Not to try to dissuade optimism but I don’t think Scheyer was telling him to not even look at the bucket when catching a backdoor cut deep or to let a player like Taine Murray cut off his drive when he had an advantage or to end his dribble too early on almost every drive with advantage after his (good) shot fakes.
There’s schematic stuff like that his role was mostly to hang out catch and shoot - which could change here. But there was still plenty of room for him to make some plays if he was able that wouldn’t have been outside of his role.
I think we know enough to say that he was limited/uncomfortable - the question mark will be how quickly does his comfort in those areas improve. My gut is that it can happen but likely won’t be (dramatic) this year.
Yeah, I thought the clips laid that out fairly well. He either couldn’t get an advantage, or couldn’t do anything with the advantage, or got nervous and took bad shots when he had an advantage (attacking closeouts, I mean).
Now there’s also a small sample size issue, to be fair, and he will improve (fingers crossed).
Anthony Gill could have easily been a stretch 4… Look at what he’s done in the NBA and his USC stats. He was just so good inside, and already surrounded by shooters, it wasn’t asked of him. Same with Mike Scott, but he was automatic with the long 2. As recent as that was, it was a different era, I guess.
All fair. I don’t think we are far apart. It’s basically that … nothing I saw this season at Duke changed the view of Power I had coming out of high school one way or the other. I wasn’t discouraged or encouraged, really.
Yeah, I wouldn’t classify myself as being discouraged by Power as a whole. I am excited about his potential and the base skillsets he brings.
His high school footage is a lot of him taking the ball to the hoop and shooting turn around midrange jumpers as well, though, which is what I think a lot of people became enamored with - envisioning him as a multi-level scorer whose complete offensive game is hard to stop. And I think that if folks are expecting to see that immediately translate once he gets more PT here, I think that’s where they’re going to be disappointed.
FWIW, Traudt situation aside, I don’t think BVP was a bad stretch 4 just looking at the player himself pre-VERY end of the season when his back was jelly and he lost his shot entirely.
We just played him at the 5 an actual insane amount of the time which was terrible for our defense. His back likely wasn’t helped by defending centers all year, either.
Groves’s situation was very similar… much better shooting, worse everywhere else, still weirdly over-utilized at the 5 which crushed our defense - defense still fine when he played at the 4 as long as we had a good defensive 3 in the game.
Ideally you want players who are good at all of it, for sure, but I think Power will be a better defensive player by the end of his career than any of those guys.
Watcher Sam play in the NBA finals as a legit good defender has me thinking about Power’s defensive potential.
Like there were a few times Luka was hunting Hauser on the switch and Hauser locked him up.
My thought of Hauser when he was here was that he was very good defensively against guys who were bigger craftier dudes… like when he shut down Justin Champagnie when they played Pitt and he was a ACCPOTY candidate.
I’m wondering if Power has similar size/lateral ability to Sam and can develop into a similar level defender.
Yeah and as I was watching Sam in that game, I was thinking “here’s a good recruiting video for Bennett ball. You want to be in the regular rotation in the NBA? Learn to play defense so that you don’t have to get yanked off the floor in key moments.” Sam played Kyrie tough as well during the Celt’s big first quarter run.
Totally. Even Evan Nolte. I remember him guarding this big wing scorer on Louisville his fourth year, and shutting him down on the drive a few times. It was pretty stunning to watch lol.
I kept waiting to see him laugh at his joke (probably true but not spoken out loud). It was sort of a "everybody knows that, right? " kind of remark. Funny