Yeah we did play faster than the year before. It was almost impossible not to
But I believe (and I've been wrong before) that we can up it to the top 10. There's zero reason why we shouldn't be in the top 10 in pace and fast break points. I would prefer like 7, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We saw in the bubble the pace and speed we can play with by letting go of the reins of our young horses.
LMA doesn't help the cause in that regard for sure. But if you give DJ someone to run with, a person who can finish in transition, that can only help his game. It doesn't have to be a big, it could be Lonnie or KJ. The entire year was like watching Pop try to fit a square peg into a triangle hole when it came to Murray. Murray has to slow down. He has to run pic n rolls in half court. He has to set up his teammates in half court sets. Murray's only form of fastbreak was when he created it himself with a steal.
The entire handling of White was wrong. He benched White for 2 inferior players and then didn't even have the balls to go through with his Ginobili plan. Gino finished the games and sure as played more than 24 minutes when he was in his prime. And I don't remember Pop startingg 2 guards way worse than Manu. Tony was an All-star so you can get away with having Manu on the bench. Murray and Forbes, eh not so much. They are both clearly worse players. The offense was supposed to be run through Derrick but it ended up being run through Rudy, Patty and in the beginning of the year Marco. I think Derrick was 4th in attempts per game off the bench for the first 2 months of the year. He clearly didn't know his role.
He puts Lonnie in the corner where he sits all possession long hoping to get the ball on a kick out. Run him out on the break. Get him the ball while he is moving and has a full head of steam. It's simple things like this that I want to see. Idgaf about our record. I didn't expect much this year to begin with. But I wanted to see the youth developed and used properly and they weren't.
Just imagine this, how would you feel about this year if KJ didn't show up in the bubble like he did? There would literally be nothing to be optimistic about next year. Even in 1987 and 1988 where we beyond sucked, we knew we had David on the horizon. You have to go back to I don't even know when to find this kind of helplessness that we had this year with no real bright spot to look forward to.