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Message: [QUOTE="OrangeFoo, post: 4961437, member: 210"] The plan on O was to have two guards who are interchangeable, are lethal in the open court and are triple threats. Then you have Bell and Taylor as perimeter threats to create space for the guards. Westry and Cope were meant to be slashers who could cause chaos by breaking down the D. Benny was the stretch 4 who could get the team an easy bucket when needed. Centers rebound the ball and get dunks off occasional pick and rolls. Unfortunately here is the reality… Benny has been a no show all season for various reasons. JJ couldn’t shoot for most of the season and now that he can shoot he’s not able to really distribute the ball. Judah is the best player on the team and it’s not close, but his shooting is not there, he has no one to space the floor for him to drive and he has no one to pass the ball to. Westry is hurt. Cope can’t shoot and again there is no spacing for him to do his thing so he causes chaos in moments but not consistently. Taylor can’t get his shot off at this level. Bell has shown some stuff but he is nowhere near consistent enough and frankly would be coming off the bench on a normal team. Then the big guy got hurt and that means Brown has to play iron man. But the big issue with the O is not the offensive strategy, it’s the D. I don’t think Autry wants to play grind it out half court games. This team is at its best when it’s turning the other team over and getting into the open court. During these blowouts the turnovers stop and the offense go to crap. I know this post is about offense, but my big concern is still the D. They play pretty good initial D… but the instant they don’t get a steal or their man gets passed the defender there is ZERO help. This leads to easy shot after easy shot. Then given that this team has the mental strength of tissue paper they lose all discipline on offense and resort to playground ball taking bad shot after bad shot which leads to easy runouts and the whole thing snowballs. I’ll give Autry a pass on the offense… I can see what he wants to do but he’s playing with a roster of misfit toys. Where I am deeply concerned is the D. D is all about strategy, execution and effort. Yet here we are two thirds of the way through the season and the team has the same defensive issues it had in the first games of the season. There is still no secondary help strategy… and that is really really bad because that can and should be fixed by coaching. I want Autry to succeed, but he needs to show some coaching chops on D. [/QUOTE]

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