yo, griz rule: love ya, love ya. but telling me to "relax about the scoring" seems a little like telling an aspiring chess grandmaster to "forget about the brains" or your teenage son when he asks for the family car to "forget about the safety rules." i mean, outscoring your opponent is what it's about. "relax about the scoring" seems like a terrible motto going into the season. here's my reasoning.
if there's one position you can tell to relax about the scoring, it's your point guard. i want my point to see the entire floor, to organize, distribute, first and foremost. scoring can come later. a scoring point guard can be a recipe for disaster, example to follow. but now you have three positions that can't score--four, five and one. that's asking an awful lot of your remaining two positions to make up the slack. and that's not good, for two reasons i can see.
first, bolomboy is at least as good a rebounder and defender as anybody we have in the paint. he scored seven per last year, but you can bet weber is exepcting him to score more. say, seventeen. say our guy averages seven. that's ten points you give away at one position, and have to make up elsewhere. if their four turns out to be pretty good, and he outscores us there as well, you go into any game against weber in a deep hole.
but my point guard example is one you should be familiar with, because it's steph curry of the warriors who torched your nuggets in the playoffs last year with back-slapping, jaw-dropping shots from downtown. he was quick and accurate, and with klay thomposon equally hot at the two, it looked like the warriors had a shot to go all the way--until they ran into greg popvich.
pop looked at the warriors roster and figured what we all knew: the warriors were crap down low. bogut was gasping and playing on weak knees. david lee was out hurt, festus ezilie is a bricklayer, carl landry was undersized and harrison barnes was a rookie. so popovich extended the defense way out past the three-point line, leaving the paint defense to essentially one man, tim duncan. he then hounded curry and thompson, forcing both to work hard to get their shots, from farther out than before. the warriors were still in it, but without scoring punch down low, the result became inevitable. san antonio won the series.
can you see weber doing that to us? bobomboy playing a one-man zone down low, knowing our guys can't score, while they double jamar on the wing? or trap out point guard coming up court?
i think you need capable scorers at every position except the point, else you're writing yourself a ticket for a long season. i also think you missed your calling as an attorney. if i were arrested for defacing signs at fort missoula, you'd tell the judge about my character, boy scout record, love for dogs, sunday school attendance--why, when you got done, the judge would have forgotten what i was there for in the first place.
in fact, the only thing that let me relax last night was awf-ul's inside info that wiley is now 7'2" and 250. we know awf is never given to irony, hyperbole or deliberate humor, so last night in my dreams wiley was soaring through the air, jamming over dwight howard. how sweet it was!
