Originally Posted by
Billy Dat
GREAT line about fit. Faried is clearly the biggest and best surprise. As others have said, he and Davis have been amazing, which makes the other primary topic so painful...
I enjoyed CDu and Gary's PG debate. I didn't see the first 5 minutes of the game, but my viewing matched more of Gary's impression in that I saw Kyrie on the ball and doing a lot more setting up of others, or at least attempting to, than I had seen in the past. I do agree with the critiques of Kyrie still not being a true set-up PG, but I thought he tried a lot harder tonight to do so, at least in the first half. K praised Rose post-game but I still think he looks lost. Starting him in the second half seemed like they are doing everything they can to activate him but it feels like he's really pressing - which is to be expected but still hard to watch. The true PG vacuum continues, but right now Kyrie is playing a much more prominent role on this team. The headline, though, is that no one is getting the ball to Davis enough...not even close. When Davis gets touches and draws attention, he scores and when he doesn't, Faried cleans up the miss. As Frashilla said on the broadcast, right now, the big are a strength and we need to sharpen the guards.
[Quick aside, the second half was 20 minutes of meaningless garbage time so any comments I make are directed at the first half. I don't really feel good about anything that happened in the second half save for the fact that the effort was fine. The ball movement, shot selection, turnovers, and weak half court defense didn't leave me on a high note.]
Just on feel alone, Harden seems like a solo artist on offense, but I can't refute the assist #s. Curry and Thompson are such gunners, and I feel like Curry is very sloppy with the ball and fouls alot, but K praised both of their defense.
I don't feel like we got better today. We jumped all over a weak team early, which is good, but we played sloppy. I am glad that the weaker teams of the pool are behind us, better competition will make us sharper, kind of like Q4 against Turkey. Still, I love watching these games and he evolution of the team.
Did anyone catch, on the broadcast, that this World Cup is going to start a qualification process like the FIFA World Cup with qualification games during the NBA regular season. They want to get away from the FIFA World Cup on the calendar so the next FIBA World Cup will be in 5 years and will include the revised qualification process. That should force Colangelo and USA Basketball to adjust how they organize everything. Or, maybe they'll build international breaks into the NBA season - but I can't imagine the owners going for that uness they make a big chunk of change. I am really interested in how that will evolve.