This season will start ugly and slowly get better.
“Yeah, with new offense we are just trying to figure it out,” Sexton said. “We’re not used to anything like this, just pretty much getting up and down playing, and a lot of pick and rolls, a lot of different actions. It’s a new offense, it’s going to take time to understand it and there’s some things that we are going to talk to coach about.”
The injuries have slowed down the progress in learning the offense.
"I guess what we have on our side is if we play extremely hard we’re going to give ourselves a chance every single night,” Love said. “When the continuity picks up and that togetherness picks up because we spend time on the floor together then we will start playing a better brand of basketball. We’re hoping some of the growing pains that we will have early will be made up at both ends of the floor if we just play really, really hard.”
Yeah, well, you can't make up for lack of "continuity and togetherness" with effort. Every team in the league is trying really, really, hard.
"Rookie Dylan Windler, who was in line to be the team’s backup small forward behind Cedi Osman, suffered a stress reaction in his left leg from over-exerting himself in the summer without enough time off his feet."
It's encouraging to know that he is so committed to being successful that he actually overtrained thhis summer.
“We’d really like to have him,” Beilein said. “The ball really moves with him. We need another shooter. He was really playing well up to that point.”
When Windler gets back he'll be at square 1, like the start of training camp. I'm thinking that after about 30 games we might get a chance to see what this team could look like. They need to learn the offense, develop some familiarity with each other, and the rookies have to adjust to the league. Actually, it will probably take the entire season. Having a veteran front line of Love, Thompson, Nance, and Henson will help. We'll have some athletic scorers in the backcourt; Sexton, Garland, Porter, and Clarkson. Windler, once he's up to speed, HAS to be an upgrade over Cedi.
It will take a while but this team could be interesting to watch in the second half.