Betrayer

Boston - If you're talking about a healthy Tatum, probably not, but that's a problem for next year. Also, any Boston series is just going to come down to whether or not they're hot from three. That's their entire gameplan. Cleveland - Probably. Orlando or New York - Yes (as long as Stew is healthy this time). Trajan is sitting here with the #1 seed in the East by a wide margin who's just behind the #1 seed in the league by a tiny margin. None of the young core is even 25 years old yet. I think he views this season as playing with house money. Unless there's a slam dunk of a trade I doubt he's going to risk crippling the future on a risky/bad trade just to do something. As much as I think you have to shoot your shot while you can in sports because you only get so many chances, I can see his point of view of trying to stay patient and financially flexible as long as possible to see this team develop in the playoffs and find the right trade.

It really makes no sense. The eye test and the stats back up Ausar's immense value to this team on both ends of the court. His minutes should mirror the star player he's assigned to shut down unless he's in foul trouble. Jamal Murray is 28 and Ausar is 23, yet JB treats Ausar like he's on a minutes restriction.

JB tries to throw this one away again by benching the defensive player of the month and the best perimeter defender in the league for most of the critical 4th quarter minutes. The guy is +9 (second only to Cade), got you 5 extra possessions, and had Murray in jail most of the night yet JB thinks that making the offense marginally better (theoretically) is more important than stopping the opponents clutch player and getting easy buckets from transition and put backs even though every stat shows otherwise. The only person surprised that Murray went on a scoring run when Ausar was on the bench was JB...once again. This is getting really tiresome. I'm glad one of the reporters asked JB about it after the game. His answer was terrible, but at least someone asked.

Zero interest in Coby White. I wanted Ayo in the deal, not because I wanted him to be a starter, but because he can hit the three and play some defense. We don't have any of those, not even mediocre ones, and we need to start upgrading our 1-way players to 2-way players.

Even more importantly, they get Piston killer, Vucevic. If you wear #0 in Detroit he's guaranteed to look like prime Dirk against you.

When I first read that we were in a trade with Chicago involving Ivey I assumed Ayo was the return. Imagine my disappointment when I saw it was Red Velvet. After some time to digest this, I'm going to come at it from the other angle because I think I can understand what they're doing here. The trade value for guys like Ivey (Monk, Sexton, Simons) is in the tank in the NBA. You can't move them. Ivey is a worse player than any of those, so his value was terrible. Your only chance to get anything significant was to package him with other players or picks and maybe those deals just weren't out there. You weren't hanging on to Ivey in the offseason with what he probably wanted to make, so he was gone for whatever anyone wanted to offer him if you wanted to drag it out or nothing if you didn't drag it out. Based upon the rumors over the past few weeks he could very well have asked out. You could tell he didn't want to be here. A trade had to happen for all of those reasons. Plus, every time he stepped on the floor it was a mess this year. You really couldn't pair him with anyone and make a competent backcourt. Sad to say it, but Huerter is a better player. He's had some struggles shooting on a bad team, but he's a career 37% shooter who doesn't require his feet set and 15 seconds to set up his shot like Ivey. He's bigger. He's a better defender - he's not a good defender, he's maybe a neutral one, but he's not Ivey who was absolutely terrible. If I'm looking down the bench and both Ivey and Huerter are there, I'm putting in Huerter. Sad, but true. I'm disappointed that the 5th pick was traded for a mediocre player, but at the end of the day it's an upgrade in my eyes. Side benefit is Huerter is another expiring contract which is more flexibility for the next 2 days or for the offseason.

They score a lot of points in the paint, but I think Del was pointing out that they shoot a poor percentage from the paint as well. They win games because they win the possession battle by forcing turnovers, getting offensive rebounds, and limiting opponents shots. Offensive efficiency is a real problem for this team in nearly every phase of the game, even from the free throw line.

Does anybody watch the "celebrity" game anymore? It's terrible and there's rarely any actual celebrities in it.

Suns did to us what we do to everyone else on defense and it worked. This is what the playoffs will look like when other teams really lock in defensively and play as hard as we do every night. I actually applaud JB for benching Ivey who looked terrible in the first half on both ends of the court. Bad timing if you want to trade him, but he's been total trash this year. That said, how do you not put the best perimeter defender in the league on the other team's best player who's having a career night? It makes absolutely no sense. And why take out Duren and Ausar out so soon in the third when you've actually made a run and cut it to 3? Are these guys 40 year old vets or in their early 20s? Duren was dominating in this game and he doesn't even crack 30 minutes. Ausar is at 25 minutes. Jenkins nearly played as many minutes as those guys and he was having another bad night yet we didn't try out Sasser when we couldn't hit a three to save our lives? Mind-boggling stuff from JB, who's done a phenomenal job creating a culture and will probably win CotY due to the record versus expectations, but is failing left and right at in-game management. As everyone knows, shooting is a real problem, but the solution isn't more Duncan Robinson types. We have zero 3 and D players. You have 1 guy who can shoot that gets hunted by the opposition every time on defense, and then a bunch of guys who can defend but can't find the bucket on offense. Getting some 2-way players HAS to be a priority for the trade deadline if you want to compete past round 1 of the playoffs.

Denver's revenge game coming on Tuesday.

You're assuming that a trade bringing back Giannis is going to leave all of Ausar, Duren, and Holland on the team?

Was just thinking about how we could be the third team in the Giannis to Miami trade and come out of the deal with Powell and Portis. Powell is a rental, so that should lower his price a bit even though he's having a nice season.

NAW picked ATL and they needed to find someone who could be a sometimes ballhandler and get some buckets. Sounded passable on paper, but the limb-flailing, turnover prone, always injured, low efficiency thing they got was clearly not the plan. I can't kill Trajan for it because he's done an amazing job of building a really deep team with finds like Green, Jenkins, Reed, and more. That said, I CAN blame JB who keeps trotting Caris out there like he's a core member of the team (when healthy) and even playing him down the stretch in 4th quarters.

Those records will look a little better than the teams we're facing because Booker and Butler will both be out.

Murray's poor FT shooting saved them from a classic JB game mismanaging performance. Why did he use all of his timeouts to make offense for defense switches? Did you really need an 0-8 Duncan back in the game? That first foul on Green was questionable at best and you left yourself no timeouts to challenge it. Why wasn't Ausar brought back in the game in the last 4 minutes? Let him use up that last foul. He was a team high (by far) +14 in this game and shut down Murray all night. I'm so tired of hearing that it's "for the offense". When your half-court offense is as bad as ours you make up for it with extra possessions and easy buckets. Ausar gave them 8 extra possessions (5 steals, 2 offensive boards, and 1 block) of the type that usually result in high percentage transition opportunities and shots at the rim. Building on the same question, why was Duncan playing at all in the final 4 minutes of this game? He was 0-8 from three and was getting targeted on every defensive possession by Murray. Get Ausar, Ron, and/or Stew in there to create some easy buckets. JB claims defense is the identity of the team and once again you see him giving up on our elite defense to try to make our offense slightly less mediocre. Look, I love Daniss on most nights, but he clearly didn't have it tonight and yet JB rode him for way too many minutes in the 4th even while Cade was in the game. His role is backup PG, not shooting guard. JBs ability to mismanage rotations killed us against the Knicks in the playoffs and will again in the playoffs this year if this team doesn't make a consolidation move to add more 2-way players and take some decisions out of JB hands. Just wait until LaVert comes back from the injury he's milking so he can't get traded.

Welcome to a playoff atmosphere. Cade will be trapped. You’ll see zone. You can’t win with just 2s. You can’t start three poor defenders in Duncan, Harris, and Duren. You need to use your challenges better. You need better lineup management. Being first in the East is an awesome accomplishment but if you want to get past the second round you need to make a move before the deadline.

Look, we probably weren’t winning this with Cade playing this bad, but also terrible game management by JB to have Robinson, Harris, and Duren closing this game.

Tobias and Cade cooked on defense on consecutive plays.

Wow. Didn’t expect the refs to look back a few seconds earlier. I’ll take it.

Are we the worst in the league on challenges? I can’t imagine any team being worse.

Yea terrible call. about to lose this challenge though. Duren grabbed the jersey.

SVG called it. Why are we going back to the starting lineup who are all at least -11 in this game.

Why do I see Tobias waiting to come in?

Cade is so off today.

Put Duren back in now so you can go back to Stew to close. Or just don’t sit Stew.