Grange: Drowing in 3-feet of Water

[slaw]

Wake me up when it's all over.....

http://www.sportsnet.ca/basketball/n...-in-weak-east/

Gay and DeRozan are third and sixth in the NBA in shots attempted, respectively; no two players on any team take more shots than the 38.5 a game they hoist and yet they combine for just 4.3 assists a game. Gay in particular has no apparent conscience as he takes 20 shots a game and dishes out just 1.6 assists while shooting an anemic 38.2 percent.

As a whole the East has a record of 66-78 through 144 games for a winning percentage of .456—and this with the Heat and the Pacers combining to win 80 percent of their games. Remove those two juggernauts and the remaining 13 teams are 50-77 for a winning percentage of .393.

Put another way the other 13 teams are on pace for a 32-50 record, a standard the Raptors can’t even keep up with.

[Superjudge]

good, i hope the get even worse

[isaacthompson]

How do the Raptors compare to some of the league’s better teams? They don’t. Of the Raptors’ four wins none have come against teams that have a winning record at the moment and only one was against team—Memphis—that could be considered a quality opponent. Against teams that do have a winning record so far the Raptors are 0-6 and also lost to Charlotte, who are .500.

Just turrible.

I loved the analogies at the beginning. He summed it up perfectly.

[KeonClark]

How bout this one:

It’s early, but Gay is on pace to be the only NBA player in 60 years to take so many shots while making so few and passing so little, according to Basketball-Reference.com

[hateslosing]

good, i hope the get even worse

People are way to negative about this whole thing. If you think that tanking is a good idea this season I think you're crazy. There are too many teams to compete with at the bottom of the league and even if we did our best to lose, I'm not convinced we will finish worse than 5th last. So let's just make the playoffs and give our young players (and some of our veterans) a taste of playoff basketball. If we're lucky we'll get home court by winning the division and make it to the second round.

Also, Rudy Gay learning to pass isn't as crazy as Grange makes it sound. He's actually averaging 3.0 assists in our wins and in the last 2 (Jazz, Grizz) is averagin 4.5. Demar Derozan is also averaging 3.5 assists per game in wins and has actually upped his assists per game this year to 2.7 from 2.5 last year. So while their ratios of shots to assists is still atrocious, I think that they are both improving and will get better as the season goes on. Part of the problem is that Rudy and Demar are being asked to initiate the offense a lot more this year, somehing Lowry or Calderon has always done in the past. I think what we are seeing is a bit of a trasition period of two guys that are used to shooting whenever they touch it learning that they now have to create for others

This team is going to get better, we have the personel and the schedule is going to improve. Plus it looks like we have no offense right now so if Casey develops some you know, basketball plays, that will likely contribute to more wins. Both Rudy and Demar are also not going to shoot less than 5% less than their career averages all season.

[KeonClark]

People are way to negative about this whole thing. If you think that tanking is a good idea this season I think you're crazy. There are too many teams to compete with at the bottom of the league and even if we did our best to lose, I'm not convinced we will finish worse than 5th last. So let's just make the playoffs and give our young players (and some of our veterans) a taste of playoff basketball. If we're lucky we'll get home court by winning the division and make it to the second round.
Also, Rudy Gay learning to pass isn't as crazy as Grange makes it sound. He's actually averaging 3.0 assists in our wins and in the last 2 (Jazz, Grizz) is averagin 4.5. Demar Derozan is also averaging 3.5 assists per game in wins and has actually upped his assists per game this year to 2.7 from 2.5 last year. So while their ratios of shots to assists is still atrocious, I think that they are both improving and will get better as the season goes on. Part of the problem is that Rudy and Demar are being asked to initiate the offense a lot more this year, somehing Lowry or Calderon has always done in the past. I think what we are seeing is a bit of a trasition period of two guys that are used to shooting whenever they touch it learning that they now have to create for others

This team is going to get better, we have the personel and the schedule is going to improve. Plus it looks like we have no offense right now so if Casey develops some you know, basketball plays, that will likely contribute to more wins. Both Rudy and Demar are also not going to shoot less than 5% less than their career averages all season.

Bingo! I'm with ya homie

[Craiger]

Its worth noting sample size here. We are still at a point in the season were one or two games turn a team from .300/.400 to .500

Just a guess on my part but I wouldn't be suprised if there has been alot of cross conference games at this point, since the east as a whole will always average .500 against the east.

Expect alot to normalize in the not to different future.

That said there is no question the Raptors are staring a late playoff seed, or just outside the playoffs, square in the face right now.

Now I remember someone saying something about not wanting that......

[isaacthompson]

People are way to negative about this whole thing. If you think that tanking is a good idea this season I think you're crazy. There are too many teams to compete with at the bottom of the league and even if we did our best to lose, I'm not convinced we will finish worse than 5th last. So let's just make the playoffs and give our young players (and some of our veterans) a taste of playoff basketball. If we're lucky we'll get home court by winning the division and make it to the second round.

Did you not read the article? How are we supposed to advance to the second round if all of our wins so far have come against sub-.500 teams?

Playoff experience is overrated if it just means the team gets swept.

[CalgaryRapsFan]

Did you not read the article? How are we supposed to advance to the second round if all of our wins so far have come against sub-.500 teams?

Playoff experience is overrated if it just means the team gets swept.

And/or if most of the roster won't be here next season.

[hateslosing]

Did you not read the article? How are we supposed to advance to the second round if all of our wins so far have come against sub-.500 teams?

Playoff experience is overrated if it just means the team gets swept.

There are only 5 teams in the East with winning %'s over 0.500. If we won our division, which isn't an impossibility right now, we would be the fourth seed and might end up playing a team that is as bad as us and have home court. The Hawks for example, are a team that I think we could compete against for a series. That could get us to the second round.

I'm not saying it's ideal and we would likely then get swept in the second round, but I'd rather try to win a series than try to lose as many games as possible for a chance at a player that might be good.

[Nilanka]

Can't really argue with anything written.

[Axel]

Can't really argue with anything written.

Thanks for the contribution Switzerland.

[Nilanka]

Thanks for the contribution Switzerland.

I should clarify. I can't argue with anything written by Grange in the referenced article.

[CalgaryRapsFan]

There are only 5 teams in the East with winning %'s over 0.500. If we won our division, which isn't an impossibility right now, we would be the fourth seed and might end up playing a team that is as bad as us and have home court. The Hawks for example, are a team that I think we could compete against for a series. That could get us to the second round.

I'm not saying it's ideal and we would likely then get swept in the second round, but I'd rather try to win a series than try to lose as many games as possible for a chance at a player that might be good.

I don't want to turn this into another to-tank-or-not-to-tank debate, but there's a lot more to any decision about team direction than just the bold.

I think this current roster has a window of two years max (this season and next) to compete; essentially the life of Gay's contract. I don't believe MU will extend him, since any extension has to build off his $19.3M salary for next season. I also doubt that MU will re-sign him when his current contract expires, unless he agrees to a serious pay cut (even then I'm personally doubtful whether Gay represents the team-first approach that I expect MU to build with). Plus, Gay could opt-out after this season, which cuts that window in half.

Another significant question mark is Lowry. Is he the Raptors' PG of the future? That question should be answered ahead of the trade deadline (or possibly by the draft, at the latest). If Lowry is not the PG of the future, he should be traded for something of value (an equally good player, prospects, draft picks, or some combination thereof).

If Lowry is traded, I think he represents the first domino. Unless a subsequent trade returns a starting PG, or one is signed in the offseason with limited cap space, there's no way this team can compete. At that point, it makes no sense to keep Gay, if the team isn't going to be truly competitive for the remainder of his contract.

If the decision is made to trade Lowry and Gay, simply as smart asset/cap management and effective team building, then the "tank" is on for the rest of this season whether you like it or not. In that case, valuable trade chips for playoff teams (ie: Novak & Hansborough) should be cashed in immediately, with the longer-term in mind. Tough decisions will then need to be made on decent veteran players under contract beyond this season (ie: DeRozan, Johnson and Fields), likely to be based on market value and what they'd return in trade (we can all speculate, but we really have absolutely no idea).

The more I think about it, the urgent question MU faces is not "should we tank?" and the most important issue isn't the 2014 draft. The first question is about Lowry, since he's expiring and plays a critical position. The next question is about Gay, especially if MU gets an indication in private about his intentions regarding his player-option. Those two questions are the catalyst for whatever comes next, regardless of which side of the "tanking" issue you're on. The answers to those two questions will dictate the direction MU ultimately takes.

[Axel]

I should clarify. I can't argue with anything written by Grange in the referenced article.

haha fair enough. I find it hard to take anything Mr. Burns says at face value, especially when riding in a tank.