Post#12 » by hands11 » Sat Oct 30, 2010 3:20 pm
I'm still wide open an hopeful for this team. We are so early in this rebuilding process still. The keys to me are finding our baseline and then to evaluate which players show the most ability to progress. So key to that is getting some tape to study and teach from.
I feel good about our leaders and that paint my outlook right now. I find no need to draw any negative conclusions. Specially when there is so much room for hope and we only played one game and it was sadly against Orlando who is a terrible match up for us. Season opener just made it 50x worse.
Fear of a slow start is what made the productions this year so hard. The key will be not falling to far behind while we are finding our baseline and getting some tape.
I feel a lot better since they kept Martin and Hudson around because I have no faith in Nick on any given night and this gives us more flexibility with the guards which will help them gel quicker. Martin should be backing up AT, which he did, and Hudson should be used as a change of pace at PG so Kirk can get some minutes at the two until Gil is ready. I think Nick should be buried on the bench right now. He just isn't mature or reliable enough. We have time to raise his value before the trade deadline. We don't need to play him right now. For me, I done with Nick. I'd rather see what we have in Martin and scan for his replacement.
I'm already past the ORL game. I give it very little weight. It was pretty much the worst situation for an opener. The good news from the game is Wall continues to show he is a fast learner. By the second half he was doing a better job of closing the space they were giving him. With that he will put more pressure on the D to drive, pass or shoot closer to the basket and be able to pump fake for some shooting fouls. I doubt he has a worse shooting night. He has a decent stoke so it will come. I think he was just off and a little nervous adjust to the increase speed and competition. First game may not have looked great for him but he still dished out 9 assists. Not bad for a rookie PG.
Dray - I have little doubt he is going to find his game. He had some good open outside shoots. He just missed. And with little to no post options for him to get it rolling, well, we saw what happened. He was doubled a lot. Then he got a crap call by the refs and had 3 fouls.
McGee - I'm not going to come down to hard on him. We know our concerns we have with him and we know he can get better this year. But Howard was the worst match up for him. What I hope is that Flip also gets Yi, Seraphin, Armstrong, Booker, and Hamady as much time as he can spare. I'm pretty sure McGee won't be able to pull it off alone, so we need to get these guys experience to to see who else can be a least be somewhat steady in helping in any way. Plus we need to see who learns the quickest. Hamady is likely going to be inactive before long so I hope he get on the court a few times so he gets a taste and we can get some tape. Seraphin is a sleeper key. If we can just get him playing strong and rebounding, that would be a huge help. We need post toughness desperately. Even a little taste should help him progress and give the coaches some tape to work from.
Lots to evaluate here over the first 5-10 games. I'm going to be looking for the good and the progress while hoping for some wins. Kind of how I watch the Skins right now.
That's our Flipper
