The "who starts at point guard" is starting to appear increasingly meaningless to me, there are deeper more systemic problems than who is on the court bringing the ball up to start the game. For me it starts with our starting shooting guard; there's really something off about Brandon, and the way he's playing with his teammates. Sure his assist numbers are about where you expect them to be given his first three years in the league, but there's a weird vibe I get from him when he's playing seems to indicate that he's thinking he has to go out and completely dominate a game, which is probably rooted in a sense of responsibility to live up to his big extension as much as anything, but what comes across through the screen is that he trusts his teammates less than he ever has before. There have always been a steady diet of high pick and rolls and clear outs when he's handling the ball, but he seems to be trying to do too much by himself, and is not performing very well at all off the ball.
As for starting point guard, be that Miller, Blake or Bayless it really doesn't matter to me at this point. Whomever it is clearly going to have to play off the ball because Brandon is so ball dominant, the other reason I see it not mattering is that Nate doesn't seem to want to run an offense that blends the talents of all the players that are out on the floor; I see a lot of 1 on 5 and 1 on 1 and sometimes even 2 on 5 but most of the time guys are standing around waiting to catch and shoot, presumably from kickouts they think will be coming their way, but there's no movement, there's no guess work for a defender about what is coming, all defenses currently have to do is just overplay Brandon forcing him to make off-balance passes to players that end up taking a lot of shots at the end of the clock or contested and/or often fading backward. The net result is that we take a lot of low percentage shots, don't get to the free throw line and we never fast break so there are no easy buckets.
I'd like to think that there's some magic personnel formula that Nate just hasn't hit on yet and when he does get that combo figured out it will start clicking, but I don't see this group really coming together any time soon, the pieces don't quite fit; there's too much replication, too many guys unsure of what their roles are, and still too many guys who are young enough in their careers that they probably aren't satisfied with being pigeonholed into being a role player. If this thing is going to be salvaged for this season, KP is going to have to break his pattern and actually pull off a mid-season trade, but more likely he'll wait until the draft and try to move some guys (if at all) and hope for some sweetheart deal to fall in his lap (which won't). The other alternative is to fire Nate and hope he can find a coach capable of blending all these jump shooters together, but even that probably won't work unless a slightly different mix of players is put together.
And Blake would flourish on this type of line-up, since anyone that comes off him to double or trap, will be victim to his wide open "Three"
