Lebron can help resolve our spacing issues if he finaly decides to be the Roll Man in the PnR rather than the Ball Handler. He only needs to play like this when we have both Wade and Rose on the floor.
Then you can decide to attack with either Rose/Lebron or Wade/Lebron and only have one of them standing at the 3pt line.. Unfortunately, Lebron for some odd reason never wanted to be that type of player.
He has been by far more productive playing Off-Ball.
Having Lebron play as a Roll-Man makes him a far more dangerous threat, because he is a much bigger threat closer to the basket with his finishing and passing than he is from beyond the arc as a ball handler. The Defense has less time to plan when he gets the ball closet to the basket and therefore his TO% will go down as a result aswell.
As a PnR Roll Man Lebron is ranked in the 96 Percentile(Volume isn't great obviously, but it's consistent over the years) and is able to generate 1.43 PPP. Off Cuts he is able to generate 1.56 PPP and is ranked in the 94 Percentile. In Transition he is able to generate 1.21 PPP and is in the 70 Percentile (It's down because of his high TO Rate, bit he shoots 70% in transition, by far the most efficient).
Lebron as a Ball Handler is able to generate 0.96 PPP and is ranked in the 83 Percentile.. not bad right? but it's still not even close in generating the most efficient shot, especially when you consider the fact that we have another 3 dominant players in the roster and two of them in Rose and Wade aren't that far off and are able to generate 0.90 PPP, 0.89 Respectively on teams with far less individual talent. Then you have IT who is by far the best PnR Ball handler and is able to generate 1.04 PPP and is in the 94 Percentile.
If we want to beat the Warriors we need to change the way we attack. Cavs were the best Isolation team in the league at 0.99 PPP (not good enough to beat the Warriors) and had by far the most isolation plays called and they also lost perhaps the best isolation scorer in the league in Irving.
If we want to beat the Warriors we need to beat them at their own game. They generate the best PPP off of Cuts, Off-Screens, Transition and Spot-Ups. So Unless we somehow become one of the best defensive teams in the league, we need to switch to a motion based offense because they generate far more points off of Cuts/Spot ups/Transition/Screens than we do off of Isolation/PnR/Etc.
The thing is, with the way our roster is built atm, we can perhaps be even better at their own game if the players were willing to change the way they play. We have some elite Spot Up shooters, Cutters, Transition players and it's all about the system at this point. Transition points, Cuts, Scoring off-screens even if you are at the bottom you still generate more PPP than the most elite players that generate their points in Isolation/PnR/etc. Our first line of attack should always be in Transition, Cuts and Off-Ball.
Moving Love to C is perhaps a very good thing. It limits the opposition transition points because we don't crash the offensive boards as often, we limit the opposition offensive rebounding because Kevin Love is the best outlet passer in the league and it's a risk to crash the Boards with him at Center. We also limit scoring off cuts/screens if we play switching defense.. and we also bait teams to Post Ups and Isolation which are one of the least efficient shots.
Having TT crash the boards on offense against starting lineups was detrimental to this team.. we had the worst transition defense mainly because of that. Having TT crash the boards against weak second units that are weak on the boards and are also far less dangerous in transition is a huge net positive.
I wish Lebron would buy in, because this team really doesn't play to it's full potential. We can be as dangerous and perhaps even more than GSW if we change the way we play.
