djFan71 wrote:Walsh was pretty solid. Rough whistle, but he always seemed to be in right spot defensively. Game is way too fast for him and he’s a stick flailing around, but you can see a player in there when the body is built up - and he realizes that and stops avoiding contact so much - and when the game slows down in general.
Yup. It's clear that there is some serious potential there but it's a long term thing.
No need to rush it. We're doing the right thing. Going slow with him, baby steps. Got him in there last night for the first time in a lineup with starters, when it wasn't garbage time. That's good experience for him.
Just keep slowly developing.
He was good in summer league last year. The next step is seeing the progression he makes from 2023 summer league to 2024 SL. Ideally, we see a guy in 2024 SL who is really tearing it up, pretty much dominating. Ideally, we are saying to ourselves by the 2nd or 3rd game, "ok, he's too good for SL".
If that happens, then we'll know he should be ready to come into training camp and compete for some legit mins as like a 10th man (or maybe even 9th man) next season..
It might not be till his 3rd season that he gets consistent rotation mins and that's ok. He'll only be 20 next season. Look at how old guys like Austin Reaves, Herb Jones, Hauser, Pritchard, D-white, Caruso, Gabe Vincent, Strus, Caleb Martin and Dorian Finney-Smith were when they first got consistent rotation mins - for pretty much all of them it was like age 23 or 24..