I got to thinking what if McD is not just signing a raft of guards because he sees future use of them as trading assets but because Hornacek wants to have enough guards that they can put ball pressure on the opponents all the time. Maybe use a full court press at times. It takes a lot more energy to defend like that so you have to have a numerical superiority, which we do have without resorting to scrubs. Crank up the fast break a couple more notches on top of that and you'll have a team that everyone seriously hates to play.
I'm thinking of pairings like Dragic & Bled, Thomas & Green then additional pairings of Goodwin, Zoran or PJ with one of Dragic, Bled and Thomas - with Ennis TBD. Yes, its hard to imagine Green applying ball pressure but he will if its the only way he gets on the floor - though I wouldn't be surprised if Archie or Zoran supplanted him. If teams go small against us, and they will, PJ, Green and Goodwin would log time at SF. I'm not ruling out pairing Thomas with Dragic and/or Bledsoe at times, but I certainly wouldn't plan on keeping 2 of the 3 on the floor at all times.
Okay, why not play D,B,T 32 min each and keep 2 of the 3 on the floor all the time? First of all T has to mesh with both D and B fairly well or it won't work and secondly it will be weak defensively - 32 minutes is still too long to keep up intense ball pressure game after game. (If you watched Eric play for the Clips and last year you'd have noticed that he virtually stopped pressuring the ball here(32.9 mpg) the way he did in LA.) An injury to any one of the three completely ruins the plan so you can bank on not having it for a third of the games. As others have talked about at some length is puts a real squeeze on the SF position - Marcus, PJ, Warren and Green splitting 48 minutes. That will put pressure on us to initiate going small, which will only work if the opponents respond by going small as well. I think we would hammer teams at small ball because of our strength at wing positions but I also think our opps wouldn't go along with it, willingly. I don't see trotting out the Morris bros at 4 & 5 causing opps to go small... they'd just salivate.
With all that ball pressure we still aren't at the level of contenders but we will be practicing what we want our long term style to be so our defense will be improving - and you can add trapping manuevers into it once its humming. Our frontcourt will need to improve but we have guys with a good bit of potential in Plumlee, Markieff and Len so it may turn out all we have to add is a solid backup PF. Toliver may do in the stretch 4 role but he's lacking a bit on defense and rebounding and his age is against him.