I like what I've seen from Dante thus far. But to say he could step into Outlaw's role and do better has a lot more to do with one's feelings on Travis than it does how excited you are about Dante. Outlaw is an athletic shot jacker. He doesn't do anything else. But that one thing he does do is very valuable. After all, the team with the most points wins the game. There has long been an idea that we'd be better off with a more all around player like Dante. I remember several times people suggesting that we try to trade him for Desmond Mason. But if we do that we have one less guy you can depend on to create their own shot. Travis can jack up shots from anywhere on the court. A goodly amount of those go in the basket. I'm not a big Travis guy. I'm hoping Utah doesn't match for Millsap and Webster's healthy enough to play the 15 to 20 minutes a game Travis played at the 3. I think we'd be much better off with a real bruiser power forward and a real spot up shooting small forward. But to declare Travis is now expendable because of a couple summer league games is a tad premature.
Actually summer league games or not, I think Travis has been replaceable for years by many players off of free agent list or drafting for need. If it wasn't Cunningham, it easily could have been a lot of other players. Hell there have been vet free agents on the available board almost every year who are better than him, and are known value on the court. The facts are, if Travis shot isn't falling, he is a detriment on the court.
I'm so glad we keep drafting guys that have names or nicknames that rhyme with go. Next year, we can chant that G-O must GO, when he becomes next year's scapegoat.
...this one, I am hoping and praying that we don't have to do that!!! It is just that both, zBO and TO, score extremely low in the IQ department with no signs of improvement in that area
I'm not quite ready to christen Dante better or even close to being as effective as Travis as an NBA player, but I will agree with the underlying premise that he looks like a much more well rounded player with an intuitive sense of the game (Hoops IQ if you will). Travis is still a freak athlete with the ability to get some crazy shots up in the air that actually go in surprisingly often. If Dante is on the roster come training camp and if he's part of the rotation when the season gets rolling that's when can make legitimate quantitative and qualitative judgments about his ability compared to Travis. Until then I'm just going to enjoy him for what he is at face value -- a second round pick who seems to be playing more like a first round pick. Where this leads is still very much in doubt.
I'm starting to hate the term "Basketball IQ", call it "floor sense" or "feel for the game," but IQ is a total misnomer. Whereas true IQ or intelligence isn't something you can move a whole lot, floor sense and feel for the game can definitely be improved on with experience. The fact that Travis still doesn't seem to have much at this point of his 6 year NBA career probably doesn't bode well for him improving much more, but to say a player can't improve their "basketball IQ" is just wrong -- in this instance, Travis just didn't improve his much.
Well I am sick of gay people saying they want to get "married", call it joined, sword-fighting, taco-stacking, but not marriage. It is a total misnomer. Say what?
I wouldn't call it sensitive. Just bored. And really though. What is the definition of marriage? The union between a WOMAN and a MAN. Not the union of 2 humans. ZING!
