Jalen Pickett

[DaFan334]

I wonder whats up with him. He looked awful this summer and in preseason and like he was just a bust. He was just named G-League player of the week posting 26.5 points, 10.8 rebounds and 9.0 assists to go along with 1.5 steals. It seems like they really need to give him a chance if he is dominating that level that much.

[famicommander]

It's because the Gold played two awful teams twice each in a row. I watched (most of) the games, the man still can't dribble. It's just that it doesn't hurt him at the G-league level because the entire offensive system is designed around this limitation. We use secondary ballhandlers, and every time Pickett brings the ball up we have both wings crashing towards him to receive a pass in case someone stops his dribble early (and they usually do).

The Wisconsin team we played twice had zero two-ways, zero NBA roster guys, 3 normal starters out, and 3 guys playing that were literally signed the day of game 1/day before game 2.

Pickett has good passing, defense, court vision, IQ, and he's a decent enough shooter with nice post moves for a guy his size. So if nobody can exploit his dribble, he can put up numbers. Especially against sub-G-League opposition.

But it doesn't change his NBA prospects. We can't design an NBA offense around his inability to dribble.

The G-League in general is low level, and we lucked out and played two particularly bad G-League teams for a total of 4 games. At certain points in these games Jalen was pointing and calling out instructions to his teammates in plain English and the other teams couldn't do a thing about it. It looked like a 14 year old being the only older guy on the court with 9 eight year olds, to be honest.

Don't forget that Collin Gillespie averaged a near triple double for the whole G-League season last year. It's just not a good league.

[skywalker33]

Doesn't feel he gets the speed on the NBA game or perhaps he over-thinks it.