I think the fact that the team looks a total mess and Dalmbert's comments about them not having the same fire they did at the end of last year are two concepts that dove-tail beautifully. They never looked good last year until inserting some talented, athletic youngsters with fresh legs into the line-up and playing all-out all of the time made them look good when they could over-power teams with pressure defense and turnover triggered fast breaks. That kind of run and energy simply can't be sustained long term, especially when teams know what is coming and it's not the last third of the season when other teams are not tired and/or mailing it in. Take away that huge effort/energy advantage and last year's team would have been lucky to win 30 games with its level of talent, experience and execution.
This year's team has more talent and more experience, but there is no energy advantage at this time of the year to mask the piss-poor execution. In fact, now that we have some more skilled players, the generally disorganized scrum that we call our offense looks particularly putrid given how unbelievably bad it has made some pretty good offensive players look.
