The Clippers are a really good playoff team with three hall of famers and we went in there and looked good considering how young we are.
Scoot - Looked rough to start but that’s unsurprising. He was being attacked early and probably needs to slow his tempo down more against dudes like PG and Leonard who are constantly looking to swipe steals and disrupt passes.
Ant - A little underwhelming and I wish he played more minutes and took more shots. 0 turnovers were nice. I wish he would imitate Dame a little more and drive to the basket and draw more fouls when his 3 isn’t falling. I still feel like he can be a #1 scoring option but he needs to put on some muscle and drive to the basket more.
Sharpe - 3 ball wasn’t falling but looked dynamic in other ways. Genuinely believe with his athleticism and more minutes/experience he can be a nightly triple-double threat.
Ayton - Box score watchers will laugh at his 4 points but he did some things that impressed me. Getting into foul quickly limited his minutes and I don’t think he ever got into the flow of the game. He did grab rebounds at a rate of 18.8 per 36 mins and also picked up 3 steals. Friday will be a lot more telling of what we have with him because last night’s game wasn’t the best indicator.
Robert Williams III - Loved some sequences he had at the defensive end and was pleasantly surprised by his offense. I think we possibly have a really good center rotation here. I cannot say I was a fan of both Ayton and Time Lord on the floor at the same time, considering neither one of them can stretch the floor with their 3 pt shot and the spacing just looked rough.
Brogdon - I feel like I’m in the minority but I really want to keep him around for the next two seasons or so. His presence on the floor allows us to be so much more flexible with whatever backcourts we run, and he can put up points fast. Hopefully he takes Simons, Sharpe, and Scoot under his wing.
Camara - I’m a big Murray truther but Camara looked better with more time last night. 3 and D wings are so valuable in this league and if he can develop into a good role player I’ll be happy.
Grant / Thybulle / Murray / Rupert - No thoughts really. All either looked pretty meh or didn’t receive enough minutes to judge.
All in all, I still think this can be a play-in team. The western conference is kind of deep though so I don’t think it will be easy or super likely. I also think tanking in a draft this bad is fucking stupid. I do believe being dropped into hostile territory against a playoff team with three hall of fame players (one of which Scoot models a lot of his game off of) was a good thing for this squad to get out of the way early because there’s a lot of things for them to build off of, and because we got the ugly loss out of the way early. Friday should look a lot better.
There are currently more suns fans jerking themselves to aytons bad game than actual blazers fans. Y’all he’s not on your team anymore. Move tf on.
It just sucked we made westbrick look so good. Bro was getting so hype scoring against youngins smh
Gotta give our guys time to see them before we jump to conclusions. That being said lot of upsides vs a decent team. Sharpe, Time Lord, Ant, Brogdon, and Mathreese looking solid. Grant and Ayton will improve too. Rookies gotta accelerate their learning curves. Our match up vs Orlando should be interesting, maybe we’ll have a chance to win too.
I said this in the other thread but 91% of Ayton’s FG were assisted or put backs last year. He’s not going to have the same level of guard play here so we really need to figure out his role offensively and get him the ball in his spots or this trade is not going to work out at all.
We don’t have a Dame or a CP3 on the roster to be able to run straight PnR the entire game and expect ayton to be impactful offensively - we have gotta be better manufacturing touches for him on things like post seals, duck ins, and things like that. Even PnR seals would be useful - these things all help out the guards too because they don’t have to be throwing passes into tight angles while on the move.