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First Impressions: Enes Kanter by Sebastian Pruiti

http://nbaplaybook.com/2011/08/15/first ... es-kanter/

This is a nice breakdown, and leaves room for optimism. Is Kanter rusty? He is, but it's inevitable for a kid who hasn't played a competitive game in two years and is basically at his senior debut. Despite the huge jump in the competition he's facing, though, it looks like he can retain his main strengths while most of his weaknesses seem to either stem from his high-level basketball inexperience, or to be at least still correctable. If the lockout continues I think he should really look for an opportunity to play lots of minutes in a good European league, he needs to play as much as possible to make up for the time he lost. It should do wonders for his game.

To bring up a topic that has emerged in another thread and will probably be discussed often in the future, of course Valanciunas will look better and probably be better right now, despite arguably being the inferior player two years ago: Jonas is a superb talent in his own right and has been learning his trade against top European competition, while Enes - as much as he may have worked by himself - has essentially thrown away the past couple of seasons. But things can still change, they're both only 19 years old and have their whole careers ahead of them. And even if Valanciunas will end up being the better player (and there's a pretty good chance that's going to happen), it doesn't mean that Kanter can't be a great player as well.

i think he looked good, nothing spectacular but for a 19 year old playing for a team he never played for, he showed me physical defense, strong rebounding, and great skill.

People seems to be pretty negative on him lately, there is a reason why he was the third pick in the draft....and that is because he has a pretty unique skill-set for a center. The way he moves without the ball is fantastic, he's a bruiser in the post and has the ability to hit a short jumper (I think his shooting skills are overrated). He can also hold his position in the post, and with Favors in the fold, all we need Kanter to do is play good man defense, which he does - his help D seems bad, but it could improve drastically with time. For a 19 year old he is scary, and right now he hasn't done anything to prove that he is more raw or less talented than Favors was at the beginning of last season with the Nets.

babyjax13 wrote:People seems to be pretty negative on him lately, there is a reason why he was the third pick in the draft....and that is because he has a pretty unique skill-set for a center. The way he moves without the ball is fantastic, he's a bruiser in the post and has the ability to hit a short jumper (I think his shooting skills are overrated). He can also hold his position in the post, and with Favors in the fold, all we need Kanter to do is play good man defense, which he does - his help D seems bad, but it could improve drastically with time. For a 19 year old he is scary, and right now he hasn't done anything to prove that he is more raw or less talented than Favors was at the beginning of last season with the Nets.

Darko, Part 2.

I'm not sure he even knows how to play basketball yet.

I hope we can develop him while he is here. The videos of his high school games are terrifying, he didn't have basic fundamentals down. He probably has a better chance of playing and learning under Corbin, so I hope they get 3rd pick kind of play out of him before he gets his first big payday off his rookie contract.

As I've said from the beginning; If you see many bad plays and habits from a player in a 5 min highlight video that suppose to make him look good, then he sucks. And I'm not even talking about the high school videos that make him look even worse.

LOL, overreaction board to the max!

Remember how crappy Hayward looked early last year, he wasn't finishing around the rim, he couldn't shoot at all, and he couldn't learn the plays. And he'd had 2 years of college, 1 of them as the #1 guy on a near championship team.

Kanter is going to be just fine, he plays three more times this weekend, I bet he plays better.

Bat wrote:LOL, overreaction board to the max!

Remember how crappy Hayward looked early last year, he wasn't finishing around the rim, he couldn't shoot at all, and he couldn't learn the plays. And he'd had 2 years of college, 1 of them as the #1 guy on a near championship team.

Kanter is going to be just fine, he plays three more times this weekend, I bet he plays better.

No some people were suprised that Hayward adjusted late in the season. I said from the beginning that if he's given enough playing time, he was gonna have a Mike Miller like rookie season which he started to live up too in the last few months (I still hate that we picked him that high). I said that because he played and was physically extremely similar to Mike Miller.

Kanter won't magically do things he's never done before like play even decent defense, get more lift on his jumps, consistently use proper fundamentals, always play like he cares or be a good scorer with out relying mainly on his size. All those things are important for him to be successful versus veteran players. So unless he meets a genie tommorow, he's gonna suck again this weekend.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck; its probably a duck. So if Kanter does things that sucky players do, he probably sucks.

Bat wrote:LOL, overreaction board to the max!

Remember how crappy Hayward looked early last year, he wasn't finishing around the rim, he couldn't shoot at all, and he couldn't learn the plays. And he'd had 2 years of college, 1 of them as the #1 guy on a near championship team.

Kanter is going to be just fine, he plays three more times this weekend, I bet he plays better.

Draftexpress wasn't fond of Kanter at all as a prospect and predicted pretty much all of Kanter's struggles. Skita looked terrible at the beginning of his rookie season and then was out of the league 18 months later. Using someone looking like they can't play as a positive is kind of illogical.

Every rule has an exception. I'm not ready to give up after a few international games. Remember AK excels in Euro play. Pau and Dirk don't dominate like they do in the NBA. Flat footedness is the least of the worries. That's can easily be attributed to not knowing the plays. We have learned that Millsap and even Memo are not expendable for the possible season though.

Jazzfan12 wrote:

Bat wrote:LOL, overreaction board to the max!

Remember how crappy Hayward looked early last year, he wasn't finishing around the rim, he couldn't shoot at all, and he couldn't learn the plays. And he'd had 2 years of college, 1 of them as the #1 guy on a near championship team.

Kanter is going to be just fine, he plays three more times this weekend, I bet he plays better.

Draftexpress wasn't fond of Kanter at all as a prospect and predicted pretty much all of Kanter's struggles. Skita looked terrible at the beginning of his rookie season and then was out of the league 18 months later. Using someone looking like they can't play as a positive is kind of illogical.

Dx hated taj Gibson too, and completely misread him going into the NBA, it doesn't mean anything. We are trying to throw a kid out because he had 3 bad games after not playing for two years on a team he's had only weeks to prepare for against competition he's never faced in a league he doesn't play in professionally nor has been playing in.

You guys are crazy.

Panic mode is only allowed to start after his rookie season. And even then, there's tons of time to improve after that.

Remember, kids, big men develop slowly.

You guys are overreacting vastly.

It's only crazy if a few international games change your perception of him drastically. I haven't been very high on him from well before we drafted him. This is just one more data plot along the line of a few that have formed my opinion of him. We can only hope he learned basic fundamentals practicing for his college team, because he don't have confirmation he has them yet. I'm hoping he does.

I wasn't too impressed with Kanter before the Drfat, but he's only 19, for crying out loud......

The Jazz saw something in him, and obviously Calipari (who's not a bad judge of talent) saw something in him as well....... A lot of the flaws people are pointing out are perfectly fixable with proper coaching......

I know it's the off-season, but c'mon......

I've set the bar at Chris Kaman. Any better career than that and I'll be very happy. Any worse and I'll be disappointed.

About the same and I'll be content.

Centers are often busts. it's just the nature of the beast. I'll bet he's better than the last 4-5 centers we've drafted though.

I haven't really changed my opinion on him at all with these games, I'm just disappointed he has all the issues that he had in high school that seemed to make him an extremely raw prospect with limited upside.

I think we should kill him.

red4hf wrote:The Jazz saw something in him, and obviously Calipari (who's not a bad judge of talent) saw something in him as well....... A lot of the flaws people are pointing out are perfectly fixable with proper coaching......

I strongly disagree, most of his flaws are extremely difficult to fix.

1)Most guys who come in the league playing horrible defense, are still very bad or worse in their prime such as Boozer, Okur, Big Al, Amare, Dirk, Yao, Bargs, ect... And I don't care if he can "hold his own in the post" because Bargs can too and there plenty of avalible video to prove that Bargs can but holding your own in the post is almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things in today's nba.

2) If he's not getting enough lift on his jumps now at 19 y/o, its only gonna get worse as he gets older. Athletism can only be improved so much and he needs a lot of improvement.

3) He doesn't always play like he cares. Thats was seen during the games last week, in his pre draft highlights, and many analyst have reported that. You can help a guy mature mentally but you can't help them care about that there doing.

4) Now generally the easist things to fix would be to improve his offensive skills and learn basic fundamentals. The only problem is, it usually takes a few years and requires alot of attention from the coaching staff and lots of playing time. Right now he relys way too much on his size to score which isn't gonna work in the NBA, so I don't know how he's gonna get even half the playing time he needs to fully develop especially with his super sucky defense.