It's been good to see the team actually winning games despite not playing well overall. The last win in particular gave the team a small cushion which will be needed with our injury situation. I have however seen some things that really concern me. For one thing tho some have praised the changes, i've been concerned about how the offense has slowly devolved into an ugly mess over the last 8 games. At 1st the changes were very subtle, but now it's clear that all vestiges of the offense we once saw have gone away.

The team looks like they don't really know what to do anymore. Sometimes out of sheer force of habit they'll go back to some of the stuff they used to do, but mostly they stand around and go ISO or if they move it's often very clumsy, where guys get in each others way and there's very little continuity of ball and player movement. It's GREAT that the defense has really picked up and been much tougher, but what worries me is that in the playoffs we'll face teams that defend equally as well as we do!!! We're such a poor offensive team that I don't know if we can beat these teams playing this style of offense or just shooting this poorly. It's all good if you're just hot and hitting all those long jumpers and tough shots, but we haven't been.

Things have ground to a halt. We're near the bottom in terms of Offensive Efficiency! The team still gets up a lot of shots, but we shoot 43.7% which is 22nd in the league. The team is shooting poorly from 3 too. 31% on 3's which is 28th in the league. Even our FT shooting is down! 74.7% which is 21st in the league. Now this team has been able to overcome these weak numbers with a supreme effort on D, which I love. The thing that concerns me is that when we face a good team that can match us on D we don't have enough offense to give us the edge in that kind of matchup. The Defense will cancel out and that only leaves offense. This was the problem that the Bulls had last year. They could beat most teams during the regular season, but in the playoffs you'll eventually face a team that can defend as well as you can and then what???

I did notice many of the disturbing trends you point out. The Offense has been really stagnant the last few games, and the free throw shooting has been off as well. However, last night the free throw shooting was one of the reasons they won they game, so hopefully that is a move in the right direction. The team is going to shoot poorly from three point land, because really the only consistent three point shooter is Novak. If his attempts are down, then the % will drop. JR Smith is erratic yet dramatic. The good thing is we won games.

Really the gist of what this thread is about is that this doesn't portend well for the future when we get into the playoffs and have to actually score with our set offense. Right now we get by with poor offense and great D, but when you go up against an equally great D then that will cancel out and you'd better be able to put the ball in the basket at an efficient rate. The idea is to have a balanced team. Right now the offense has slowly ground to a halt and it's not just the fact that Lin and STAT are out.

Even with shaky 3pt shooters and shaky play makers, you can still execute ball and player movement to get better shots. I did like how Melo would work to get low post in the broken plays we had, but he won't be facing the Bucks every night. He won't be able to do that against Dwight Howard. We need to find a way to get back to more of the team oriented offense that we had before and not just rely on players individual talents alone.

One example is that Novak isn't getting as many open looks. WHY? Mainly because the ball and player movement is so slow that defenders aren't being challenged to cover the entire floor as much, so if our players aren't moving, then the defenders don't have to move as much and can get back very easily when Novak gets the ball. The ball and player movement and PnR broke teams down and opened up the perimeter for Novak and our other shooters.