Impressions From The Game at Courtside

So I had seats in the courtside section tonight. A few thoughts...

1) Batum is a very good player. His ability to defend and to shoot is very very good.

2) Leonard is lost. He missed 3 or 4 easy baskets by failing to keep his eyes open on pick & rolls. On defense he was often asking where he should be. I know he's a rookie, but even so... he's very athletic and if he gets smart he'll be a real keeper.

3) Claver- Why is he in the NBA? I actually counted and he missed 21 shots in a row in warmups. He rarely talks with anyone and he has so little confidence in his shot he was running from the ball when in the game.

4) Pavlovic- It's been a long time since I've seen a player so slow and unable to shoot a basketball. Oh, wait, there's Claver...

Still, it was a fun game and the Rose Harden was rockin'.

 

Oh snap! Rastapapoaspoaslokhasdoius is going to give you a piece of his mind!

 

Claver, to his credit, made some very smart plays and has a couple of plays that were made purely on hustling.

 

Ya know, I think he knows the game very well for a player his age. He just doesn't have an NBA skill set. I don't think he has the skill set to start for a college team. But he is smart.

 

bleh. That was such a feel good game, and you just focused on the negatives (except for Nic). Watching Dame go off in crunch time from courtside woulda given me goosebumps, man.

unrep.

 

Riiight? BP just sat courtside and that's all he's left with! Shoulda gave me those seats ;-)

 

Oh, it was a feel good game, but I wonder why Stotts plays some of the players he does.

 

Perhaps, but fuck skill set. He'd start on smarts and athleticism or basic ability alone.

 

Because he has five starters and nothing else?

 

Are you perhaps unfamiliar with our bench?

 

No, he's not really athletic. He's like a lot of Euro players. They mentally know the game very well, but that's about it. He's in position, knows when to do certain things... but he is clearly lagging in ball skills. I mean, his smarts are evident, but his game ends there.

 

I know, I know, it's a lousy bench. That said, I think Barton has a possible upside for the future as a role player. Others getting playing time clearly do not. So why not let him pick up minutes Pavlovic is taking? There's wasted time on the floor on a non NBA player. A guy behind me said he wants to cover his eyes when Pavlovic is in he's so bad.

 

Regardless of how many years he's been playing the game he's still a rookie, give Claver a break and a chance.

 

The funny part, and it's totally by accident probably, but he only played 7 minutes, and managed a +3 in that time. So luckily, he was a net positive.

 

Disagree. And I'd agree to disagree, but you sat court side on a night like tonight, and this is all you could come up with? Yuyuza has a valid point.

 

BP, can I hit it?

 

The rookies who don't play feel this is a learning year so they defer to others. Claver made some hard shots in preseason. He's 6-10 or 6-11 (based on how he towered over Batum tonight during timeouts) whose Batum-like mobility makes him a SF.

I agree with you, BP, on Leonard. This was not one of his better games, contrary to the thread going right now praising him for this game. He played a lot because Houston stopped Hickson. In the 3rd quarter Leonard screwed up a bunch of times in a row and I was thinking he had lost us the game.

 

I was watching from couchside. It appeared to me that Lillard was in a complete zone for most of the 2nd overtime. Love his budding sense of clutchness!!

 

Did we go 2OT? Did I miss something?