Some SVG quotes from todays practice presser 12/7/2020

I mean, what do you want him to do? Try to use Gentry’s old system?

It’s obviously not ideal, but hopefully we get a defensive foundation down.

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"I'm on what we're going to do at 6 p.m. tonight."

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Leave Stan alone, he's worried about what's for dinner tonight!

This is another free hit year for me.

I'll be super happy with a top 10 pick if we suck

We should know what's happening with Lonzo and have a lot of the main guys under contract for the next 3-4 years.

Then we ramp it up from next year onwards

Why are you saying Hayes will be loss all season, are you saying he is retarded or something, no one has been in this system before, except for JJ so i don't see why he would be at a dis-advantage when it comes to learning the system

People gotta be realistic about the expectations especially early on in the season. I expect plenty of breakdowns and communication issues the first couple of weeks. Individual defense is nice and all but SVG defense will require these guys to be in sync with some good chemistry. There’s no way around it. It’s going to take time.

The offense will be fine and will probably have to carry them early on.

We have a really tough schedule going into the season. I don’t expect great defense but I expect to see some brilliant stretches as they continue to play with each other and develop that chemistry.

Being young and able to run up and down the court can hide some of the half court issues on both sides while learning a new system, but I'm also not expecting a radical system that would take a lot of time to learn anyway. Much of growing pains will come from playing the system in actualy games, something that'd help some to have more preseason games but is mostly learned in regular season anyway.

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Defense is defense, especially when Van Gundy expects everyone to man up on their guy and not get beat. They say he doesn't scheme help for just getting outright beat (that's where having Adams is going to be huge when guys do get beat). There are things that he'll want to do certain ways like defending the fast break, the pick and roll, iso, etc. but at the end of the day it's mostly about being held accountable.

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I mean to an extent I agree that most of these guys came up in highly competitive leagues and are more than familiar with basic defensive concepts(though that is also why I think Hayes may lag in that regard because he truly only has been playing a few years and all he learned in year one is likely being adjusted in year two and less familiar to him than other young players). Though to another extent, I don't quite agree.

There are quite a lot of variations in how you execute defending in the NBA(as you somewhat alluded to) and a heck of a lot of game to game prep that needs to be adhered to so you don't do things like the Pels habitually did last year like leave good role-playing shooters open, guard too heavily on non-shooters, shading or icing players properly based on the team concept and a given players strengths and weaknesses. And given a bunch of comments he has made over the last year about where he sees teams finding on-court competitive advantages and meaningful innovation, I would all but guarantee we are going to see some zone worked into that system.

Offensively Im sort of expecting, like with a lot of coaching transitions, you arent going to be throwing everything out with the bathwater. When Gentry and Kerr took over the Warriors they didn't completely throw out the old playbook, they continued using a good bit but just adjusting a lot of what was already there while throwing in some new strategies to better diversify and utilize the talent and skills certain players had. Like one thing I think SVG has hinted at is emphasizing not giving up offensive boards to the other team in pursuit of the fast break. Which probably means we won't be seeing Zion leak out and leave rebounding to everyone else, he probably stays home more often and we probably start seeing him take the ball up in transition some.

My thing is if the Pels start 0-2 don't melt. We start with Toronto, who is a veteran team, and then play Miami on Christmas. All I'm looking for is an improvement of the small things we were just awful at last year. Free throw shooting, unforced turnovers, stagnant half court offense, and bad team defense. Those aren't huge changes that will take weeks to learn. Those are things good coaches preach. If we improve in just those categories, I am happy

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I guess there's just 2 parts to it. One being getting comfortable with your teammates and the 2nd with a new coach/system.

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Lonzo and Favors were both new last season, so Jrue didn’t really have familiarity with them, he was also the only one of those 3 that was familiar with Gentry. Sure they had a bit longer training camp, but how long is a typically NBA training camp?

Is the argument what this team could be if we kept Jrue and Favors this season, or a comparison of what this team is this season versus what it was last season?

ETA: we had more new faces in the rotation last year than we do this year. JJ, Favors, Zion, BI, Lonzo, Hart, Hayes, Melli, and NAW were all new faces in rotation last season.