Cunningham - I think he's a tweener that is destined or PF Babbitt - I did NOT like how slow his shot was to get off. Lost on defense, but active on offense Pendy - Solid back up banger Johnson - The Greg Anthony comparison is rock solid Mills - Active, and maybe could be a nice back up Ebweke(sp?) - Very ative, and would probably do wonders under Camby's wing. Too bad he'll never get a chance
My impressions: guard play: I need to see more, but I liked the way the team worked under both Mills and Armon -- Johnson's willingness to defend and solid fundamentals (stance, knowing where his help was, good read and react ability, ability to contest shots) gives him the edge for me front court: Pendergraph looked a little more comfortable around the basket on offense, his D was OK, Dante didn't wow me with his offense (except for that great pass to the cutting Patty) but he's versatile on defense and that's never a bad thing. Ebekwe was really active on defense, and gave Patterson and Hill quite a bit of trouble, hard to say if that can translate to the big boy league. wings: Babbitt was a mixed bag: The good: he looked really tentative at first with his shot, but I liked the fact that he can put it on the floor and create a little bit, he also seemed like he saw the floor pretty well and he appeared to have pretty good rebounding instincts. The bad: looks totally lost on defense, doesn't understand position, went under picks when he was covering Budinger, didn't appear comfortable defending the pick and roll and looks like he needs to hit the weight room immediately. Nichols was pretty spastic out there too, but I don't care about him so, whatever.
Canales (sp.?) has really got the team playing well as a group. They moved the ball and hustled constantly on defense, relentless pressure. Maybe we HAVE learnt something from the Suns' bench crew... Greg Anthony had a three point shot and was a little smaller, but that's certainly something Johnson could strive for. Mills is a good deal quicker, though. Mills actually looked like a PG for the first time I've seen him. Up to this point, he's been kind of a Nate Robinson Lite whenever I've seen, but today he kept his head up and made good passes.
I was surprised at how well he seemed to play out there given all of the talk of him being a combo guard or scoring guard, he's gotta learn to cut out the jump-pass crap, but his D on Jermaine Taylor (who had averaged 23 points before today) holding him to 13 points, 6-14 shooting and 7 turnovers was nice to see. I agree completely. He never looked like that at St. Mary's. I need to see him replicate the effort because I'm a little concerned that his success might have come from the fact that it was an up and down game and as we all know that probably isn't going to be the way they play in the regular season. I was also pleased to see him at least give effort on defense, but his lack of length really hurts him in that respect.
Excited by all the reports about Canales almost more then anyone. Sounds like we have a great assistant, hopefully someone who can bend Nate's ear on Offensive sets as well. Thanks for the reports everyone!
Terry was a little better than I expected. No one has mentioned him because his minutes were limited. Mills ran the team with a steadier hand than I expected. The team played as a team more than the last couple of Summer League teams, maybe because of Coach Canales, or maybe because Bayless wasn't there to dominate.
The first SL game usually sucks. I think the next few games will be a better indication of how these guys are.
We benefitted from upping the tempo on a team playing for the third time in three days. I wasn't overly impressed with anyone.
I found out about that well after the game ... it certainly changes my impression (now I'm not sure what I think about anybody).
Yeh, he banged his knee in draft workouts, although he is practicing with the team; it may be that they want to get a better look at Johnson and Mills right now.
"The Mike's" did mention that the Blazers were fairly certain in what they had with Williams, so I guess playing him after his injury wasn't as important. What do we have in Williams?.... Athletic freak I guess. Rice said that his vertical leap off of two feet was 36 inches and running off of one foot 48 inches. Makes him worthy of development time in my book!
What I thought was interesting was the interview with Nate where he blurbed out that he really liked how Mills pushed the pace. That is the one thing you can give Mills, he is lightning fast.
Re: Williams: I get the impression that the Blazers are keeping him out because they spread a lot of scary stories about his knee to get him to drop and now they don't want their disinformation campaign to be blatantly disproved. Re: Babbitt: I think people are overplaying the "slow" thing. David Thorpe certainly came away impressed. Think how slow and lumbering Dirk Nowitzki looks - but he's still valuable. I think people are scared because Ammo looked slow too. But just because they're both slow doesn't mean they're both ineffective. Babbitt had much better combine results, and he's beefier too. He can be a poor man's Carmelo!
