Troubling thing i've noticed

[ceez]

My question/curiosity/wonderment is what is causing the struggles?

He looks more lost than he was as a rookie. That type of regression is not normal. It would be different if he came in to the NBA and never looked like he belonged. That is not JV though. He showed flashes very early last year of becoming dominant.

Hopefully it is just sophomore jinx and works itself out sooner than later. He has shown too much drive and talent to think otherwise. DeRozan as an example had a 3rd year regression and put together numerous strings of 7-8 games stretches where you thought he finally got it throughout his career. Hopefully right now is not one of those strings but he is in fact the real deal (at least offensively).

think too how good/confident he looked in summer league. now i know summer league is summer league but also remember how the offense was run.

not only is JV not getting passed to in general, but when they DO run offense for him its on short jump shots. not the post. he's a fine jump shooter but he really needs to be in the post.

[JawsGT]

think too how good/confident he looked in summer league. now i know summer league is summer league but also remember how the offense was run.

not only is JV not getting passed to in general, but when they DO run offense for him its on short jump shots. not the post. he's a fine jump shooter but he really needs to be in the post.

He isn't getting position man. Now, there have been many occasions in which I have noticed him getting position and not getting the ball, and no doubt that has frustrated him. I'll admit, the team isn't doing enough to get him, or Amir for that matter, involved in the offense. But if he is going to slack off on trying to get position he will never get the ball. He is playing soft. Now maybe he thinks that working hard in the post is a waste of time because he isn't getting the ball, hard to say really, but I haven't liked what I have seen from him lately. You can see the frustration on his face and with his body language.

Still, he has to work for it down low, and he is also giving up position to his opponent. If Blatche is gonna have his way with JV, what are we to expect against guys like Hibbert, Chandler, and Lopez? Horford just ate him up in the second game of the season.
Some of this is on the team and Casey, but as the games go by I'm thinking more and more that JV is just as responsible for his struggles.

[jimmie]

Are you serious? Rudy went left with Demar on the wing and Amir in the corner. Who told Amir to go to the corner? Where do you think the help is coming from? Ain't nobody leaving DD open for a game winner with the way he shot last night, so naturally the help rotates off Amir, so what do expect Rudy to do? Two options, take another contested 2 while being defended by two guys (I think we have all seen enough of that), or pass to the open guy in the corner for a possible winner. Casey effed up, plain and simple. The only way Amir is on the floor in that instance is if he parked UNDER the basket, not behind the 3pt line. Stupid, stupid play. Rudy did what he should have done, Casey did not. Just one of many coaching mistakes Casey made last night...we should have destroyed that piss ass team last night!

That's simply not true. I just checked the video, and as soon as Gay gets the ball, he has DD on his left at the elbow. The pass to DD is available at that moment (he's open) and remains available until Gay starts his drive -- about 3 seconds. Gay spends that time 'setting up' his move, when he really should have immediately fed the hot hand and let DD have the last 7 seconds in the game to make something happen.

Amir being in the corner is how the play was drawn up, true -- with Novak and Lowry in the other corner -- the point: extend the defense so the guy with the ball at the top has options for the drive when the defense extends. And putting the ball in Gay's hands may have been part of the play call, which is Casey's blame, if so. The way he's been playing, he should not be the first option, and should never be the 'playmaking' option. To say Gay "did what he should have done" in that situation is false.

That said, it was a 2-point game. If the Raptors are as good as some people think, it should never have come down to one shot.

[JawsGT]

That's simply not true. I just checked the video, and as soon as Gay gets the ball, he has DD on his left at the elbow. The pass to DD is available at that moment (he's open) and remains available until Gay starts his drive -- about 3 seconds. Gay spends that time 'setting up' his move, when he really should have immediately fed the hot hand and let DD have the last 7 seconds in the game to make something happen.

Amir being in the corner is how the play was drawn up, true -- with Novak and Lowry in the other corner -- the point: extend the defense so the guy with the ball at the top has options for the drive when the defense extends. And putting the ball in Gay's hands may have been part of the play call, which is Casey's blame, if so. The way he's been playing, he should not be the first option, and should never be the 'playmaking' option. To say Gay "did what he should have done" in that situation is false.

That said, it was a 2-point game. If the Raptors are as good as some people think, it should never have come down to one shot.

Gay was given the ball to be the playmaker, which he is more than capable of. He didn't have it cause he was the first option. He had it because he was supposed to drive and draw a defender. If the defender doesn't some, he takes a two and possibly sends the game to overtime, if the defender does come, he passes for an open and possibly game winner, which is what they wanted. He could have passed the ball to Derozan BEFORE he makes his move, but then a defender closes out on Derozan and we very likely get a contested shot. He drove, drew a defender and passed the ball to the open man, just like he should have. If he should have done anything different, it would have been to drive right, which would have had two capable 3pt shooters on that side. Amir should not be parked outside the 3pt line on the last play of the game like that. Why not Ross in that position? I still think Casey screwed the pooch on that one. Plus, Casey's lineups were a joke last night.

I do, however, agree with the bold...it should have never come down to that.

[octothorp]

If the Gay/JV play that we're talking about from last night is the one I'm think it is, I've got to side with Gay on it. JV and his man were working against each other relatively high, and Gay passed it low and it went out of bounds (that's the play we're talking about, right?). So obviously there was a miscommunication there, but had JV picked up on what Gay was trying to do and they had connected on it, he would have gotten the ball deeper in the post and in better scoring position than he had all night. Gay's had a lot of experience playing with one of the best euro big men in the game. He's been a more willing passer to JV than any other wing on the team (except when he goes into his brutal tunnel-vision mode and passes to nobody). He knows where JV needs to get the ball to be successful, and last night through both JV's fault and through the rest of the team's fault, JV wasn't getting the ball where he needed it. Should Gay have waited and brought it up during a timeout or in the lockeroom? I don't think so. Point it out immediately so that they can get on the same page.

As someone else noted, there have been numerous times where we see Gay encouraging him after he makes a mistake or gets a bad call. There are A LOT of things to criticize Gay for this season. His relationship with Valanciunas is not one of them, and in fact it's one of the few things I'd give him credit for.

[Shrub]

Maybe they are being emphatic because they want to see more out of him?
I'm not an advocate for Gay (don't know how I feel about Lowry), but this is a bit silly.
Say what you want about this team, but I don't think the relationships between players are an issue.
Gay is a poor leader but I don't think he's a jerk, and I'm sure things are fine in the locker room.

They could be more encouraing...and he could perform better.
I am sure they went into the game hoping to utilize JV to exploit the absense of Lopez, and he didn't come through.
In short, they're frustrated because they know he's capable of so much more.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:
If JV requires coddling to perform and be confident, he's not the kind of player I want on my team.

He could be in a better situation, but it's on him to rise above it.

[jimmie]

If the Gay/JV play that we're talking about from last night is the one I'm think it is, I've got to side with Gay on it. JV and his man were working against each other relatively high, and Gay passed it low and it went out of bounds (that's the play we're talking about, right?). So obviously there was a miscommunication there, but had JV picked up on what Gay was trying to do and they had connected on it, he would have gotten the ball deeper in the post and in better scoring position than he had all night.

A smart player doesn't make that pass until JV has established position, whether that's high post or low post. He doesn't make that pass while it's clear that his teammate and the defender are still battling.

Gay is not a playmaker. He's terrible at seeing the floor, can't handle any better than Demar, gets stripped way too often when he drives the paint, and makes poor/ill-advised passes (like the one to JV that's under discussion, and the one to Amir to end the game, regardless of what the 'play' dictated should have happened) when he does decide to pass.

I don't know whether he's "toxic" in the lockerroom, or how his teammates feel about him. I just know that he's providing very few positives and a boatload of negatives on the floor on a nightly basis.

[JawsGT]

I have been hard on JV lately, suggesting that he needs to work harder in the post on both ends of the floor to start having a bigger impact. However, after some thought I have realized that JV (and our big men in general) are working hard in terms of hustling up and down the floor between possessions as well as setting a lot of screens for our guards and wings. And, as you may have noticed, our offense often has to reset which sometimes means our bigs have to come up from around the rim to set another screen to get the play started again. All this requires a lot of energy from our big men, because both Amir, Tyler, and Jonas all run the floor pretty well. So, perhaps JV doesn't have the energy to battle down low with some of the other bigs throughout the game. When he plays well, it is usually in the first quarter, obviously when he has the most energy to burn. But a quarter or two of running around trying to have a defensive presence and freeing up our wings and guards could very well be exhausting the kid to the point where he doesn't have the strength to battle with some of the bigs down low. Watching the games I haven't really noticed him being tired, but he doesn't necessarily have to be breathing heavy to not have enough strength to be an effective post player on either end of the floor.

Just something I thought was worth noting and something I'll be paying attention for in future games. I'll also be paying close attention to the screens he sets as well as how the ball handler is using those screens. Our perimeter execution isn't the greatest (as evidenced by the number of times we reset) and I haven't really critiqued the process enough to suggest it is a weakness of JV or the ball handler. But I will be looking.

[Rapstor4Life]

thing about JV he has to learn more than 2 moves its pretty silly sometimes. Get that man in the gym with Hakeem, but you know 2nd year.