comforting article on morris and playing sf
When he was with me, we did everything as a small forward because I wanted to evaluate whether he could handle that position. What I believe is, while there is a need to be quick and fast and agile to play small forward in the NBA, having that doesn’t mean he could be an average to a plus defender. It’s not just physical ability that allows you to defend NBA small forwards. You have to have mental agility. You have to have a comfort level with defending out in open space. That comes with experience. When you tell me you’ve been a three your whole life, in a city like Philadelphia, some of the best basketball in the country, and you’ve been defending basically guards, you have that mental agility.
“He has a fantastic looking 3-point shot. As he shoots more and more of it, he’ll be a strong player in that regard. I think he will be a 38 to 42 percent 3-point shooter. He’s very good coming off pin downs, very good coming off flares and other cross screens on the perimeter. At 6-8, he’s not an easy guy to close out on. And he’s very good at shot-fake attacking you when you do. He gets his hips down. He needs to get his hips down lower, but he can fake and get by people.
“Now, you factor in that he is a prolific low post scorer and you start thinking about the match up problems of threes trying to defend this cat in the low post. And you start thinking you have the most efficient scoring shooting guard in basketball on one wing and you have a 6-8, tough, rebounding, athletic, defensive-minded, elite scorer who can post up and shoot outside. You have Kevin’s ability shooting and getting to the line, and Marcus’ ability to hit outside shots and score paint buckets. You are talking about a team already No. 1 in offense last year after the trade, I think this is an upgrade.
http://blog.chron.com/nba/2011/06/a-dif ... -run-call/
