Ime Udoka after Amen, Jalen spark comeback win in Portland

Pace is neutral when measuring the league. But it isn’t neutral about any one particular team. Some guys are great in transition and some less. If you have a team full of transition s

Execution in the half court in the playoffs is all that matters. Transition offense partly is effective cause of lazy defenders. Your February regular season mundane game has lazy players and can be exploited. So pace can matter then. Playoffs though that disappears.

 

I’ll receive Harold’s last post again: it’s not that high or low is absolutely good but there is no doubt some rosters are more suited to play slow and others to play fast. If you have CP3 and Shaq, you’re suited to play slow. If you have Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion, you better be outrunning your opponent.

It’s of course a benefit to be able to play slow grinding basketball but sometimes you have to look at your roster and realize these guys are only going to marginally improve at this within a season until their skills catch up. As our young guys continue to improve their skills (mainly shooting and passing) you want to start slowing down and those skills will improve the slow half court offense.

In general younger, faster, more explosive teams should run more to make up for their experience and skills gap with veteran playoff teams. You want to take advantage of what you have more than anyone else, so how do you take advantage of athletic youth? Transition and pace and stamina are your friends. In the slow half court, bodily strength, skills and experience are a major advantage.

The Wizards for example had Avdija, Gafford, and at SF Kuzma. They’re led by some moronic guards. They’re not interested in winning. It’s not a comparable situation. They don’t have 3 elite athletes who can run past you and jump over you. This team is not suited to run at all.

OKC destroys people in transition. They will slow down as skills catch up. Jalen Williams is a SG playing PF, Giddey still can’t shoot and Dort is smaller that most people he guards. They run even though SGA is equally good in the half court.

We need to look at better models for our team. Pacers, Kings, OKC run. Denver were top 10 in transition frequency last season even though they have a slow C.

We’re getting there. In frequency we’re top 10 now. Coach and roster all want it. It’s not a coincidence Sengun’s assists are back up and all 3 athletic guys are thriving since the team picked up the pace. Nothing will miraculously change everything but we’ve tried both ways and the core 6 players look better/same at a higher pace. None of them are struggling with it. It’s much more logical AB’s probable to convince players to get back in transition than to hope they develop a 3pt shot in-season. Udoka is doing the right thing imo.

 

Myth. The bottom 5 teams in transition PPP last playoffs lasted 41 games. The top 5 played 63 games.

You have to be good at both in the playoffs and half court becomes more prominent than regular season but if you don’t punish teams in transition in the playoffs you’re going to make wins very hard on yourself.

No one is advocating for giving up developing half court. That is a longer term development though, requires skills and strength and experience executing. We can’t fast forward that just cause we want to. We have to take advantage of our unique advantages in the meantime. We can be faster than everyone else right now, those 2-3 extra high efficiency points can flip entire games.