When to start JR? Or not

…but part of me is dying to see him run the 2 with Lawson at point. I feel like they’d anchor a potentially devastating 2nd unit (up-tempo and maybe more explosive than our starting 5) that few teams in the league will have an answer for. The other upside is that with the second unit, he won’t feel compelled to defer to Melo, and will therefore have more opportunities to be THE MAN we know he can be.

Bottom line: as long as he’s getting 30-35 minutes a night, I don’t much care where they come from, but I’d like to see him paired with Ty and see where it takes us.

balance is the key. earl in the starting line up will help melo from being double teamed and do the grunt work for chauncey. the first and second unit both have a quick element to it. billups and afflalo are similar in that they are pragmatic and decisive. smith and lawson are similar because they are spontaneous and free lance more. the guard play needs to compliment each other. there will be times where a need for a pragmatic or spontaneous approach will exist. that will be an exception not the rule. the only problem i have right now is the 3 point shooting. nothing wrong with taking a 3 as long as it is within the context of the offense. move the ball, make the other team play defense by making the extra pass. the speed game will be more effective in the second half when fatigue sets in. denver makes it too easy on the other team by shooting jump shots early in the offense. the situation denver has at center makes it critical that the shooting guard rebounds. earl has the skills of graham, afflalo and lawson in a single package.

J.R. has played a fantastic 2 games after missing 7 games and spending 24 days IN PRISON. He’s a phenomenal player. His game has been mature and unselfish. He is distributing the ball well, driving inside, and playing energized defense. Bring Afflalo off the bench and finally shelve AC for garbage minutes.

Melo starts playing like he didthe first three games. Ever since he saw his name on ESPN in MVP talks he has taken it upon himslef to run 80% of the shots and offense when he is on the floor. Last nght Melo would either get te ball with 20 seconds on the clock and take a jab step jumper. If it wasn’t that, Melo would get the ball with 10 seconds on the shot clock. Hold it for 5, then drive into a bunch of standing 7 footers looking for cantact but wasn’t awarded with any because he jumped into them. HIs layups would just fire off teh backboard. To me, a supid play like that should count as a TO.

Anyways, with Melo playing like he is, starting JR would just take from his ability to score. He’d get a shot one in every 10 drives if he started with 7 others going to Melo, one to CB and one to Nene. So, if Melo can start playing his unselfish basketball and stop forcing himself into a tugh J or a double team post up, then I’m all for starting JR. It is Melo and Karl’s job to get Melo’s act figured out.

Oh and Warkentein needs to go to work on finding a 7 footer who will crash the glass, block out and play hard. Nene and Bird are soft on the defense glass and Martin is always paying a one-on-one. I’m pretty sure many of the regulars on this site have mentioned just about every big man possible.

I say we trade Melo, and Nene to Orlando, Orlando sends Dwight Howrad to Denver and Michael Pietrus and Ryan Anderson to Golden State and the Warriors send Jax and Turiaf to Denver.

Denver’s starting 5 looks like:
Billups Lawson
JR SMith Afflalo
Jax Graham
Martin Turiaf
Howard. Bird

Gives us three perimeter threats and the best low post presence in the game as well as the best defensive post presence. Give’s our bench a blocking big in Bird and a rebounding big in Turiaf. Balances our team and works under the salary cap.

I know it would never happen and it would screw up chmistry terribly, but I would do it… oh and also bring in Byron Scott as an assistent and let him take the reigns once GK is done.