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Ghost of Kleine wrote:1- Big man development mentors:

Hakeem Olajuwan/ Kevin Garnett/ Tim Duncan/ Patrick Ewing.

2- Shooting guard/small forward mentors: Reggie Miller/ Paul Pierce/ Dwayne Wade/ Glenn Rice.

3- point guard mentors: Steve Nash/ Gary Payton/ Tim Hardaway/ Mark Price/ John Stockton.

There's just so many ways to improve our players' development, IF Sarver is just willing to spend.

Which player mentors would you most like to see work with the players on our roster if possible, and why?

1. Joey Buckets, 3-point champ
Joe Harris is perhaps the best story of perseverance and growth in the NBA over the past half-decade. He braced himself for a long stint in another league after he underwent foot surgery in January 2016 and the Cavaliers flipped him to Orlando; the Magic immediately waived him.

Brooklyn plucked Harris from the D-League six months later. Kenny Atkinson, the team's coach, suggested Harris watch film of Kyle Korver and installed some of Korver's pet Atlanta sets for him. Harris couldn't believe it. "I was taken aback," he told me in 2017. "I mean, Kyle Korver is the O.G. -- the ultimate shooter."

Two years in the basketball wilderness made Harris timid -- a curse for any shooter. "He was like that battered [deer] you find in the forest," Atkinson recalled. "He had no confidence."

He does now. Harris has drained a preposterous 47 percent from deep. He's comfortable snapping into his shooting motion from a dead sprint, and he has a quick-trigger release to evade defenders trailing him around screens.

He has hit 46 percent of his tightly-contested 3s and 46 percent on pull-ups, per NBA.com. Atkinson loves devising ever more complex ways to spring him -- including this circuitous bad boy:


Harris aborts a double pindown and begins a casual jog across the court, only to U-turn around one last screen while D'Angelo Russell and Jarrett Allen draw all the eyeballs. Good luck following that.

Harris can handle, too. Brooklyn has scored 1.21 points per possession any time Harris shoots after dribbling around a screen, or passes to a teammate who lets fly right away -- the second-highest mark among 206 players who have used at least 75 ball screens, per Second Spectrum. That number is not a fluke; it was beefy last season, too.

Most of those aren't pick-and-rolls in the normal sense. They are more like catch-and-rolls; Harris rockets up from the wing to the top of the arc, and catches a pass at the same moment he curls around a screen. He drives from there -- with a head start. His pick-and-rolls continue Brooklyn's offense. Harris hasn't yet shown the ability to resettle that offense when it bogs the way someone like Joe Ingles has. He takes only 0.9 pull-up 3s per game -- 109th in the league.

If those things come, Harris will be primed for a raise from his $8 million salary when he hits free agency next season. He's a feisty, smart defender who relishes when opponents assume otherwise. Teammates and coaches love him.

And he just outdueled Stephen freaking Curry in the dude's hometown at All-Star Weekend. What a story.

bwgood77 wrote:

Ghost of Kleine wrote:1- Big man development mentors:

Hakeem Olajuwan/ Kevin Garnett/ Tim Duncan/ Patrick Ewing.

2- Shooting guard/small forward mentors: Reggie Miller/ Paul Pierce/ Dwayne Wade/ Glenn Rice.

3- point guard mentors: Steve Nash/ Gary Payton/ Tim Hardaway/ Mark Price/ John Stockton.

There's just so many ways to improve our players' development, IF Sarver is just willing to spend.

Which player mentors would you most like to see work with the players on our roster if possible, and why?

I always see this stuff mentioned, but what makes you think these NBA superstars, who made millions in the NBA and most if not all are doing other things, want to suddenly become player development coaches?

I imagine we look into everyone we can in this respect. I think at some point maybe James Jones, if he is still around, might be able to get someone he played with like Kyle Korver to maybe be a shooting coach if he wanted...or at least ask...heck, Jones himself could do that.

I found this interesting from Zach Lowe's article today...

1. Joey Buckets, 3-point champ
Joe Harris is perhaps the best story of perseverance and growth in the NBA over the past half-decade. He braced himself for a long stint in another league after he underwent foot surgery in January 2016 and the Cavaliers flipped him to Orlando; the Magic immediately waived him.

Brooklyn plucked Harris from the D-League six months later. Kenny Atkinson, the team's coach, suggested Harris watch film of Kyle Korver and installed some of Korver's pet Atlanta sets for him. Harris couldn't believe it. "I was taken aback," he told me in 2017. "I mean, Kyle Korver is the O.G. -- the ultimate shooter."

Two years in the basketball wilderness made Harris timid -- a curse for any shooter. "He was like that battered [deer] you find in the forest," Atkinson recalled. "He had no confidence."

He does now. Harris has drained a preposterous 47 percent from deep. He's comfortable snapping into his shooting motion from a dead sprint, and he has a quick-trigger release to evade defenders trailing him around screens.

He has hit 46 percent of his tightly-contested 3s and 46 percent on pull-ups, per NBA.com. Atkinson loves devising ever more complex ways to spring him -- including this circuitous bad boy:


Harris aborts a double pindown and begins a casual jog across the court, only to U-turn around one last screen while D'Angelo Russell and Jarrett Allen draw all the eyeballs. Good luck following that.

Harris can handle, too. Brooklyn has scored 1.21 points per possession any time Harris shoots after dribbling around a screen, or passes to a teammate who lets fly right away -- the second-highest mark among 206 players who have used at least 75 ball screens, per Second Spectrum. That number is not a fluke; it was beefy last season, too.

Most of those aren't pick-and-rolls in the normal sense. They are more like catch-and-rolls; Harris rockets up from the wing to the top of the arc, and catches a pass at the same moment he curls around a screen. He drives from there -- with a head start. His pick-and-rolls continue Brooklyn's offense. Harris hasn't yet shown the ability to resettle that offense when it bogs the way someone like Joe Ingles has. He takes only 0.9 pull-up 3s per game -- 109th in the league.

If those things come, Harris will be primed for a raise from his $8 million salary when he hits free agency next season. He's a feisty, smart defender who relishes when opponents assume otherwise. Teammates and coaches love him.

And he just outdueled Stephen freaking Curry in the dude's hometown at All-Star Weekend. What a story.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26046302/10-things-like-including-warriors-genius

Would be nice if we scooped up Trajan Langdan as GM to start using these kinds of tactics...and take a lot of what the Nets have been doing and bring it here.


A lot of people think Kenny Atkinson is one of the great young upcoming coaches, but his rookie year he was 20-62....of course they didn't fire him. Then he went 28-54..not a big improvement but they stuck with him.

Now he is 30-30.

Crives wrote:I wish Nash or Amare would at least spend some summer time working with the team.

JDJ26 wrote:

Crives wrote:I wish Nash or Amare would at least spend some summer time working with the team.

Sarver probably ran both off.

Hesh wrote:I was thinking Bogut as a defensive coach for Ayton. Unfortunately, he's is still playing in the NBL. But he'd be great.

Kuwolves12 wrote:http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26088024/inside-phoenix-suns-messy-dysfunctional-front-office


A good article and begins to answer some questions. In the last 3 years we’ve drafted bender, chriss, Jackson and ayton, all of which were top 8 picks. It’s obvious early in their careers but I don’t think any of them have lived up to expectations to this point. So either the Suns are extremely unlucky drafting or we have a player development issue. I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that it’s more the latter