martin wrote:
The offensive rebounds are good, yet many of the other ones Sims got while everyone was headed to the other net. Sims had a hard time converting on the offensive rebounds as well. And his defense was mediocre IMO.
Just one game but this looked like the same Sims from last season.
Alpha1971 wrote:martin wrote:Bench was solid
And although I don't expect to see the points scored by Deuce, Shamet, and Kolek to be the norm off the bench the good play of the entire bench unit looks repeatable. Precious look like he picked up where he left off as did Deuce and Shamet looks as good as Grimes did at his best off the bench.
We actually have the foundation of a good bench. Deuce, Shamet, Precious is really solid and they should play well together. We just don't have a wing over 6'4 and we are not deep. But I could see this bench playing well together and doing some damage like Indy's bench.
ToddTT wrote:martin wrote:
Achiuwa doing Achiuwa things.
I think we're in good shape at backup PF.
Good game by Kolek, filling up the stat sheet quickly again. If there is one thing Tyler needs to work on is his lateral movement on D. That will help move him up the rotation.
DLeethal wrote:Alpha1971 wrote:martin wrote:Bench was solid
And although I don't expect to see the points scored by Deuce, Shamet, and Kolek to be the norm off the bench the good play of the entire bench unit looks repeatable. Precious look like he picked up where he left off as did Deuce and Shamet looks as good as Grimes did at his best off the bench.
We actually have the foundation of a good bench. Deuce, Shamet, Precious is really solid and they should play well together. We just don't have a wing over 6'4 and we are not deep. But I could see this bench playing well together and doing some damage like Indy's bench.
Crazy eyes Portis would be awesome on Knicks bench.
ToddTT wrote:The last big man this good at using the glass was Tim Duncan.
Yeah...know this is in jest, but big men really using the glass well are a rare breed.
Guys like Precious, Sims, and especially Mitch, who don't have great touch on their shot, can benefit from using the glass. Bill Walton never had a soft touch, but could use the backboard quite well.
Sure, be able to shoot a 3, but why not work on interior & midrange shots first, including those 10 foot angle bank shots.
Drives me crazy.
martin wrote:Not bad
I like Bodega KAT better TBH. Shout-out to who we came up with that.
GustavBahler wrote:martin wrote:
The offensive rebounds are good, yet many of the other ones Sims got while everyone was headed to the other net. Sims had a hard time converting on the offensive rebounds as well. And his defense was mediocre IMO.
Just one game but this looked like the same Sims from last season.
Both he and Mitch look "small" when they get an offensive rebound near the rim, and can't dunk the ball.
Both were impressive. Wasn't it Bridges who suggested or approved that we get him, having played with him a Phoenix?
I saw him take one "too quick" 3, but other than that, I was impressed by him.
Kolek looked like he did in the SL. He's just a savvy player. I'd like to see him guarding some opposition starters to see if he can adapt to their speed Payne is quicker on D, but I thought he looked shaky an a distributor near the end of the game.
THE DUECE IS LOOSE
And shamet was an underrated pickup
Now that we have seen some game action! The to early evaluations call for Shamet to start, have Kolek backup Brunson.
Brunson, Shamet, Mikal, OG, Towns
Kolek, Deuce, Hart, Precious, Mitch.
How about that one KAT 3 from Dame territory! Overall the starters missed a bunch of open shots but you can see the potential there already. They just need some reps working it together.
The bench showed a lot of enthusiasm on both ends of the floor. It looks like Thibs already has his rotations pretty well set. Payne had 6 assists to lead the team and that dagger 3 for the win. Maybe Thibs will go full on hockey style and just play those guys as a set.
Fun to see these guys in action.
newyorknewyork wrote:Now that we have seen some game action! The to early evaluations call for Shamet to start, have Kolek backup Brunson. Brunson, Shamet, Mikal, OG, Towns
Kolek, Deuce, Hart, Precious, Mitch.
Too sieve-y of a backcourt
martin wrote:newyorknewyork wrote:Now that we have seen some game action! The to early evaluations call for Shamet to start, have Kolek backup Brunson. Brunson, Shamet, Mikal, OG, Towns
Kolek, Deuce, Hart, Precious, Mitch.
Too sieve-y of a backcourt
Probably true after thinking about it a little more. Either gonna be Deuce or Hart and Deuce looks like he's primed for 6MOY contention. Shamet can play a small 3 off the bench. Looks like we will basically play 3 guards and a big off the bench and stagger our forwards with them.
Payne vs Kolek is going to bring all the drama for fans this year I can already see it.
I purposely skip preseason cause it doesn't mean anything but saw the highlights and good stuff from Deuce, Shamet, Kolek and Payne. Depth is a question mark entering the season so good start.
My takeaways are that the starters looked rusty and confused but still performed well as a unit which tells you a little bit about how high their ceiling is. Lots of missed bunnies and stuff like that, Mikal was rushing a lot of his shots, overall just looked like they were playing pickup for the first time. But they still took control of the game in the second half during their mins. They appear that they can do what we think they can do which is be an elite offensive unit and solid enough defensively.
Bench surprised me with how sharp they all looked. They could be a pretty potent unit. Sometimes the best benches form out of nowhere, not even because of the most overall talent but just how well they play together ala Indiana. Payne/Kolek - Deuce - Shamet - Precious looks like they could surprise some people this year as a bench unit.
I'm a little concerned about size and rebounding. Overall depth still an issue - we are extremely guard heavy. This is not going to be the same type of team we are used to since Thibs has been here, where we break teams on the offensive boards and fly around like crazy on defense. And there is some mild fear I have because the last time we tried to shift our style like that was the Kemba/Fournier year and we also saw Bogie really struggle to find his niche until very late in the season. We have not done well with anything besides bully style ball and this team is not that. The difference is now we are trying to do it with MUCH better talent. Brunson and KAT is not Kemba/Fournier/Randle. And we still have two elite defenders and a really good one in the starting unit. Denver won a chip with KCP and AG as the only defenders in their starting lineup. OG/Mikal/Josh is much stronger than that.
I don't love OG being down low battling bigs for boards. This is probably why we need Hart in the starting unit. But Hart should probably be our second leading rebounder most nights and not OG. OG should be flying around and contesting and not boxing and battling big guys.
I think Cam was probably assured the backup spot. Deuce is going to get a lot of mins this year and will play with Brunson. Payne/Kolek are really jockeying for Brunson's backup 12-15 minutes. I gotta say last year we saw our team fall of a cliff when Brunson sat. Payne looks like he can keep us afloat in those minutes. So does Kolek, obviously, and then some.
Deuce looks like he's going to be Quickly of 2 years ago for us. A guy who can play 25-30 mins, backup Brunson some, play with Brunson some, step up and score a ton of points when Brunson is out, close out games when he's hot etc.
SergioNYK wrote:I purposely skip preseason cause it doesn't mean anything but saw the highlights and good stuff from Deuce, Shamet, Kolek and Payne. Depth is a question mark entering the season so good start.
Depth is a concern mostly because we're starting a man down at center (Mitch) - but the acquisition of Towns really shored that up because of his positional versatility. Heck, starting with the OG/Achiuwa trade, we've really become extremely versatile.
In recent years, we had been deep, but what I'll call "tandem" deep. Let's take Mitch and Hartenstein - you could only have one of them on the floor at a time. Or Randle & Obi. Let's recall that we started out last season with absurd depth at the wing position, which ultimately was a terrible logjam of RJ/Grimes/Quickley/DiVincenzo/Hart/McBride all vying for minutes, and few of them getting adequate mins to get into a groove. You can be too deep if you can't decide which player has the "hot hand". You end up wasting a few offensive positions to see if they're hot, and if they're not instantly hot, it's probably almost time to bring the starter back in anyway. Too much depth showed - most of the members of this group performed at a much lower level than expectations.
This season we're in a new world where Thibs can be extremely flexible with who plays and can offer up a lot of different looks. On offense, practically everyone can shoot, so worst case an "out of position" offensive player can park in the corner and still be an asset, or pair up in a pick and roll.
OG, Bridges, Hart, Achiuwa can be assigned to play defense on most 2-4's, and sometimes 1's and 5's depending on the match up. It's pretty cool.
What shooting and versatile defense does is allow our team to stagger rotations and get away from a Hockey style "line" mentality (ie starting 5, next 5 mentality). You can stagger breaks and can always have 2-3 starters in the game. That keeps a level of continuity on the floor at all times.
