Singapore Slingers skeptics will not be convinced that the Slingers' 87-69 defeat of the Barracudas last weekend was anything to shout about, especially when the home team had four tune-up games prior to their ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) season opener while the visitors had none.
Strategically, the Barracudas had in fact cracked the Slingers in Singapore, but basketball is not a game of pure strategy. The Barracudas' amiable Filipino head coach, Bong Ramos, had all the right strategy in place only to be limited by a lack of fitness and depth on his bench.
To read more, go to: RED HOOPS
I disagree because I think Slingers do have outside shooters, but have a lack of catch-and-shoot shooters. Al Vergara is a good three-point shooter off a Jeffers high screen. M.L.B is a good three-point shooter provide he creates his own shot one-on-one. The only reliable catch-and-shoot shooter we have is Michael Wong. Though, in the previous game, Wei Long filled in the void and hit some impressive catch and shoot treys. If you notice carefully, the Slingers are running an offensive strategy that allows their players to get open curling off pin down screens. If I ain’t wrong, it is called a flex offense. Something like the San Antonio Spurs offense. Slingers are playing small to spread the court. And what do we need? Catch-and-shoot players. Currently, Pathman does it well from mid-range. From downtown, Let’s hope Wei Long continues his hot hand today. That would fill the void.
gotta agree, even Al said at the start of the season “We need one more shooter to replace Darren Ng” Marcus Ng shooting leaves much to be desired (no arc at all), we don’t really have a pure shooter in the team.
@slingerrocks – almost never disagree with your input but in this case i think i do and actually agree with barracudas coach 🙂
In my opinion, you need shooters with rythm to break down the zone. Here is the problem I see with the Slingers shooters – I find only Al and Leblanc to be in-rythm shooters (I think Michael Wong would also fall into this category but so far he hasn’t shown it). The rest of the slingers – wei long, wei jian, marcus are all too streaky and inconsistent to break down a zone successfully. Now, normally 3 rythm shooters would be enough to break down a zone but I feel Arsego messes the line up – his starting lineup is Al, WeiJian, Marcus, Leblanc and Jeffers. This means both Marcus and Leblanc can’t play at their natural positions of 2 and 3 respectively and need to play at the 3 and 4 instead. So in the end its only Al that can hit the open 3 in this group since Leblanc is forced to bang in the post. The second problem I find is that Wei Jian and Marcus are high energy players who get very excited and are difficult to contain themselves in the system. Wei Jian and Marcus are great at slashing but that is effective only when they are pushing the ball up or against a man-on-man defense. Against a half court zone they still need to develop the discipline to stay within the system and hit an open 3 in rythm. So, thats why in my opinion, to break a zone – al, marcus, leblanc, pathman and jeffers need to start – this opens up both Al and Leblanc to hit the big shots. Anyway, enough of rambling – perhaps my basketball knowledge is still not up to the mark to be able to understand their offense properly 🙂
I disagree with the Barracudas coach. Well, he must have thought that the Slingers lack outside shooters. That was true only in the 1st half. If Wong Wei Long and M.L.B continues to hit the outside shots, things will be fine. The weakness will be gone. Well, the Barracudas were quite slow on transition Defense. Their bigs were too slow to get back. That resulted in many Slingers fastbreak points.