tontoz wrote:One thing I like this year is how aggressive Deni is driving to the basket. He used to be very timid about driving. This used to be an annoyance for me and I remember arguing about it with one of his foreign fans on here.
They were complaining about his role in the offense and my counter was that he is playing in the same offense as everyone else, he just doesn't do anything with the ball when he gets it.
You really want to open up old arguments? because the way I remember it is that the "local fans" claimed his problem is that he's just too slow, too weak and not athletic enough to do what he did in Europe against NBA players, which I hope we all agree today is a complete nonsense.
I've said it in the past and I say it again, you can't narrow down the reasons for how a player performs to just "do something with the ball when you get it", that's not how it works, there's a lot of psychology behind how a player performs, some players are affected more by it and some less, Deni apparently affected more, and that's why the main arguments of us "foreign fans" were that Deni's problem is not skill or size but mainly confidence and our suggestion for a solution was that the team should play a team oriented offensive system where Deni feels a part of and not a system where just one player is holding the ball most of the offense while everyone else are watching him, it was only a suggestion for a solution, obviously it's better if Deni can work on his confidence on his own but as I said back then it's the team's interest to help him with that if he's suppose to be a main part of their future.
And I think these arguments are very valid today as well, I don't think it's a coincidence that the last few games Deni's performance was rising while Poole's was declining, the more Deni is playing without players like Poole next to him on the court the higher Deni's confidence is going to be and in relation so does his performance.
