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I have previously been pretty hard on Dort. Offensively he was a black hole last year. This year Dort has been playing much better on offense. He has had a couple of poor plays offensively but nothing like last year.
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Chet is a beast. We will win a lot of games if Chet stays healthy and continues on his present trajectory. He is killing it in the blocks category and seems to have ice water in his veins when he shoots the Trey.
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Cason Wallace looks like the real deal so far. What a steal so based on his play so far.
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SGA seems to be picking up where he left off last year.
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Holmgren is filling that void that we were missing last year in the “big” category.
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This is going to be unpopular but Giddey has very sweet passes but he is not currently in the top 6 players on the team. Right now Giddey is the weak link as a starter.
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Joe is in a bit of a shooting slump but has improved as a player overall.
I agree with all that. Doing Simmons’ trade value exercise, I honestly don’t know how many players I would trade Chet for right now. He vastly improves any lineup.
Jdub looks like he’s pressing a bit… maybe feeling the pressure to show out as the all star everyone expects him to be. Feel like he needs to focus less on cooking and finishing and more on table-setting. I’m happy to give him time to figure out how to be a star.
Giddey’s efficiency has always been shaky. After FIBA and preseason, I thought it was interesting that instead of developing his J, he seemed to lean into bullying his man on the block and being even more aggressive attacking the rim. Both good ideas, but it hasn’t paid off very well in the first two games.
I admit I wasn’t super high on Wallace after summer league. Yes, nice D, but didn’t know if I could trust the shot and shaky handle. I thought he’d be a 8m/night type player that I hoped would be a net neutral his rookie year, maybe collect some time in G league. Basically: expected value for a 10th pick. His D is much better out the gate than I expected, he just seems to fit so seamlessly.
Joe’s missing shot is pretty concerning.
Dieng is still promising and still frustrating. He’s much improved from last season, but still needs to be more assertive. There are still a few instances per game where he gets the ball and you can tell he wasn’t ready for it and doesn’t know what to do with it.
Very curious to see how the rotation shakes out when Kenrich and JWill are healthy.
I hypothesize that you will see a lot of Dieng when the game isn’t super close one way or the other. Deing plays a little bit tight when it is a nip and game. When it’s not he loosens up and let’s it rip on offense. He will get better with maturity. He closer now than he was last year.