4? Always perplexing when Nate talks So many times I scratch my head and wonder? Shouldn't he maybe play the 3? Could we at least entertain another coach? Looking around the league, there are some nice assistants One of them could surely understand Nic is not a 4? Wouldn't it be best for the franchise if our skinny ass 3 didn't play the 4? No one agrees with me, but I'm used to that
Gerald is a beast! I don't know what there exact weights are, but Wallace is twice as strong as the Frenchie!
More like 20Lbs, and who knows how exact that is Nic can guard many of the 4's just fine because of his length
I can't think of many 4's that would blow Nic off the low block. He certainly has the length though. Just not the mass, IMO
LA/ZBo/Griffin/Pau/West/Amare are probably the only 4s that Nic can't handle, mostly because they play primarily in the post with their backs to the basket, or are way too strong. Guys like Dirk, Bosh, Odom, etc, he can handle.
Every single coach worth anything would have any 4 Nic was guarding go directly to the low block and clear out. It's not that hard to figure out. 6'8" 210lbs vs 6'10" 250lbs
It's not like Gerald at 6-7 230 is a great answer How about we just hope(or pray) Aldridge is healthy?
Great, the guy who couldn't even post up Steve Nash is now going to be our starting POWER forward. I'll never figure out Nate's fascination with playing skinny guys who shoot the 3 (Rashard Lewis, Travis Outlaw and now Batum) at the power forward spot. Is it any wonder this team is consistently near the bottom of the league in points in the paint? BNM
Rashard played the 3 for him. SVG made him a 4 in orlando. Unless Reggie Evans was playing the 3 in Seattle.
Re: Nic in the post. One of the things he vowed to work on was his post game, and SLUC posted him up a fair amount. Here's the highlight reel from his time there. Now, being highlights, it's a lot of open court dunks and blocks, but you can see some posting up at: 0:13, 1:29, 2:27, 2:43, a particularly nasty one at about 2:50, and 3:31. [video=youtube;1pMZi-6jp50]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pMZi-6jp50[/video] Not saying Nic is ideal there, but he's obviously been working on it. He and Kirilenko are actually pretty comparable. In fact, compare Nic with Robert Horry, Lamar Odom, Kirilenko (the one FA I really covet, especially after watching him play for Russia and CSKA Moskow), Uncle Cliffy - all started out as tall skinny SFs and transitioned to PF.
Nic is about the same age as Brandon was his rookie year. Give him 5 seasons and he will be lighting this league up!
I think it's a question of whether he can guard players on the post, rather than whether he can post anyone up. Horry, Robinson and Odom are all at least two inches taller than Batum and outweighed where he is now. Looking at 6'8" PFs in the NBA and I think that it's safe to say players that are wide are much more likely to succeed than those that are thin. Ed O.
You zeroed in on my comment about "age" and missed the bit about "the state it's in" ... Yes it's not universally old, and it's not a bad team per se, but it's loaded with scads of youngins with (probably) limited upside or guys with solid if unspectacular games outside of Aldridge and not a lot of players you can pencil in as Roy or Oden replacers -- not their actual positions, but their intended role as true foundation pieces. Much like the T-mac-less and Yao-less Rockets, I have no doubt that this team will play hard for Nate and they will probably enjoy some measure of success and maybe even get into the playoffs as a 5-8 seed this year, but they just don't appear to have the horses to get much farther than that.
