What do we need to do to get the first team offense going?!

[drza44]

i think they've just been bad.

1. kg hasn't shot well. he's going inside even less than last year, but he is also missing his usual money 12-18 footers. i expect those to come around

2. rondo has not been scoring well. he's been doing too much dipsy do stuff inside. he needs to shoot more good shots; he often gets to the basket, decides not to try to lay it in, then gets stuck making a bad pass or a worse shot. he needs to have an attack to score mentality sometimes, instead of constant fancy mode.

3. pierce is often the one that stops the ball movement, but then again he's been playing the best of the starters and has far and away the best +/- on the team.

4. ray isn't shooting well. some of this will come around, but then some of this was hinted at by his under-reported drop in production last year with no real increase in efficiency; he just dropped a bit and at his age, will continue to. i must say, he's also one of the worst good players at running a fast break. it's always surprising.

I agree with most of this.  KG is just not playing as well as he did last season on offense, and is missing shots he normally makes.  His jumper/inside shot ratio is similar, he's just been off.  That should work itself out.  

Pierce's shot has also been off, which I guess makes sense if his wrist has been hurting, but I think that has been part of the culprit as well.  His +/- is so great because he's been the starter that stays on the floor as the engine for the 2nd unit, who has been blowing the competition away.  The game where Allen played that role instead of Pierce (the Pistons game), Allen was the one with the huge +/- benefit and Pierce had a negative there.

I think there is some early season let-down here too.  The Cs are putting in the effort on-court (thus the excellent defense), but in camp and the preseason they (rightly) didn't hit it nearly as hard as they did last year.  To me, these first few games are the pre-season for the starters, and they're still working the offensive kinks out.

Plus, it seems to be a bit of motivation as well.  That was one of the telling things about the Toronto game to me, that it looked a lot like the Pacers game until KG and Pierce got mad, which amped them up, and all of a sudden they were blowing the Raptors off the court.  

What these first 8 games have told me is that this Cs team can beat most of their competition even with a rusty offense, their best players' offense being off, and without full enthusiasm on a nightly basis.  That is frankly a bit scary for the rest of the league, because as the season progresses all three of those problems should work themselves out.