PG: Trent for Powell is Masai's worst trade

[Chandan]

Still amazed at how Barnes is able to score. Never thought he'd be getting 15+ a night year 1. I thought anything over 9 would be a success. Could be a 20pt scorer before the end of his rookie deal

with nothing ran for him too!

[mdenny]

[code][/code]The last 7 or 8 minutes...fred's defense is just another level. He's already one of best defenders in the league. But i swear he's gotten even better this year.

In order for ppl to fully apprecuate what he does on that end of the floor....we'd have to break down game tape by possession. Sometimes the ball doesn't even get to his man and he's still the reason they don't score.

I only managed to see the second half and i was watching scottie on defense for every possession. He was making much better decisions. Our defense is so hard to learn. He's gonna be amazing when he figures it out fully.

Yuta was amazing first game back. He's gonna be huge for us. I've lost patience with boucher. The great thing about Yuta....anything he gives us point-wise will be gravy. We just need that consistent effort and i don't think it's the type of thing to run hot and cold. We can basically pencil him in for it every game.

Precious was spectacular. He's been great ever since sitting out those games.

Best, if not one of the best wins of season. It's really the defense that was so reassuring. That's what's gonna determine whether we get above 500 for the season.

So many of the ppl who repeat the "treadmill" narrative are really undervaluing the young players we added since last season.

Trent, precious, barnes and banton was an extremely good haul of 19 to 22 year old players to add to our core since the last deadline. Add them to flynn/harris/johnson....that's 7 guys plus our 2 picks next draft. Maybe we trade boucher/svi/dragic at the deadline for some second rounders....consolidate them and move up. Possibly come away with mid-FRP (ours) and a late one.

I'm hoping to end up above 500 on the season.

[HiJiNX]

I know Precious had the offensive outburst but for me it was his defence in the second half that was special.

[Kingsway_fan]

I can see why raptors management is high on Precious.

He should start.

Second half was as good a half as the team has played all season. Hopefully, they can build on that.

Still getting tired of paacals one one one forcing it on offense mindset... hopefully the team learns how to pass it around mote rather than the selfish play we have seen all season.

When OG us back, team gonna have a lot of depth... yuta and Flynn were great and really contributed when out there.

Boucher has fallen off the cliff this season... and should be relegated to spot minutes until he shows he deserves more...

Fred and Trent were solid....

Barnes back to the form we saw at the beginning and hopefully his defence continues to improve, and now, he is starting to make three pointers.. a great sign of things to come...

Great win.

[OhCanada1091]

Still amazed at how Barnes is able to score. Never thought he'd be getting 15+ a night year 1. I thought anything over 9 would be a success. Could be a 20pt scorer before the end of his rookie deal

with nothing ran for him too!

I'm thinking about making a video of all the times FVV doesn't pass the ball to Scottie but Im so busy with work lately. He's blatantly forcing passes to other players instead of making the right play, it happened many times in this game. Also in crunch time he couldn't just let Scottie handle the ball? Three times he took the ball out of Scotties hands in crunch time and two times it led to a turnover.

Im a big Fred Van Vleet fan and by no means am I on the side that wants us to trade him and develop Barnes and Banton but he needs to do better. Those two plays in transition were gimmes but he's gotta be more willing to trust Scottie. I hope they try to bring him off the bench when OG comes back.

[Kingsway_fan]

Fred was awesome. He is massively >>> Lowry this year... we got a great return in precious. MASAI knows what he is doing... so impressed.

[fbalmeida]

Win, as fun as it was, at times, frustrating.

TSN put up a graphic that showed we were the most inexperienced team in the league if you subtract Goran Dragic, which we likely will be doing shortly.

It shows.

Bad halfcourt offense. Dumb mistake prone defense with no rim protection.

Still good enough to beat the Grizzlies.

It kills me knowing that we'd be good enough to win a lot more games if only we had a 3rd string center protecting the rim, stepping in for Birch or Precious when they miss games, instead of putting Siakam on rim protection detail against the likes of Ja, JJJ, and frickin' Khal Drogo.

[pingpongrac]

Still amazed at how Barnes is able to score. Never thought he'd be getting 15+ a night year 1. I thought anything over 9 would be a success. Could be a 20pt scorer before the end of his rookie deal

with nothing ran for him too!

I'm thinking about making a video of all the times FVV doesn't pass the ball to Scottie but Im so busy with work lately. He's blatantly forcing passes to other players instead of making the right play, it happened many times in this game. Also in crunch time he couldn't just let Scottie handle the ball? Three times he took the ball out of Scotties hands in crunch time and two times it led to a turnover.

Im a big Fred Van Vleet fan and by no means am I on the side that wants us to trade him and develop Barnes and Banton but he needs to do better. Those two plays in transition were gimmes but he's gotta be more willing to trust Scottie. I hope they try to bring him off the bench when OG comes back.

Weird. I don't remember that at all. Seeing as we only had 1 turnover in the entire 4th quarter, that seems like just another made up stat/occurrence that fits the narrative that FVV is unwilling to pass to Barnes which is making us worse. FVV (and the rest of the team) doesn't need to pass Barnes the ball every single possession lol. Giving a rookie the ball to handle every possession in crunch time when we're trying to eat up clock doesn't seem the greatest plan either.

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[Young Moosehead]

Trent is so gifted at creating space for himself. His next step is to become a better playmaker. IF he does that one day, he will be a star.

I think we're already seeing flashes of GTJ being a better playmaker. He still takes a lot of tough shots that may be better to pass on, but he has done a good job of finding the open cutter recently and generally makes the right pass. I think as he continues to make tough shots and attracts more attention, he'll have more games tonight where he scores 20+ and has 3-5 assists.

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He made the one sweet dish to Scottie on a drive in the third. Don't recall any others

He is passing a bit more though. I remember a pass he made, I think it was the third. The ball stuck for half a second and it looked like he was going to take a three, then he passed it on to Fred. I imagine if you play with Dame and CJ for long enough you get trained to take that shot when/if the ball gets to you. Hopefully his ball movement keeps moving in the right direction.

[WuTang_OG]

https://youtu.be/cuymob4rW5E

Best coach

[niQ]

Love those comeback specials.

Also,

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[lobosloboslobos]

FVV is also a way way way better player than this board gives him credit for.

Fred is a great player and his strengths are obvious. I love him on our team. I think the frustration is with the way he plays sometimes. If you're objective, there is some validity to some of the criticism.

The problem is that some posters lose objectivity with guys like Fred, Siakam and Trent. I love them all, and I hope we find a way to keep them around. But...they all have some things to work on. Getting them each playing to their strengths more and improving upon their weaknesses is what should all want to see as fans of the team.

Also, I think we should let go of any kind of agenda for Barnes. It'll be great if he wins rookie of the year...but he'll be fine one way or the other. We can't put him above the team. I think we're bringing him along the right way.

Also, I don't think there is an issue between Fred and Barnes. Fred just wants to win and he'll get frustrated with Barnes' rookie mistakes. It's like he's annoyed by his annoying little brother energy that I'm picking up. He doesn't fully trust him yet. They haven't been through those battles together yet. Barnes needs to earn that trust...and I'm sure he will. Fred is telling the truth when he says that all he really wants to do is win. I think he needs to work on trusting his teammates more, and trusting the pass more because he likely thinks he's the best chance at buckets most of the time. Incidentally, that's that's the only issue I see with him running point...doesn't mean I hate him and want him off the team. You need that confidence to take and make the biggest shots. You need that guy on your team. It looks like we might have 3 in OG, Trent and Fred.

I think people forget that under Masai our moves have been very measured and we give players a ton of time to figure things out. Lowry had the same mentality as Fred for a long time. In some ways a lot worse. We gave him the stability and continuity to figure his stuff out and look how he turned out. Our leadership is more patient than most of us fans and that's a good thing. Our biggest strength is internal growth and the key to that is continuity, which means letting our players fail forward. Let's be grateful for the wealth of young talent we're cultivating.

Great post full of common sense.

The other thing I just want to add, in case it happens to help anyone see things a bit less harshly, is that around here we are constantly demanding that players not have flaws, but this is just not possible. Good players are still flawed players. Really good players are still flawed players. Great players are still flawed players. Only all-time greats maybe have no flaws, and yet even then look at all the flak that everyone from Wilt to Bird to Shaq to Kobe to Nash to whoever get for glaring flaws in their games. EVERY PLAYER IS FLAWED! If you keep that in mind you won't spend endless pages complaining about the same damn flaw. It's OK for guys to be flawed. They can still be good. They can still be great. That's just life.

my 2 c

[Gold Dragon]

with nothing ran for him too!

I'm thinking about making a video of all the times FVV doesn't pass the ball to Scottie but Im so busy with work lately. He's blatantly forcing passes to other players instead of making the right play, it happened many times in this game. Also in crunch time he couldn't just let Scottie handle the ball? Three times he took the ball out of Scotties hands in crunch time and two times it led to a turnover.

Im a big Fred Van Vleet fan and by no means am I on the side that wants us to trade him and develop Barnes and Banton but he needs to do better. Those two plays in transition were gimmes but he's gotta be more willing to trust Scottie. I hope they try to bring him off the bench when OG comes back.

Weird. I don't remember that at all. Seeing as we only had 1 turnover in the entire 4th quarter, that seems like just another made up stat/occurrence that fits the narrative that FVV is unwilling to pass to Barnes which is making us worse. FVV (and the rest of the team) doesn't need to pass Barnes the ball every single possession lol. Giving a rookie the ball to handle every possession in crunch time when we're trying to eat up clock doesn't seem the greatest plan either.

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These are the two turnovers in crunch time

https://go.nba.com/3bih

This one is Barnes not planning to do anything with the ball except pass it to one of our guards. Fred comes back and Barnes passes it too far and it becomes a backcourt.

https://go.nba.com/5dbz

This one is Fred trying to pass to either Gary or Scottie but both are well covered but he had already commited to the pass and he was too off balance to get it over the defenders and ended up passing it to Bane instead. This was Fred's fault and it is fair to blame his vision and playmaking abilities here. If you look at the angle of the pass, I think he was trying to get it to Scottie.

Neither of these plays is about Fred being selfish or looking off Scottie.

[Backcountry]

Loved that Yuta went right for the big dunk block in his first game back, especially after being posterized by Antman last season. The guy never gives up! So glad to have him back, and can't wait until he's back in full game shape.

Precious wins "Allstar 3rd Quarter" award of the week. Showing up for the Tigers' faithful in Memphis.

Fred and Gary couldn't be stopped in the 2nd half. Clutch time.

Great adjustment to the D in the 2nd half.

I'm still wondering if something is wrong with Pascal. Not showing me a lot on D, or even extra effort. Still a bit of twinge in the shoulder?

Scottie. Glad to see the hand clap back. He looked a little down the last couple of games, but he seemed backed to his normal exuberant self last night.

Dillon Brooks with a little too much trash talk, but still look forward to seeing him in Canada colours again.

[Lateral Quicks]

This team looks every part of a young, high variance squad. The young players are going to have bad games which we'll probably lose, and good games which we'll probably win. Yesterday Precious had an incredible game, and unsurprisingly we won.

Hopefully with a fully healthy roster and more experience as the year progresses, the team starts racking up more wins.

I do have to say I'm pretty disappointed with Pascal's lack of consistency so far, especially on defense. He needs to be bring it every night, much like Fred does.

[WuTang_OG]

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[Gold Dragon]

A few notes

- GTJ feeding the hot hand of Precious in the 3rd
- No pump fakes or hesitations for Precious' 3s.
- Yuta in the post game saying he is going to keep going up to challenge shots whether he gets posterized or not
- Nurse gushing about Fred orchestrating the offense on several plays in a row all in different ways
- Fred making life difficult for Ja despite a major disadvantage in size, speed and athleticism

[Dennis 37]

Haha

GARY “BLACKHOLE” TRENT

arguably been our best player all year. Elite shot maker.

The one natural scorer on the roster and posters call him a hog Lmaooooooo if Trent is a hog I don't know what demar was

If one's role is a shooting guard, and one is good at it, I get confused when one is criticized when they shoot.

Also, Fred didn't look to me like he played hero ball in this game. I do not remember consecutive plays where he said, "I'm doing this myself."

[aminiaturebuddha]

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And he finished +2, which meant that he was +26 in the second half. Hard to say which one of those is more significant.

Interesting that all of the bench guys were slightly negative in +/- last night, which suggests that Pascal was getting a lot of those "starter with the bench" minutes in this game, much like GTJ did the past couple of games. I guess Nurse is still experimenting.

[Danny1616]

FVV is also a way way way better player than this board gives him credit for.

Fred is a great player and his strengths are obvious. I love him on our team. I think the frustration is with the way he plays sometimes. If you're objective, there is some validity to some of the criticism.

The problem is that some posters lose objectivity with guys like Fred, Siakam and Trent. I love them all, and I hope we find a way to keep them around. But...they all have some things to work on. Getting them each playing to their strengths more and improving upon their weaknesses is what should all want to see as fans of the team.

Also, I think we should let go of any kind of agenda for Barnes. It'll be great if he wins rookie of the year...but he'll be fine one way or the other. We can't put him above the team. I think we're bringing him along the right way.

Also, I don't think there is an issue between Fred and Barnes. Fred just wants to win and he'll get frustrated with Barnes' rookie mistakes. It's like he's annoyed by his annoying little brother energy that I'm picking up. He doesn't fully trust him yet. They haven't been through those battles together yet. Barnes needs to earn that trust...and I'm sure he will. Fred is telling the truth when he says that all he really wants to do is win. I think he needs to work on trusting his teammates more, and trusting the pass more because he likely thinks he's the best chance at buckets most of the time. Incidentally, that's that's the only issue I see with him running point...doesn't mean I hate him and want him off the team. You need that confidence to take and make the biggest shots. You need that guy on your team. It looks like we might have 3 in OG, Trent and Fred.

I think people forget that under Masai our moves have been very measured and we give players a ton of time to figure things out. Lowry had the same mentality as Fred for a long time. In some ways a lot worse. We gave him the stability and continuity to figure his stuff out and look how he turned out. Our leadership is more patient than most of us fans and that's a good thing. Our biggest strength is internal growth and the key to that is continuity, which means letting our players fail forward. Let's be grateful for the wealth of young talent we're cultivating.

I don't think anybody is disputing that these players aren't finished products and have a lot of room to grow and improve.

Fred obviously has some tunnel vision issues, no question about it. However, the positives he brings to the table vastly outweigh the negatives. He's one of the best players in the league in advanced stats, is incredible defensively, and he's been fairly efficient this year. This is his 5th year in the league and his 1st year as the undisputed point guard of the team. Do people remember how Kyle was from 2013-2015...he definitely had a lot room to improve back then as well.

The issue is people just seem to bash Fred for the sake of it with almost no analysis or nuance. Every time he makes a bad play these same posters go crazy, acting like no one else makes mistakes.