No Excuses

Rip wouldn't miss one no matter what. Hand in his face, over under. Just ridiculous down the stretch. Excellent game by everyone. We lost because of bad officiating in the start and Blatche playing like complete poop on defense. This team is getting there. McGee has arrived.

Meh it was a good play by design but Blatche isn't even a high percentage outside shooter.

Noooooooooooooooo why give it to Blatche...

Come on Gilbert dagger lets go.

Charlie V would be a HOF player if he played every game against us. What a joke.

Yup and as much as I have criticized Flip, I think he's getting through to Javale. This team is playing really clutch in the fourth. Even Blatche has stepped up big time.

Yup I don't have any doubts anymore either. We have a top 5 talent at the PG and C position. This team has the potential to be scary good if both Wall and McGee become what we think they can.

He warmed up tonight along with Yi but they took a last second precaution and kept him out. By all accounts he will be ready by Tuesday. I'm more worried about Josh Howard. We aren't hearing much on his end. Charlie V. couldn't have abused Blatche anymore in the first. I'm really starting to get pissed off at this guy.

McGee is beasting too. 10 points, 9 rebounds, 1 block. He should have three blocks, those two goaltendings were complete BS. Dude I really think he's turned the corner. We should be winning by double digits. These refs have called a terrible game so far.

Brave, you might be right that this team is turning the corner. Nick Young has gone from a useless bust to being recognized by Flip as our best bench scorer and a top 3 defender on this team. His defense has improved significantly. McGee is getting better each and every game. It's almost getting to the point where if his progress continues he won't be a liability on the court but a huge asset. Gilbert is finally getting in a rhythm. Hell even Trevor Brooker impressed me last night. He was hustling out there last night and he sets one hell of a pick. Wouldn't be bad as a utility guy off the bench. Like you said earlier about Blatche, I agree that he needs a bit more time to get his health and conditioning straightened out but IMO he's running out of time. Soon it will no longer be an excuse. I don't know when the wins will start showing up but the youth movement is taking shape. Exciting times for this franchise.

I want us to make a move for Marc Gasol. Pair Gasol and McGee together as the 1a/1b center pairing. The biggest downfall of this team right now is inexperience to close out games and rebounding and tough paint defense. McGee has picked up his rebounding big time but we still need a load in the paint, someone like Gasol. We have no big men who can really get the others in foul trouble. The biggest thing is experience though. I'm really interested in seeing how McGee develops in an 82 game season with 25-30 minutes every night. He's already made such huge improvements in 11 games. Scary to think what he could become if he continues this progress.

I like having Hinrich on this team. In general I really like our guard rotation. Nick Young has been playing really well on both ends of the floor this year. Wall, Hinrich, Arenas and Young is as good a backcourt you can ask for right now. McGee is really really impressing me. Man he gets his help defense under control and the sky is the limit. This team can be really really good with a tough gritty front line. With the way Blatche is playing, I'm not sure he has a future on that. I'll give him another week or two to start playing with more energy.

Blatche is really making boneheaded play after boneheaded play. McGee is going to be a monster once he figures out help defense. Oh boy. 10 seconds left, Memphis needs a 3.

Hinrich should have shot that. He had a wide open look for about 4 seconds. They had no reason to force it into Blatche.

Has Vasquez played tonight? I tuned in late third quarter. Would suck for them to come out and not get to see him play.

I'm giving him a week or two before the whole "out of shape because of offseason injury" excuse goes away. Gilbert is a freaking machine. Pisses me off thinking what we missed out for three years. Why is McGee doing behind the back moves? BLOCKED BY MCGEE! HAHa nice sequence. Is there a lot of people at the game?

Blatche is playing like a lazy POS. I love Gilbert.

Wall is expected to play tonight. Wonder if we can hang with the C's. We gave them real trouble last year with our athleticism.

Nah, Blatche is definitely not in shape right now. He missed about two months worth of conditioning due to a broken foot over the offseason. I think he returned back on the court in September. He's will working to get back in shape but he's played well so far this year.averaging 17 and 8 with decent shooting numbers. His efficiency will go up as he gets in shape and gets used to playing with Wall and Gilbert (who he didn't play with last year)

I thought last night was McGee's most impressive game so far. His asthma problems seemed to be kicking in but his man to man defense is really improving. Once he understand help defense, he's going to be a monster on the defensive end. I'm liking how his game has been improving steadily.

Gilbert looks awesome so far. He's getting close to regaining his athleticism.

A lot of the cutting into the minutes for our starters was because of injuries or foul trouble. Blatche picked up two early fouls and sat the entire first quarter. Wall pulled something late in the third. Yi got hurt so Booker got his minutes. Flip hates McGee so Armstrong undeservedly got more minutes than he should. I always thought Eddie Jordan sucked at rotations and coaching in general but Flip Saunders is making him look like Red Auerbach. As some posters have said earlier in this thread, at least one phase of our team used to look NBA caliber. Under Flip, it's looked like complete crap on both ends of the ball. This is with a veteran team when he had Miller, AJ, Caron and Brendan or with the younger guys.

The game was in Chicago but I think the officiating was fine last night. Gilbert should've gotten a few more calls but we played really bad on defense and the Bulls defense was suffocating us.

I think it's both. I have a feeling the players are tuning out Flip Saunders. Flip also insists on running the zone heavily with this team. Honestly haven't seen a team run zone (especially 2-3 zone) as much as we have been this season in quite a while. Our roster isn't exactly filled with high IQ players. Just a bad combination. A huge criticism of mine towards Flip is that he uses a really right rotation and plays his guys more minutes than they should. Last night on a back to back we had injuries happen to Yi, Wall and Blatche. Flip needs to use the bench a lot more and at this point Seraphin can't be worse than Armstrong. I really want to see him get minutes. He might be a bit clueless and the language barrier will cause problems but he'll go in and bang with the other teams big men and grab rebounds/block shots. Armstrong provides nothing in in the paint.

He better be getting some serious development time with the coaches then. Do we have a one on one coach to work with him specifically? All things considered, he can't be worse than Hilton Armstrong. I'm hoping that at least 5-10 more games into the season he starts eating some minutes at the back up PF/C spot. Kind of dumb for him and his agent to do that though. The D-league would help him get used to NBA style of play. The Rockets are doing this with Patrick Patterson and the Raptors are as well with Ed Davis. Seraphin is much more under developed than both.