Sengun/FVV-centric offense won't survive long term

We're approaching the halfway point of the season and it's time to start talking about this. I gave the whole team roughly 30 games to work things out and now it's time finally to judge everyone based on their raw output for the remainder of the season. Right now our #1 big picture issue is offense. If you further diagnose it, we're extremely weak inside the arc and in transition. Those are unsustainable flaws.

Our defense is amazing but our offense sucks. Not to mention, our offense has an extremely limited ceiling the way we're running it. Ime Udoka has not yet shown himself to be an above average offensive coach in his career. In Boston, he was not a better offensive coach than Stevens given roughly the same roster. Mazzulla is the best offensive coach among the 3. Mazzulla is no MDA himself.

We can't expect someone to come in and improve everything all at once. It has to unfold over a season. I was always aware that Ime would come here and prioritize defense very much in the mold of Thibs - leaving offense to be fully worked on later as a lesser priority. So there's nothing to be angry about here. We needed the time to work on our defense and we're not fully finished installing even right now. However, we are entering the second phase of the season. Everyone should know the offense/defense and it should easy to install more stuff in the offense right now. We should be stealing sh*t from the Warriors and Nuggets as much as possible. We just don't have the same off-ball execution as those teams.

There are some characteristics Udoka is displaying that remind me of Pop's weaknesses (when SAS were contenders) and that makes sense (drowning his team in midrange, not trusting youth, not great with coaching offensive wing players, excellent in the post though). I don't think Ime is doomed to be a below average offensive coach or anything like that, but he better stay on top of this lest he ends up a Thibs or a Rivers. Someone who will lose his locker room early at almost every job. You can only yell and be angry for so long till players tune you out. You can motivate people in the short term that way but not in the long term.

My suggestion is that we need Fred and Holiday to chill on taking 2pt shots. They are shooting extremely poorly on those, just as bad as our young guys. I thought Ime would be the type where he goes "I don't care how much money you're making, this is a meritocracy and we do what's best for the team". However, there does not seem to be any effort to let FVV know that there's an 8 year sample that shows he should not be taking this many 2pters.

We need FVV to generate easier and earlier shots for Jabari, Jalen, Amen and Cam. We do NOT want to go the route where we are leaving Sengun to carry the load of 1.5 scorers. Sengun is half of an ELITE offensive duo. FVV is not the other half, although he's a very stable and reliable professional who's filling in admirably. Please don't get me wrong, I'm so happy we signed FVV. His leadership, passing, defense and 3pt shooting is amazing for this team. Right now there's no one converting on drives at a rate that could unseat FVV. However, we've been through this before with KPJ. We've seen how much truth (none) there was to the idea that since Jabari can't make ultra wide open shots, then he must not be able to make any shots. Turns out delivery, context, execution, trust, confidence, rhythm all matter. People could have been shooting better than KPJ, but out backcourt were hogging all the good shots if we're being honest.

On FVV's role in this, there have been accusations in the past - which I thought were frivolous - about FVV holding back young guards. A big chunk of Raptors fans have been saying this for two years. Now, I'm reconsidering whether it was false. He may not be a bad guy, but also he may not realize that his subconscious knows he does not benefit monetarily from these guys succeeding as soon as possible. It's not intentional, as I said we're all human. That's on Ime. He needs to be watching this situation.

The bottom line for me is, if we have to give shots to the best of Cam/Amen/Jalen/Jabari, we should be willing to let them shoot 1-2% lower TS% as long as they're clearly better than FVV in the 2PT area. We can sacrifice a tiny bit of efficiency there and I bet one of these 3 young scorers will make up the difference within this season. It would be a great investment for our future. We'd know better what we have before the deadline. The FVV-Sengun centric offense will not survive long term anyway so it's time to prepare this team. I didn't want to sacrifice anything significant in terms of wins, so it's good we've been patient with this and trusted FVV's steady play.

However, now that we're more than 1/3rd of the way through the season, I think it's time to judge Ime's offense just as we would anyone else without taking anything away from his success overall.

Aside from trades, which offensive direction do you guys think we can go with the pieces we have? Is this really the best offense we can do with this roster?

 

This is a bad thing? Sounds like space for everyone else, achieving exactly what shooter should achieve.

The way you're describing FVV, it's as though he's Lebron James. Role players are doing their job when their defenders over focus on them. Star scorers you don't want to crowd, but FVV is not that. I don't understand why we're treating FVV as anything other than an excellent role player which is what he's always been. I always knew we'd have to over extend him, but we have jumped the shark a little bit and FVV is taking a few unnecessarily difficult shots per game. Over 90% of his contribution should be defense, passing and 3's. There's nothing we're gaining from FVV taking this many 2PT shots, he's not making them better than our scoring guards. If we get to the point where he's drawing more defenders to the 3pt line, that's heaven for Sengun/Jabari/Jalen/Amen/Cam. We are really desperate for spacing and better 2PT shooting, it's a major flaw in our offense that's holding us back.

I get that this is the best strategy to pursue if we're in the situation where getting just 1 extra win at the end of the season makes or breaks our entire rebuild. However, that's not true. We're not talking about just giving up wins. We're not talking about risking 4-5 wins. We CAN afford to risk sacrificing 1 or 2 wins if the potential return is 1 or 2 extra wins on top. That's not an unreasonable expectation that one of Jabari/Cam/Amen/Jalen will reward us for that.

 

This thread has nothing specifically to do with Jalen. The point is: anyone who has a chance to score 2pters better than Fred by the end of this season. I do not accept we don't have anyone like that on the roster. Hell I'd rather Sengun take more shots.

Regarding your point, i addressed it. It is the most efficient offense thus far but it is pointless. FVV is not going to look much different by the end of it and even if he has his best season ever. We're never going to want that to be our bread and better.

Remember, we are in phase 2 not phase 3. We are not yet at the point where future doesn't matter at all.

 

Just regarding this point too, I've never known offense to be Ime's thing. I'm letting him do his thing with defense and development. At the moment based on results, Ime is basically the inverse MDA.

We don't do anything well on offense other than FVv/Sengun and I don't believe the roster is that bad offensively.