We had the players, they had the team!
1. individually we were, clearly, the most talented team in the Final – if not for our opinion only, we had 4 NBA players back there [Alex Len, TJ Warren, Archie Goodwin, Josh Harrellson] – the only true problem was the total lack of team play at the halfcourt. We are designed to run and/or to look for fast break points but the Spurs deffended well enough the transition and gave us space to launch jumpers instead of going to the rim. Like Isiah, rightfully said, the Spurs run almost the same play each and every time but it worked. Our halfcourt defense was poor the whole tournament and tonight was no different.
2. what frightened me was how easy they controled our best players [TJ Warren, Archie Goodwin]. We can throw the "tired card" but if we look to the game closely enough, we see that they just tightened the interior/paint and just like that, the drives of both players are not going in, they start dribbling too much to get space – and boy, those handles were not looking good tonight [7 TO on both of them] – and it was down to missed jumpers. They are completely different players but both of them only know how to produce points in the paint and we just saw why thats a problem.
3. i love Alex Len but he disapointed me in the Summer League. Yeah, he looks like a good deffensive center. Yeah, he already knows how to use his body down low in the battle for rebounds. Yeah, he has a place in the NBA, specially nowadays where people just ask for his centers to alter/block shots. We know how valuable he can be. Last year we were a tottaly different team with him or without him. But man, this is the Summer League. Every time he received the ball down low, they [Spurs] fouled him or throwed some double team. You can be something special if you believe/work on your offensive game. Thats a part of his game that i wanted to see in this Summer League, so im disapoointed we just saw the same old Len. He’s good, but he can be great.
4. sad to lose the game in the effort point of view when we had a pittbul down there [Mike James], playing his ass off. 3 players in our roster had +30 points in this Summer League – thats something worth considering! – and i think we won 4 consecutive games (?). It was another fun Summer League, we went to the Finals – again! – and they had a taste of very differente styles of players, especially Devin Booker that looked rock solid on defense today, even with all those fouls. He covered well enough his man and was actually one of the few that looked reasonable in rotations. We missed the "gold" but we saw improvements here and there and our yong core just saw their values rised. Good for them. For the Suns. And for us!
5. Now, lets eat some Nachos in front of the coach/players when your rookie [Devin Booker] publicly said the most difficult part of beeing a pro is .. the diet! Gotta love PJ!
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