Jovan Buha
speaker
326 appearances
10 recordings
3 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 26 Jun
Jovan Buha’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But I think the larger point with that is like, I don't see this as a one trade fixes.
everything situation, I think they have to make two separate moves. And the guy that they've been most closely linked to around the league has been Jonas Valanciunas. It's been the worst kept secret dating back to the summer when he was on LeBron's list of guys he was willing to take a pay cut for. Yeah, I was surprised by that.
Looking at the rest of the list, it was like Klay Thompson, James Harden, DeMar DeRozan, and then Jonas Valanciunas.
But I also watched him in the regular season finale get played off the floor against the Lakers. And then they them do it again one game later in the playing tournament against the Pelicans. So I don't get how they could watch those two games and them attacking him in the pick and roll and attacking his defensive mobility. and then turn around and be like, we need this guy on our team.
I just don't get it. So I've personally been against the potential fit of Valanchunas. Like I get, they want a tough physical guy who could bang with Jokic in the post, but I would rather go for a guy like a Walker Kessler or even roll the dice with a guy like Robert Williams, where those guys are just better rim protectors, shop lockers, and have a bit more mobility defensively.
But I think that the two fixes for them have to be a better interior defender and and a better three and D type wing, or at least, you know, wing shooter, wing defender, at least check one of the boxes, if not ideally both. So I guess you could throw in maybe Dorian Finney Smith, though he is, you know, hitting his mid thirties.
He has been playing more like four, 4.5 this year, not quite the, you know, the, the wing stopper that they need, but yeah, I think they need to do something because the status quo is not working. If you look at the record against teams above 500, if you look at the skid they've been on losing eight of 12, I just don't think this group is good enough as constructed.
And unless they're going to tear it all down, which I just reported that they are not planning to. Right. If you are going to keep LeBron and 80 as your core, you got to invest in it and you got to put some draft capital behind it. Otherwise, you're just on the treadmill of mediocrity.
Yeah, well, so I think to go back to the three needs that they've had, those are three needs they identified last season as well. And they have yet to really check any of those boxes. So I even said in the story, I don't think it's realistic for them to check all three of those. You can probably check two at most.
And I think, again, the two that they need to check are the big man and the three and the wing big wing. Like they've just not had that. really player going on almost four years now. But as for the, the offense, a big thing was they shifted the offense more toward LeBron and they had the first like 15 games or so where they ran things through Anthony Davis.
They were very organized and they were running the pretty offensive sets that NBA Twitter loves to break down that JJ Redick has implemented. But then around the 15 game mark, there was a pivot to getting LeBron more involved because at that point, LeBron was posting a career low usage rate. And he at times took shots at the offense and shots at his own role within it.
So I think clearly there was some internal discussion to get LeBron more involved and The issue is LeBron then went on arguably the worst slump of his career, or at least the worst slump since his rookie season. And the offense just fell apart. And I think there's been an acknowledgement, especially dating back to last week with the whole NBA Cup schedule and them having some time off.
of we need to get back to playing the the offense that we were playing earlier in the season so we do need to find that balance of keeping lebron happy and making sure he's getting his pick and roll reps and he's playing the spread style of offense that he likes to play but at the same time we need to keep ad involved he's our best player he's our offensive fulcrum and we need to make sure that that we just got to figure out a better blend between the two and not be so uh you know such a stark contrast in terms of how the offense looks night to night so uh
Interestingly, their defense that they've had their last three games have been their three best defensive performances of the season from a defensive rating perspective. So the defense is trending in the right direction. The offense continues to be a mess. And if you look at this group, it's an offensive minded group like but beyond LeBron and AD, it's.
Austin Reeves, Rui Hachimor, D'Angelo Russell, Dalton Connect. These are all guys who trend more toward the offensive end. So I think if this team is going to hit their ceiling, it's got to be behind a top five, top eight offense at worst. And right now, they've been an average offense for going on almost a month.
So they got to figure that end out because if they're not an average offense and a bad defense, that's just a bad team. So I think they got to get back to doing what they were doing earlier.
The Athletic NBA Daily · LeBron & Lakers “embarrassed” | Pacers struggles continue · 5 Dec 2024
podcast
And similarly for almost different reasons. I mean, again, like tonight against the Brooklyn Nets, they score a season low in points in the first quarter. When they were in Memphis a few nights ago, they scored 45 points in the first quarter. So different personnel at times are being run in and out. The injuries, I do think, have played somewhat of a part.
Here in Brooklyn, you're watching lineups who are at the same time. Enrique Freeman, Johnny Furphy, Jairus Walker are all playing at the same time. That kind of led to the initial slide in the second quarter before the starters came back in and the turnovers and the ball was being thrown around like people throwing a beach ball at a concert. But there's just a lot of inexplicable qualities.
I've said it. I think that this is the most confusing Pacer team that I think that I've covered. And that includes the back end of the 2013-14 season when the struggle was going on in part because last year when they lost games, there was generally a formula for it. you knew why they were going to lose.
It was going to be because of their defense and because likely their shooting didn't hold up on that particular night to compensate for their defense. This year, it's so many different reasons that I don't exactly know how you go about fixing it, and sometimes they seem at a loss from it other than the common theme normally that they bring up a lot of times is we didn't play hard consistently.
Showing 241–260 of 326 · page 13 of 17
← Previous
Next →