Post#22 » by RollingWave » Sun Oct 31, 2021 5:12 pm
Ignite played game one, it was pretty ugly, some general overview and thoughts.
Scoot Henderson is still dealing with some minor back injury and didn't play, with the remaining 5 prospects, they started 4 of them (outside of Fanbo Zeng) and the rest of the rotation was Feng / Jeter / Amauri Hardy and a few G League young vets.
Anyway, they got destroyed in the first half, especially right out of the gate where they were 20-0 before Dyson Daniel mercifully hit a 3, from the 20-0 point they actually won the rest of the game ... the problem was obviously that this was too big of a hole.
After the early destruction, they mostly played only 1 or 2 of the kids with the vets most of the way, with a few brief exceptions.
Anyway, how each of the kids looked. (relative to expectations.)
Jaden Hardy (expectation: high lotto pick ) : quite bad, especially in the part he's suppose to shine most in, aka his shooting, where he was 1 of 8 from 3 (but 3 of 6 from 2s), however he also had 6 assists, and some of them were pretty good finds in transitions, defensively he looked... ok, I feel he didn't get down in stance all the time but also wasn't massive point of failure either. the most troubling part was probably where he had one of his catch and shoot 3s literally blocked by an opposing guard. team worst -22 but he did look good cutting and finding some guys in transition. they really weren't playing through him nearly as much as I thought they would.
Michael Foster (expectation: mid to late first-round pick ) : not good, there were some flashes of goodness and he he showed off almsot all the skills, the problem was that he wasn't putting anything together enough, he had some nice defensive moments, but also some not so good once, and on offense he didn't seem to have a clear role/plan most of the time despite getting quite a few touches, he went for an ugly 3-12 from field overall.
Dyson Daniel (expectation: mid first round pick ) : horrific, whereas with Foster you can see the logic in what he's trying to do and some were just missing by a little, but with Daniels, the proof of concept isn't there on offense, most notably, the first 3 times up the floor (he brough the ball up in all 3 ) 2 of them saw him lost the ball for no reason in half-court, and another one he got stripped clean at top of the key, the horrible start mostly had to do with Ignite simply couldn't get into any sort of offense at all and the clear point of failure with Dyson Daniels, he looke better later on and his defense looked mostly about as positive as advertised, he went 1 of 2 from 3, the 1 is the first shot the Ignite made all game, a step back 3, the problem is that his other 3 was an in rhythm catch and shoot.... which he air-balled wide and short by a very large margin..... he did swing some passes in a pretty impressive way, but I just can't get over how blend and high his dibble looks, I see no chance he can use that dribble to initiate consistently in the NBA.
Marjon Beauchamp ( expectatition : ???? maybe second round ??? ) : the most impressive statistically and probably overall in this game. he scored in variety of ways, though he didn't hit a 3 and is 2 years older than the other 4 guys, but he actually had a somewhat efficient game in an otherwise horrific performance by the team, scoring in a variety of matters, transition, iso etc... he look the part of an NBA player at least, and had the 2 highlight offensive plays of the game just iso and blowing past guys for big dunks.
Fanbo Zeng (expectation : ?????? is he a real prospect??? ) : well if the bar is if he's a real prospect then he blew by that easily, cerainly looks as athletic and skilled as anyone out there. when he was in position he clearly bothered if not straight up blocked a lot of shot, and he found a few seam to get buckets, he went 1 of 3 from 3, but the process looked more promising than say.. Dyson Daniels, (aka the one he hit was a clean catch and shoot and looked very good, and the 2 he missed were bad shot clock heaves), bot like 8 rebounds in just 20 mins, some pretty contested too. Also notable is that he's the most clear guy that was trying to direct traffic and or coordinate plays on defense especially but also some on offense. At least I feel comfortable in saying he's not Kai Sotto / Princepal Signh, now he needs to do more to prove he's a real draft prospect obviously.
Overall a lot of deer in headlight this game early on , they recovered decently, lets see what their adjustments are going forwards, from this game at least I'm most worried by them letting Dyson Daniel play point when he's not really dribbling like a point guard out there and he result showed, I suppose partly that's due to Scoot being hurt, but anyway, we'll see.. physically speaking I liked what I saw from Hardy actually, he's thinner than I remembered, the effort seems mostly there as well, Foster looked decent when they played him as a 5 and I want to see more of that, Zeng I was mostly worried about him just completely crashing and burning at higher level but obviously that didn't happen.
Second game tonight.
The river of time wash away all heroes