Post-Game Thread - Preseason vs Nets, Home

[bobheckler]

We beat the Brooklyn JVs.  




No Lopez, no Thaddeus Young, no Jarrett Jack, no Joe Johnson, no Barf-nani.  The only regular Net starter to even play, much less start, was Bogdanovich.  We should have crushed these guys.  It should have been Armani Milan redux.  It wasn't.  We won by 6 but the game was closer than that.  The JVs had a 1 point lead on us halfway through the 3rd.  I was not pleased with that.

1.  Thomas Robinson, the #5 bust in 2010 by Sacto, put on a show on the boards.  This is his 4th team in 4 years and I think he's going to make this one.  He worked his butt off and got 9 boards, 4 offensive in 25 minutes.  He also had 5 of the Nets' 22 TOs, but that's what happens when a scrub plays a lot of minutes.

2.  Bogie was the Nets high scorer with 18.  He tortured Hunter a bit, backing him down into the paint and then doing a stepback from the frito line.  Not much Hunter could do about it, since Bogie is 2" taller and 20# heavier.

3.  Rozier is quick.  Man is he quick.  I can't wait to see him against players like John Wall and other greyhounds.  He had a good Europe trip, but has missed a week with his rookie learning moment (thinking himself clever by not telling the training staff his knee hurts) and was expected to have a bit of a conditioning and game rhythm issue.  Nope.  He definitely gets the game ball for this one.  16 points off the bench and excellent defense.  4 steals.  At least one of those steals was a pass directly to him but the rest was him.  The kid has a nose for the ball.  The knock on him, when he was drafted, and why everybody was so shocked when he was picked as high as he was, is that he's not a great shooter.  Couldn't tell from last night.  3-3 from 3 and, what I really liked, was a pure "my name is Terry Rozier and I'm here to torture you" where Rozier had the ball on top with time winding down and he froze his defender with his killer crossover, like a mouse that can't take his eyes off the snake's flicking tongue, then he took him right, gave him a little jab step towards the paint that made the defender fall back and then he pulls up for the free throw line J.  Swish.  It was Chris Paul.  Paul does it against everybody and has for years and Rozier has done it just once, but that's what he does.  I was as flabbergasted as everybody else when Danny and Brad took a guard and not a center, and one that everybody had going mid-20s no less, but I'm starting to see it now.  This kid's a player and he has ice in his veins.  He was bringing the ball up (at a decent clip, no Rondo-walk up for him), saw nobody was defending the paint and just kicked it up a couple of gears and positively rocketed down the lane.  He went for the big dunk, was fouled and missed, but his burst of speed when he saw the opening, his acceleration, was incredible. He has the ball on a string.  6 assists and only 1 TO.  He's going to be pushing Bradley or Smart for minutes because he is a better ball handler than either of them, by far, and he's a defender like them too.  Welcome to Boston, Terry Rozier.  Play like this and you'll like it here because we'll like you.

4.  Amir does all the little stuff.  15 points on 6-8, presence in the paint defensively.  He's a glue guy.  In Toronto he was on the floor with  DeRozan, Lowry, Valanciunas and Terrence Ross.  Shooting, with those guys, is not required.  He is shooting and scoring more with Brad than he ever did in Toronto and he must be loving that.

5.  The Battle of the Bubble is almost over.  James Young got 15 meaningful minutes and made the most of them.  No obvious defensive lapses, like last year.  2-5 and 2-3 from 3 shows he's gaining both confidence and accuracy in his shooting again.  Perry Jones III was inserted, for the first time, with 4.6 seconds left in the half.  He came in, again, with 2 minutes left in the 3rd and got 4 minutes to start the 4th.  That was it for him, 6 minutes total.  Brad says he was going to play him more this week, so far so not very good for Jones.  He played Bogie pretty good defense, for a while and hit a 3 from on top with the clock winding down but I feel it slipping away for him.  Brad went with the Hunter/Young back court experiment again.  He wouldn't have done that twice unless he saw both of those players as being viable.  If he just wanted to see if Hunter could play point he could have paired him with Smart or Bradley and told them to play off the ball and let Hunter run the show.  I'm glad to see Young is finally settling down, but this is a bit of a shocker to me.  I thought Jones was a shoo-in.  Shows what I know.

6.  Sergey Karasev is a streak shooter, who didn't streak enough for Cleveland, but was hot last night.  RJ came in and cooled him down nicely.  Brad said he is surprised at how quickly Hunter is learning the defensive schemes.  Well, as we all know Brad always says nice things about everybody, but this time it looks like he was speaking straight.  He is turning into a decent defender, although Bogie tortured him a few times.

7.  Another painful night for Sully.  13 minutes and he scores 3 points, has 3 rebounds, 3 assists and 3 TOs.  One of those TOs was a well-conceived but poorly executed interior bounce pass to Jerebko that didn't come up off the floor.  Our front court is crowded, whether Amir and Lee are part of our future is irrelevant since they are here and under contract, and Sully's making the decision easy for Danny.

8.  A good night for Kelly.  15 points on 6-10.  He was taking and making those Dirk 2.0 wrong-foot fadeaways all night.  4 rebounds and a nice interior block.  

9.  Another reason why Sully might be out the door is that Mickey comes in and plays well.  He is mobile, he moves without the ball, he likes to go inside like Sully used to before he fell in love with the outside shot, and he can block shots like Sully never could.  8 minutes for The Mouse and he had 4 points and a block.  He is the recipient of a lot of good passes, last night a beautiful bounce pass from Jerebko to the flashing baseline Mickey for the reverse slam, because he puts himself in good position to get the passes where he wants them and where the passers can get them to him.

10.  Statistical roundup.  23 TOs truly suck.  Smart had 3, but he's a point guard and will have the ball in his hands a lot and played 26 minutes.  It's like an infielder in baseball.  Shortstops will commit more errors than an outfielder because they'll touch the ball more.  Hunter had 3 TOs in 17 minutes.  His first TO was ugly.  Still, not treasuring the rock as much as he usually does.  And Sully had 3 TOs in 13 minutes.  We cut the TOs down to a more reasonable 15 and the final score would look more like it should have looked.  They played with energy and we looked a little discombobulated.  46 points in the paint is nice.  11 fast break points is pretty much the minimum of where we need to be as a team due to our run-and-gun uptempo style.  9 steals with Rozier having 4 and nobody else with more than 1.  3 blocks with Mickey getting another one of his spectacular coming out of nowhere blocks, Turner with a solid, excellent defense block on Bogie and Kelly's.  26 assists on 40 fgm is nice.  80 fgas is low.  We need more than that.  We are an uptempo, high volume team and 80 fgas will not win us many games at all.  We shot 51%, but I don't give that much weight since we played against the bottom 2/3 of their roster.  We should be shooting better against them.


I was looking for a serious snap back after our listless loss to the Knicks, and didn't get it.  We did not look smooth last night and they played well.  Thomas Robinson played, what might be, the best game of his career.  Their point guards, Donald Sloan and Ryan Boatright, both played exceptionally well.  Or, at least, they looked good against us and that might cut to the heart of my beef, right?  We played down to our competition.

Next game is Thursday, vs the Knicks.  I got a little disoriented on the Game On thread and was expecting Porzingis to sit this one out.  Will Phil still be playing rope-a-dope and keep him out on Thursday, making me prescient rather than merely confused, or will we finally get to see him play against NBA talent?





bob


.

[rambone]

[rambone]

Full Rozier highlights

[cowens/oldschool]

I'm very concerned with Sully showing less and less. Its like Antoine Walker syndrome all over again, but at least he made 2 all star games and took us to one ECF. Maybe he already hit his ceiling and its all downhill? he should be destroying these 2nd stringers hes going against.

[bobheckler]

I'm very concerned with Sully showing less and less. Its like Antoine Walker syndrome all over again, but at least he made 2 all star games and took us to one ECF. Maybe he already hit his ceiling and its all downhill? he should be destroying these 2nd stringers hes going against.

cow,

I'm quite flabbergasted by it myself. I thought he was our next home-grown all-star. I said, more than once, that the only PF I would trade him for is LaMarcus Aldridge. That puts him into really high, thin air. I thought his training regimen would bring him into camp with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove, and show off. All wrong. His attitude from the beginning has been almost dismissive. His haircut says it's all about me. John Lucas told him to get his ass down in the blocks but he's still taking mid-range jumpers without even trying to put a move on his man to get down lower and 3s. He's not moving in a motion offense. The only thing I've seen, so far, that would attest to a change was a coast-to-coaster. He looked like a fully loaded Charles Barkley on that, but that was one play.

Pisses me off, because he's my type of player; rugged, physical, punishing.


bob


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[cowens/oldschool]

bob I thought by this point he would develop into the equal of Kevin Love, and he used to have great games against Love, he was posting up and out rebounding Draymond Green last year. Right now he can't even be a rebounding beast against Thomas Robinson? did he and John Lucas just play cards and go to strip clubs? I thought this kid was at worst the next Oakley or Paul Silas....hope he turns it on or hes gonna be out of here.

[bobheckler]

bob I thought by this point he would develop into the equal of Kevin Love, and he used to have great games against Love, he was posting up and out rebounding Draymond Green last year. Right now he can't even be a rebounding beast against Thomas Robinson? did he and John Lucas just play cards and go to strip clubs? I thought this kid was at worst the next Oakley or Paul Silas....hope he turns it on or hes gonna be out of here.

cow,

Smile when you talk about going to strip clubs, or you'll have Hooter on your butt.


bob


.

[Matty]

cow,

Smile when you talk about going to strip clubs, or you'll have Hooter on your butt.


bob


.

D@mn straight..

[rambone]

Problem with Sully's body type is even if he hits rock bottom and has an epiphany in future years, it will be a huge struggle just to get back below 300 lbs. He's probably 300 lbs right now to be honest.

The real shame is that we could still very much use and value Sully THIS year, in a deep reserve role against heavy centers, kind of like how Doc uses Big Baby.

But Sully's attitude is crap, and he'd rather be anywhere than here.

[Matty]

I'm bothered by sully too... a buckeye playing for Boston And my kinda player... and from everything I've read it's all been mostly down hill...

I got high expectations for sully.. I hope they do not go unfullfilled

[cowens/oldschool]

Problem with Sully's body type is even if he hits rock bottom and has an epiphany in future years, it will be a huge struggle just to get back below 300 lbs. He's probably 300 lbs right now to be honest.

The real shame is that we could still very much use and value Sully THIS year, in a deep reserve role against heavy centers, kind of like how Doc uses Big Baby.

But Sully's attitude is crap, and he'd rather be anywhere than here.

the real shame is all these years Sully was never able to play his REAL position next to a heavy hitter at the 5, he used to post up and overpower other 4's fairly well.

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