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It’s been said before particularly by CT but Cole is a huge liability on defense. Fortunately Frantz seems to be coming out of his three point shooting slump in a big way, which we’re needing tonight.

You’re right but other teams rely more on the three than we do. By design and necessity we focus on the paint.

Again their absolutely horrendous shooting is making us look a lot better, just the opposite of how horrible we looked when Boston and Philly were hitting everything against us.

You’re not wrong. Knicks an astonishingly bad 1-14 from three. Change that around and it’s a different game. Many of those misses were open shots. I’m realizing an important truth of basketball: game is easier when the other team misses all their shots.

Again we see a lot of dribbling into traffic. Very rarely do you win 1 v 3 situations.

Me too. Natural on defense with surprisingly fast hands. Good enough on offense, knows his role, smart passer.

There were a lot of very casual passes leading to turnovers last night. Not sure if it was fatigue or what. Cole himself had 4 turnovers to 1 assist. I didn't feel like it was great defense that forced most of the turnovers; rather just careless passes or constant 1 v 3 dribbling into traffic.

Maybe Fran Vazquez is also available and we could swing a deal for both of them.

There was no injury that anyone noticed. Just his surgically repaired knee swelling up after a few games. No reason to believe that won’t be an issue in the future. The only way he can be pretty much guaranteed not to have issues going forward is for him not to play at all. Given how AB looks like he’s starting to develop, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Part of my post after the Indiana game. Looks like the game is really starting to slow down for him.

Our shooters are elite enough to beat them.

I dunno. Maybe he didn’t intend it, but the implication of those remarks is that Indiana is the better team but just couldn’t be bothered to turn it on against the Magic. Sounds like making excuses to me. If they’re really the better team they need to prove it by beating us and so far they’ve done just the opposite - on their home court.

LOL, I don't think so. But it is a pretty well hidden slap in the face.

Goga and Black, as CT said, had a huge outcome on this game that doesn’t entirely show up on the stat sheet. Also, Black is starting to show early signs of becoming more assertive and confident on the offensive end. I understand that with Franz and Paulo on the team, almost any rookie PG will feel a lot of pressure to just pass the ball to one of them and run to the corner, which is mostly what he’s been doing, but I think I’m starting to see signs of him looking a little for his own offense also. Great game and very important win. Only caveat is what CT said about Indiana’s defensive shortcomings, and in particular inability to stop Paulo and Franz from getting to the basket. That may not carry over to other teams that are better than Indiana defensively, which is almost everyone (Indiana defensive rating is 28th out of 30 teams). One other thing: the offense can have a big impact on the defense. In the recent Boston games for example, in one game we shot 38%. In the other game we had 21 turnovers. Both those scenarios lead to situations where we don’t have time to get set on defense, and the other team will often get open three point looks. We were able to contest most of the Indiana 3s last night because we shot 53% and had only 13 turnovers.

Maybe but a fair number of those 3's that he missed were wide open, not sure how any point guard would have changed that.

It's a tough call because you're absolutely right, the hope is he'll shoot himself out of his slump and we can't have more guys who don't take 3's, but as long as he shoots this badly and keeps taking 3's he's potentially costing us games. Our last 4 games, all losses, he's 2-18 from 3 and that probably cost us at least one game.

You're correct, my mistake. We did beat them at home last month so my comment stands otherwise, but I was mistaken about location.

Indiana favored by one tonight. We’re at home. To me this is an important opportunity to get things a little bit back on track. We beat them pretty comfortably in Indiana a few weeks ago and if we can get back to playing better we should win this one, and avoid a five game losing streak and potential tailspin.

I agree with you that he would be a terrific addition to our team. I still remember how on that draft day, about half the posters were ecstatic that we got Bamba instead of Trae. Not looking so good in hindsight :) Unfortunately I suspect Atlanta would require one of either Franz/Paulo to get him, at the least. Edit: Thinking about it, maybe we could trade to get Bomba back and then trade him straight up for Trae. Give the Hawks a chance to correct their historic mistake!

I’m not sure where he got the reputation of being a great shooter. Yeah that was the rationale for drafting him, but last year he shot less than 34% from 3. I have yet to see evidence that he’s a legit three point threat on any kind of consistent basis.

Bucks favored by 9.5 to tonight at home against short handed Magic who are on second night of home and away back to back

Driving 1v3 into the paint isn’t working either. Need some ball movement to find open shots or open driving lanes. Other teams know we’re committed to get into the paint, especially Franz and Paulo, and they simply sag off and let them try. Can’t mindlessly just drive into that.

Our lack of outside shooting and therefore spacing is being exposed. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Franz going 1v2 or 1v3 this game, trying to get to the basket. I will say that with better ball movement and less dribbling into traffic we probably would get better shots, so that is also impacting our shooting.

A lot of those open shots were off our misses though. When they were in a half court set we had much more success defending them. Goes back to what you said before about our taking poor quality shots due to stagnant offense, and over dribbling into crowds.

Yep. Against better defensive teams we fall into the same bad habits again and again. Team ball disappears and we just over-dribble into traffic.