesn’t even play, I know Cedi can suck but in a game where Levert is playing bad and Okoro is just Okoro you gotta at least try him out see if he’s flaming or not.. We end up losing at home against a team with one of their best players out.
Seeing this again this year where JB plays inept offense players because he thinks they can counter one player on the other team, so their superstar gets to chill on defense. With the amount of talent on our roster theres no reason to play like that, we should be running sets and lineups that make every player on the other team work, not iso ball, pnr with non shooters just standing in the corner for 24 seconds.. make the other team adjust and not allow Trae young’s Steph curry’s etc to just rest on D