About fucking time. He can work on his skillet hands there instead of in games that count. I'm sure he'll be back up in no time. Also, since Sochan is our new three point ace, he's going to be getting his minutes.
The thing that is really fucking up this cycle compared to the past cycles is revenue sharing. That all went down after the spring portal closed last year. If it were in place then, I'm sure we would have seen the same fuckery. Now all of the sudden, all these schools with poor collectives and/or that have been lacking in real NIL opportunities are flush with cash. It just raised the price of poker for everyone. Throw in the completely unregulated nature of the agents and this is what you get. Shitshow. Total shitshow. And it's worse for schools like Texas, Ohio State, Georgia, etc. that were paying premiums for guys out of high school on a longer development curve. Cignetti doesn't really have that issue at Indiana.
In general, we (aka I) hire too quickly and fire too slowly. I would have a bit more faith in this staff if there was a still a spring portal. Seems like they did most of their work to fill up the biggest weakness last year (DT) in the spring. If they don't get something done in the next week on the OL, what are we looking at? Grad transfers? Woof. I just want to say one more thing about Flood, who has been bashed enough around here. His lines at Bama were great. He didn't recruit those guys. He inherited them. The ones he did recruit to Bama? It looks a lot like Holmon Wiggins record there at WR (Hi Brocks!). He took the garbage we had here when he arrived and made them serviceable. He didn't fuck up the guys we brought in from the pancake factory. I don't think the guy is a bad coach/technician, but holy fuck he has done zip to indicate he has any sort of acumen at evaluation. I don't trust him to evaluate what's left in the portal. I certainly don't trust his high school evals. We mocked A&M and Jimbo for recruiting cubes for years. Well this mother fucker is a bigger cubist than Pablo fucking Picasso.
It's honestly his best and most possibly valuable attribute. It's certainly his most endearing. Also, we are now living is some bizarro world where fucking Sochan with his fucked up sidewinder spin jumper goes 2-2 from three while the rest of the team combines to shoot 2/23. This is beyond ridiculous: Champ 0-6. Fox 0-6. Castle 0-2. Barnes 0-1. Wemby 0-3, Haper 0-2. If these bitches are going to shoot that terribly, you might as well let Sochan go in there and stir some shit up. Keldon nearly single handedly won that game last night. 27 points on 11-13 fg, 2-3 from 3. He's been an absolute monster this season.
They really need to trade him for Trae Young. It would complete the cycle: Mavs trade Trae for Luka on draft night. Mavs trade Luka for AD. Mavs trade AD for Young.
The minutes restriction.... I get. I don't know if there is enough empirical evidence to support it, but I still get it. It's become SOP. But what is definitely 100% coaching malpractice is when Landale missed both free throws, not calling time out to get Sochan off the floor for that final possession. I was screaming at my TV. What the fuck? I get that Sochan was having an impact on the game defensively, but you can't have that guy on the floor on offense on that possession. You just can't. I'm on board with the idea of not calling a timeout to prevent the defense from setting up, but you have to take him out then. You just have to. I'd rliterally ather have any other player on the team taking an open jumper than him. I'd rather give Bismack fucking Biyombo an open 20 footer. Beyond that... we are 36 games into the season, which is a large enough sample size that I can revisit my pre-season questions from the very first post on this thread with answers in orange:
It was a better conference when Jordan played, too, especially after the Detroit Bad Boys aged out. Don't get me wrong, the Jordan Bulls were always the class of the league but MJ almost always had a much easier path to the finals than anybody in the west. Lebron's path was even easier.
Phoenix being competitive/ a playoff or play-in team is a stunner. They are plucky AF and Booker is much more comfortable being the man instead of sharing the load with KD. I bagged on their owner for mortgaging their future, but they've made a rather remarkable ascent given their limited assets. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they have the star firepower to make much noise in the playoffs but they are certainly going to be a pain in the ass for everybody they face.
I went last night. I was having a fit every time they closed out on Cidy Sissoko. Did they not have a scouting report on him after watching him lay bricks every day for two and a half years? Also, I’m not sure why Blake Wesley got a tribute video and Sidy didn’t. Actually I’m clueless why Wesley got a tribute video at all and shocked that they had enough clips to make one. Hopefully when Sochan comes bank to visit playing for another team the tribute video will be of him riding the exercise bike in the tunnel because he spent a lot of time on that sumbitch last night. We can dissect whatever part of the game you want, but the truth about this team is the same as it was before the season: it doesn’t have enough guys who can knock down an open three. They were out scored by 27 from three last night. They were out scored from three by 27 against Utah when they lost and by 18 when they lost to Cleveland. It’s not a mystery although it would help if they defended the three a lot better too. Barnes is in a massive slump. Vassell is out and even when he’s in, he’s streaky as hell. Vic is out. They needed Champagnie to have the game of his life to beat the Knicks. Fox has been better from three than advertised but still… You can’t be this incompetent from three in today’s NBA and expect to win.
Anybody else have the spurs down for having the second best record in the entire league after New Years with Wemby missing 12 games and on a minutes restriction in about 10 more?