Think about this though for real. Greg isn't really doing that much for us right now. However good he becomes for whatever team... RIGHT NOW, he is not helping our team at all. Yet, we are still winning and playing pretty damn well.
Imagine Durant on our team. What is the biggest thing that our team is suffering from? Another solid scoring option behind Roy. No matter what team Durant is on, it is safe to say he will score at least 18-20 a game. If we had that with our current roster?? To give up what Greg is giving us for what Durant could be giving us??? I bet you we are behind the Lakers 1 game not 6.
You're silly if you don't think Greg is doing things for us right now or helping. He definitely is.
The biggest thing our team is suffering from isn't a solid scoring option behind Roy. It's solid offensive schemes ( and defensive schemes too but is another issue entirely) to take advantage of the scoring options besides Roy. That's a coaching issue that needs to be corrected. We've basically got three offensive schemes with one side dish occasionally thrown in.
1a. The Roy Iso.
1b. The pick and roll/pop that leads to us hardly ever hitting the roller and instead having a lot of contested jumpers.
2. The Travis Iso.
Side dish: Occasional LaMarcus/Greg postup.
It's those schemes and a bunch of other players standing around. Considering this has happened the entire time Nate has been here with several different groups of players I think we can conclude this is a Nate issue and not entirely a player issue.
Imagine this team utilizing Rudy's movement more. Implementing consistent cutters down the middle when Greg and LMA post up? Back door cutters, double screens for three point shooters and open jump shots instead of contested ones?
Greg does things wrong as I said in another post: brings his arms down too much, gets too much body contact sometimes, loses a defensive rotation. These are all correctable - you lose your timing after missing a month off, he missed a year and is coming off a major surgery (and a lot of you seem to want to downplay the significance of coming off MF surgery) and had never played in the NBA before like other players with the same surgery had to fall back on at least. He'll fix these things people. There is a reason he was a good defender in college.
But he also boxes out well, he'll battle for boards and while he may not grab them he'll tip them out towards his teammates. A lot of those same teammates who decide to just let their guy blow by them and get the rebound because they don't move towards it. That isn't Greg's fault.
He also affects shots and players driving the lane. He does pick up fouls on the perimeter and gets blown by when he's on a guard - but that is a defensive scheme issue because Nate doesn't have his players fight through a lot of screens which gives the other team the mismatch they want. That's never a good sign for a coach to concede to the other team a mismatch - it also sends a message to the refs that you aren't fighting through screens and aren't being aggressive.
You can point out a lot of things wrong with Greg but again they all look and will be correctable in my opinion. He's being made to look a lot worse than he actually is because of some schemes we're using and that's no good for him.
