PG: BENCH MOB COMES UP HUGE!!!

[ill-Will03]

JaKobe has earned the role. Let him run with it. Stop carving out his minutes for Gradey when RJ plays.

Grady played great tonight. Maybe we should stop carving out his minutes for JaKobe when RJ plays.

How come he was benched in crunch time?

[MiamiSPX]

Feels good man. Dead in the water both nights and pulled them both out. This could be a turning point.

[Tripod]

Lol Darko in the post game presser:

Question: "why wasn't Quickley in to end the game?"
Darko: "because Jamal Shead was in instead of him."

It was the perfect response.

Followed by the smile!

[JCP11]

Shead arguably saved our season on consecutive nights.

He's the new Lowry

He needs to learn to shoot the 3 and keep growing as a distributor, yes.

He needs to develop an in between game too.

[ill-Will03]

Great wins on back to back nights.

Also wow Mamba is absolutely huge. He looked like a monstar out there. I can definitely see him being a valuable back up big for us.

[HiJiNX]

Say what you want, but Gradey's pts helped keep us in the game in 1st half

I thought he gave up too much in other aspects. Smart to bench him imo. The game got out of hand while he was on.

I watched the whole game and I have no idea what you're talking about. The Dick hate has got to stop.

Haha hate? Go rewatch the game and watch Orlando takeover the game as Dick came in. His +/- isn’t lying. Just because he scored some points doesn’t mean he was good to have out there.

[PushDaRock]

Gonna credit BI's self pass alley-oop as the turning point, those 2 points were also the difference in the game lol

[MEDIC]

Once Mamba gets a few practices in with the team and gets some experience, I think he can be a pretty solid bench piece.

I think so too. He does have some weird habits defensively though. He has been in the league for a while, but hasn't figured out how to stay vertical on contests & just be big out there. He's a vet at this point. He is, 7'1" & has one of the longest wingspans in NBA history. All he has to do is look big.

He looks like one of those players who tries to block shots, rather than use his length to simply be disruptive & alter shots. It's more important than blocks.

Hopefully they can work with him & impriove some habits.

I thought I saw early he had like 3 blocks in 3 min or something. Now it's showing just 1. Miss counted?

He had 2 back to back blocks (seconds apart), then a really nice block on a Bane drive attempt.

There were another 2 or 3 times when he jumped at (& into) the shooter while.attempting a block. All he had to do was put his arms up and jump straight up. Just fundamental stuff.

[mathgeek]

I can only imagine how this board would have reacted if Darko did what Mosely did on that final possession.

I don't understand ppl and their criticisms of crunch plays. It's like they think it's possible to pass the ball around the perimeter with 30 seconds left.

They don't understand that when everyone is playing with 100% effort.....iso offense is essentially a necessary evil. Its the only way to guarantee you will actually get a shot.

I don't understand that either. It's extremely difficult to run plays in the last seconds of a game when the defense is locked in. Anyone that criticizes our coach or BI, has either not played the game or watched the NBA enough. At most you can run a pick and roll but you run the risk of getting blitzed and having the ball out of your best player's hand. The best play is BI rising up with his length over the defender on the mid range. He's good enough and has the length, dribbling skills and shooting touch for that to be a good look. It's that simple. Plus that is his role here on the team. Is Scottie in the post a higher percentage play sure, but it's too slow of a play and allows defense to sneak or collapse. It doesn't work. That's why BI is getting paid 40 million+ per year. This is his strength.

[Thaddy]

If we had Sabonis instead of IQ and Poeltl we would have blown Orlando out of the water. Those two aren't living up to the expectations. Not even close.

[mdenny]

Once Mamba gets a few practices in with the team and gets some experience, I think he can be a pretty solid bench piece.

I think so too. He does have some weird habits defensively though. He has been in the league for a while, but hasn't figured out how to stay vertical on contests & just be big out there. He's a vet at this point. He is, 7'1" & has one of the longest wingspans in NBA history. All he has to do is look big.

He looks like one of those players who tries to block shots, rather than use his length to simply be disruptive & alter shots. It's more important than blocks.

Hopefully they can work with him & impriove some habits.

It's a bigger problem than that. He has no idea where to stand. No sense of angles and positioning.

[NinjaBro]

We literally had the game of the year back to back.

[Mr.Raptorsingh]

They've been really rebounding the ball well the last two games. Warriors and Magic both have undersized bigs, which has helped
Scottish Barnes and co. have been feasting

[ill-Will03]

Mamba will give us a presence that we haven’t had in a long time. Especially being a lob threat and providing rim protection

[___Rand___]

He's the new Lowry

He needs to learn to shoot the 3 and keep growing as a distributor, yes.

He needs to develop an in between game too.

Yeah that's the next step. He didn't have the offensive game that Houston's guards have this year so now he's gotta develop it. Lowry didn't have his 3 when he came into the league. He worked on it, and worked on play making too and became better.

[mathgeek]

If we had Sabonis instead of IQ and Poeltl we would have blown Orlando out of the water. Those two aren't living up to the expectations. Not even close.

Well Poeltl played great for us when he was healthy. He had a couple of great games during our win streak and was a major part of it. He's injured now and looks like it'll be a lingering injury so he may truly be done. I won't pass any judgements on him. IQ just had 27 points the other night, he's a good player but really he's an SG and should be a 4th option offensively on a good team. I don't feel Sabonis would provide a better output than both those guys combined.

[MEDIC]

Once Mamba gets a few practices in with the team and gets some experience, I think he can be a pretty solid bench piece.

I think so too. He does have some weird habits defensively though. He has been in the league for a while, but hasn't figured out how to stay vertical on contests & just be big out there. He's a vet at this point. He is, 7'1" & has one of the longest wingspans in NBA history. All he has to do is look big.

He looks like one of those players who tries to block shots, rather than use his length to simply be disruptive & alter shots. It's more important than blocks.

Hopefully they can work with him & impriove some habits.

It's a bigger problem than that. He has no idea where to stand. No sense of angles and positioning.

He looks lost right now, but I will give him a break considering this is his first game.with the Raps.

This 12 game evaluation will be perfect for Darko to evaluate whether he can absorb information and put things into practice.

[PushDaRock]

Once Mamba gets a few practices in with the team and gets some experience, I think he can be a pretty solid bench piece.

I think so too. He does have some weird habits defensively though. He has been in the league for a while, but hasn't figured out how to stay vertical on contests & just be big out there. He's a vet at this point. He is, 7'1" & has one of the longest wingspans in NBA history. All he has to do is look big.

He looks like one of those players who tries to block shots, rather than use his length to simply be disruptive & alter shots. It's more important than blocks.

Hopefully they can work with him & impriove some habits.

It's a bigger problem than that. He has no idea where to stand. No sense of angles and positioning.

You give him a pass with this being his first game in our defensive system and no practices under his belt but he was extremely slow processing on the defensive end and didn't know where he was supposed to be out there. If that continues to be the case which I do expect to happen, it tells you why he hasn't been able to stick around despite the immense physical tools and skill set.

[PushDaRock]

They've been really rebounding the ball well the last two games. Warriors and Magic both have undersized bigs, which has helped
Scottish Barnes and co. have been feasting

Orlando isn't really undersized. Carter, Goga and Banchero is a lot of size up front.

[MEDIC]

I really can’t wait to see a fully healthy team.

Having a healthy Yak & Barrett by the 2nd half of the season will take this team to another level.