You don't need to be at full health to project what a team is. Nash isn't going to help every single problem this team does. He'll cut down the turnovers, but they scored 117 points. The Lakers can't defend in the half court either.
The Heat never dipped below .500 this far out and were losing to mostly good teams. They just looked a lot better even at their worst.
The Lakers are running out of time already, even though we're only 1/3 through December. The Lakers are struggling that badly.
Our problems are turnovers.
And take Bosh and Wade off the Heat and how does that team start? WITH Bosh and Wade they started 9 and 8.
Make Bosh 70% and sit Wade and make LeBron about 70% health wise and tell me if the Heat would have even started 9 and 8. Oh and fire Spoelstra while they were going through the period of trying to find their offense and bring in a brand new coach and system.
Got it? What is the Heat's record in your mind then?
Alright now let's look at ourselves. TURNOVERS are our main issue because of team chemistry new systems and needing Nash to be the main anchor of how we run this offense.
We are ONE OF FOUR teams in the NBA that is top 10 in both OFFENSE and DEFENSE
And we are FIFTH in the league in three point shooting.
Now those factors alone say we should be a top tier team
But then look at the fact that we barely not leading the league in turnovers. We were first, now we're second, only one other team in the entire NBA is worse than us at turning over the ball and a majority of our opponents points come off of turnovers.
Lowering our turnovers is the first major step and Nash fixes a lot of that. Kobe put it pretty perfectly he said "D'antoni's offense is built around a facilitating point guard like Nash and no other point guard runs it as great as he does even though Duhon has done an alright job." And Duhon has, but he is no Nash, there's a lot of decisions Duhon caused turnovers on that Nash just wouldn't have. And that is the main factor, with Nash our turnovers go WAY down and we no longer have 3 to 4 players designated to bring the ball up the court in multiple possessions.
But also what Kobe said was this "But we need to bring urgency on the defensive end every single night and not just when we're down 13." This is also true.
Yet and still Utah scored 25 points on us off of turnovers and a big majority of their fast break points were OFF turnovers which is why they beat us down the court.
Take away 10 points off that and we win this game and MANY others that we've lost. 5 less turnovers a game and we have a winning record.
Seems small but it's very huge. Nash taking away turnovers is a BIG help to us. Till then we'll just have to bring the effort defensively to an extreme amount, and we need to space a little differently. But our halfcourt defense is actually pretty good, we are top 10 in the league in both interior and wing defense. So it seems it all comes down to the points we give off of turnovers.
So thus turnovers is our main problem and honestly our main defensive foil. So THAT needs to be fixed. To me above all else.
Edited by Majesty, December 10, 2012 - 01:32 AM.
