[Game] Kings v. Wizards - Sunday, Oct. 29 - 3 PT

[Blob]

I do think Willie has progressed as a defender since coming into the league. His awareness on rotations is better and he's stronger on the boards than he used to be -- I remember watching him play an entire game without boxing out once in summer league. He's at least picked up some fundamentals. He's also worked on improving his jumper and his little half hook shot. But Blob made some good points about his role in the offense. He's not a triple threat catching the ball at the top of the key so what good is he doing facilitating from that spot?

What bothers me the most is that every now and then he'll have a max effort game that makes you think he could be legitimate star and then he reverts back into coasting mode for the next 2 weeks. I just don't get the impression that he wants it bad enough. Derrick Williams had the same problem -- he should have been a star if he had any kind of intensity at all but he just didn't care. He was happy collecting a paycheck. I think Willie cares but he just doesn't have the motor of a top defender nor does he appear to take it personally when the other team scores. As an athletic 7 footer Willie will always have a role on a team somewhere and he'll be a pretty good rotation player for a while but he's not going to be all-defense at any point unless he does a complete 180 in attitude and he's not a liability on offense as an energy big but he's also not a huge asset either.

That shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but the lingering impression I still have from that 2015 draft is that there was a ton of high level talent left on the board when we picked and we went with the role-player instead. Myles Turner and Devin Booker are already stars. Stanley Johnson is still a bulldog on defense and he's starting to put it together offensively too. If Detroit keeps playing as well as they have the first couple weeks there's no chance of prying him loose from Stan Van Gundy. Kelly Oubre has forced his way into the starting lineup on a pretty good Washington team. Even Emmanuel Mudiay is starting to show signs of progress after 2 mostly forgettable seasons in Denver. You're not going to hit on every draft pick but we've routinely missed on these kinds of players year after year after year and it's so demoralizing.

Willie's big games, few and far between, often come at expense of disinterested and / or inferior opponent that dares him to score. He's not exactly lighting up Boogie or De'Andre Jordan that hint at elite potential. I recall one his best games last year was against the Nuggets, playing out the string with the worst defense in the league.

I get where you are coming from HB but I don't like the term "motor" or phrase "lacks motor". To me it is too generic to mean anything. You know who has a pretty good "motor", and is going 100 miles hour a lot of the time....Buddy Buckets, er, Non-Buckets. LOL, just came up with a new nickname, pending improved play, to add to my repertoire:

• Z-Bong
• Buddy Non-Buckets

Anyways, Willie does lack motor I guess you could say with a guy like Clint Capella changing ends faster than him. Rarely do you Willie get out in transition for a breakaway jump, but this is more than lack of motor. It reflects anticipation, balance and timing.. One of the best predictors of success or thereof is balance, with reaction time and anticipation closely related. These are subsets of athleticism crucial to hoops to get the half step advantage. The best players have superior balance and reaction time.

If you look at guys like Mason, Boggy and De'Aaron Fox for example, they maintain very good balance in between cutting and changing directions. This is really important! Ben did not have good balance, despite being a plus athlete. I think I described him as being on roller skates at times.

Now take this perspective and apply it to a guy Willie. The guy is a very good athlete with superior length, but he is susceptible to losing his balance when he tries to make quick cuts and move laterally on either end of the floor. This takes him out of the position and out of the play and incapable of finishing plays. This is a finer point than "motor" but crucial to success. Jason Thompson was a guy with a "motor" but terrible balance with his oversized clown feet.

You can improve balance and reaction time to degree with improved strength, plyometrics and training drills but gains are somewhat limited by a high center of gravity and morphology.

There's a couple of guys who come to mind, Gobert, Clint Capella and even this guy on the Raptors Jakob Poetltl ( 9 PPG, 9 RPG, 2 BPG 23 PER) They ALL have superior balance, anticipation and reaction time to Willie though you may be able to objectively rank them equally athletically. Heck. Willie is the better athlete than Poeltl.

But what these guys do that Willie does not is they bait the offense player to a degree, they "lay in the weeds" and trick the driver into thinking the lane is open. They use balance, anticipation and reaction time to get to the shot whereas Willie is a half-step late. The book is not closed on WCS yet, and I do like he is more comfortable with his shot, but there is genuine reason for pessimism.

 

[VF21]

Where were all of you in June of 2015 when I got chewed out here for making exactly that comparison? Cause let me tell you, it was a lonely island to be on before/during/after the draft --- this whole damn message board was convinced that Cauley-Stein was going to be the second coming of Bill Russell or something.

I'll substantiate that claim. You took a lot of flak over those comments.

 

[VF21]

...What bothers me the most is that every now and then he'll have a max effort game that makes you think he could be legitimate star and then he reverts back into coasting mode for the next 2 weeks. I just don't get the impression that he wants it bad enough. Derrick Williams had the same problem -- he should have been a star if he had any kind of intensity at all but he just didn't care. He was happy collecting a paycheck. I think Willie cares but he just doesn't have the motor of a top defender nor does he appear to take it personally when the other team scores. As an athletic 7 footer Willie will always have a role on a team somewhere and he'll be a pretty good rotation player for a while but he's not going to be all-defense at any point unless he does a complete 180 in attitude and he's not a liability on offense as an energy big but he's also not a huge asset either...

I still maintain he bears more than a passing resemblance to Gerald Wallace in some regards.

 

[VF21]

Be funny if Scot Pollard was on your team back in the day

When you can prove your worth to a team the way Scot did, you earn the right to have more eccentric hairdos.

 

[hrdboild]

Willie's big games, few and far between, often come at expense of disinterested and / or inferior opponent that dares him to score. He's not exactly lighting up Boogie or De'Andre Jordan that hint at elite potential. I recall one his best games last year was against the Nuggets, playing out the string with the worst defense in the league.

I get where you are coming from HB but I don't like the term "motor" or phrase "lacks motor". To me it is too generic to mean anything. You know who has a pretty good "motor", and is going 100 miles hour a lot of the time....Buddy Buckets, er, Non-Buckets. LOL, just came up with a new nickname, pending improved play, to add to my repertoire:

• Z-Bong
• Buddy Non-Buckets

Anyways, Willie does lack motor I guess you could say with a guy like Clint Capella changing ends faster than him. Rarely do you Willie get out in transition for a breakaway jump, but this is more than lack of motor. It reflects anticipation, balance and timing.. One of the best predictors of success or thereof is balance, with reaction time and anticipation closely related. These are subsets of athleticism crucial to hoops to get the half step advantage. The best players have superior balance and reaction time.

If you look at guys like Mason, Boggy and De'Aaron Fox for example, they maintain very good balance in between cutting and changing directions. This is really important! Ben did not have good balance, despite being a plus athlete. I think I described him as being on roller skates at times.

Now take this perspective and apply it to a guy Willie. The guy is a very good athlete with superior length, but he is susceptible to losing his balance when he tries to make quick cuts and move laterally on either end of the floor. This takes him out of the position and out of the play and incapable of finishing plays. This is a finer point than "motor" but crucial to success. Jason Thompson was a guy with a "motor" but terrible balance with his oversized clown feet.

You can improve balance and reaction time to degree with improved strength, plyometrics and training drills but gains are somewhat limited by a high center of gravity and morphology.

There's a couple of guys who come to mind, Gobert, Clint Capella and even this guy on the Raptors Jakob Poetltl ( 9 PPG, 9 RPG, 2 BPG 23 PER) They ALL have superior balance, anticipation and reaction time to Willie though you may be able to objectively rank them equally athletically. Heck. Willie is the better athlete than Poeltl.

But what these guys do that Willie does not is they bait the offense player to a degree, they "lay in the weeds" and trick the driver into thinking the lane is open. They use balance, anticipation and reaction time to get to the shot whereas Willie is a half-step late. The book is not closed on WCS yet, and I do like he is more comfortable with his shot, but there is genuine reason for pessimism.

Yeah, I see your point. "Motor" is kindof like "basketball IQ", both are hard to use in discussions because everybody seems to have their own definition for them. I totally agree that effort alone does not make for a good defender. Defensive awareness means you're applying that effort in an effective way. You could actually be a low effort defender and still have an impact if you study opponents and pay attention to positioning on the floor. I don't think you can be elite though if you're coasting regardless of how smart you are or how amazing your instincts on that end so 'motor' is a kindof prerequisite for high level defense. In this case I wasn't trying to say anything more than that. Regardless of what you think about Willie's physical ability and defensive awareness, he just doesn't apply the effort often enough to take advantage of his strengths. And that's what I red-flagged in college. It's fair to talk about potential when you see flashes of greatness in teenagers but after three years in college you're the leader on the team. Especially if you're an NBA prospect. You need to bring it every night at that point or it's fair to question whether you have the right mindset.

I also like the last point you brought up. There's a big difference between a player who finds ways to impose their will on the game and a player who only reacts to what the other players are doing. If you're constantly reacting than you're letting your opponent take the advantage. That's not letting the game come to you, it's handicapping yourself by conceding the mental edge to your opponent. The best defenders come into the game with a plan for how they're going to stop certain guys and then they adapt the plan once they see what is or is not working. Use their aggressiveness against them by baiting them with a driving lane like you described, or allow them the step-back long two that coaches all hate but certain players fall in love with, or anticipate screens and don't give the ball handler the space they want. You can tell when you watch a player enough if the wheels are turning in their head and they're analyzing the weaknesses in the offensive players and forcing them into tough spots. These are qualities you find in every elite defender and while I don't want to say that it "can't be taught" -- it's fair to say that it's a rare talent/skillset that is hard to teach. Some guys just have that edge where they want to make everyone they're playing against miserable. Other guys turn it on and off depending on how pissed off they are but that's not a professional mindset I would want to rely on.

This is also why I have a hard time understanding other fans when they say that defense is boring or that high scoring teams are more fun to watch. 'Defense' itself is such a generic catch-all term. We talk about dunks and crossovers and 'dimes' and so on and then act like all of defense is just one skill. There are so many nuances involved that no two defenders are ever the same. I was amazed at how well Ben Wallace could defend the post for example despite being only 6'9" (and even that listed height is generous) by fighting for position early, denying post entry passes, using his strength to rip at the ball, and an uncanny ability to anticipate and shift his weight where it was most effective. This is in the era of post offense and the guys he was dominating weren't the rail thin 7 footers we have today. I've never seen anyone else defend the post the way he did. Ron Artest in his prime was my favorite though. He was built like a tank and he could still tiptoe and slide across the floor backwards and laterally faster than ballhandlers could change direction. And his hands never stopped moving. It was art. And when you get five players moving and thinking like they share the same brain? That's basketball worth celebrating. It's a shame that the NBA does very little to promote the artistry of elite defense. If they did maybe we'd see more Ben Wallaces and Ron Artests instead of a million kids out practicing their best AI crossover and their Steph Curry longrange bombs.

 

[c-webb1s#1]

Where were all of you in June of 2015 when I got chewed out here for making exactly that comparison? Cause let me tell you, it was a lonely island to be on before/during/after the draft --- this whole damn message board was convinced that Cauley-Stein was going to be the second coming of Bill Russell or something.

It was a lonely island. Kingster was the only other poster here who came to my defense over it all!

People here did indeed think he was going to be some kind of godly defensive player. I mean...he still could, and ya know, I hope he does! I've been rooting for him the day we drafted the guy. But his rebounding was a huge red flag for me. Lots of people here told me it was because the always had Willie running the floor when the defense took a shot :/

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Guys I wouldn't count on seeing Giles at all this year. I'd be willing to bet that once January rolls around, he'll be shut down until next season.

I have long held he should never see anything outside the practice court this season, that's part of why I am high on him for the future. There's no rush to do anything other than let him heal.

 

[New Era]

Don’t forget Willie was a high draft pick in a very weak draft class. If he had been in last years draft I suspect he would have been picked around #15, which is a pick you wouldn’t expect stardom from.

Bottom line is he’s a role player kind of guy who is being forced to play big minutes for us. We really need Giles to pan out.

 

[ESP47]

Don’t forget Willie was a high draft pick in a very weak draft class. If he had been in last years draft I suspect he would have been picked around #15, which is a pick you wouldn’t expect stardom from.

Bottom line is he’s a role player kind of guy who is being forced to play big minutes for us. We really need Giles to pan out.

I feel like Giles would be competing more with Skal than WCS for playing time but it's tough to tell until you get him out there in a game with other NBA players. He just doesn't look like a C to me from what I've seen so far.

 

[Blob]

This is off-topic but it is frustrating when everyone, not everyone but many of us, on this Kings board were surveying the free agent prospects after we lost out on Otto Porter, as to whom the Kings should go after to fill the void at small forward. This was before the Hill / Z-Bo / Carter and before we learned that Boggy has the ability to slide down from SG to SF.

The name that kept coming up in a sparse free agent landscape was Jonathon Simmons, 28, young vet, Spurs pedigree, 6'6 slasher. He ended getting 3 / 18 from the Orlando Magic while we shelled out 2/24 to Z-Bong. Just shocking and egregious! This is not Monday morning quarterback. I wanted this kid. He was the obvious guy to target and overpay. We did have a need a starting or back-up PF but Z-Bo is a center coming off 51% TS with NO defense.

Its only 7 games but Simmons is having a breakout campaign. He is 17 / 3/ 2 with a 20 PER shooting 53% FGs for the 5-2 Magic who went into New Orleans last night and thrashed Boogie and the Pelicans. We could have easily outbid the Magic for Simmons and the whole dynamic of our team changes. We could have given him 3/24 instead of flushing 24 million down the drain to Z-Bo.

There is never a sure thing in free agency. You are always betting probabilities. But the Kings signed Z-Bo effectively hell or high water for the next 24 months. There is NO market for his services. We are stuck. This is wrong strategic approach to take if you believe in probabilities. The right approach is what Darryl Morey does. He views moves subjectively in the context of team fit but also independently in terms of asset acquisition. That is how he was able to get out ahead of the Chris Paul sweepstakes and nab him before free agency began with a collection of decent talent including Patrick Beverly and Sam Dekker.

In a league in which capable wings are a valuable precious commodity, and plodding 36 year old centers (Z-Bong) and 40 year elder statesman (VC) and 31 year old PGs within a saturated market are appropriately discounted, Simmons was an asset worth chasing. It was obvious at the time and this lack of prudence by the Kings FO and prudence, or more accurately basic common sense, by the Magic FO speaks to their current divergent paths.

If things workout for this current regime, Vlade and friends, and maybe they will, it will be because they blundered their way to success (see Boogie trade, see most FA signings), not because they forged the most direct path.

 

[The Effort Police]

I feel like Giles would be competing more with Skal than WCS for playing time but it's tough to tell until you get him out there in a game with other NBA players. He just doesn't look like a C to me from what I've seen so far.

If Skal and Giles become good enough there will be a point where their combined talent will override the fact that they technically play the same position in an NBA where positions matter less and less.

If you believe in their ceiling and are committed to developing them as the Kings seem wont to do, then forcing yourself to pick one because of position instead of making it work with both of them is sheer idiocy. Shifting from PF to C really isn't that egregious and really hasn't been in a while for that matter. Teams do it all the time.

 

[ESP47]

If Skal and Giles become good enough there will be a point where their combined talent will override the fact that they technically play the same position in an NBA where positions matter less and less.

If you believe in their ceiling and are committed to developing them as the Kings seem wont to do, then forcing yourself to pick one because of position instead of making it work with both of them is sheer idiocy. Shifting from PF to C really isn't that egregious and really hasn't been in a while for that matter. Teams do it all the time.

It depends on who you're playing. They would both get murdered by Cousins, Gasol, Griffin, Embiid, Towns etc. Positionless basketball only works if you have the right talent for it. WCS can defend PF and C but Skal can't. We don't know what Giles is going to be like but he doesn't have the size of the guys I mentioned so the odds are low that he's going to be able to defend the real centers of the league that are strong and have an offensive game.

 

[Telemachus]

It depends on who you're playing. They would both get murdered by Cousins, Gasol, Griffin, Embiid, Towns etc. Positionless basketball only works if you have the right talent for it. WCS can defend PF and C but Skal can't. We don't know what Giles is going to be like but he doesn't have the size of the guys I mentioned so the odds are low that he's going to be able to defend the real centers of the league that are strong and have an offensive game.

Giles is 6'11, 230 lbs. with a 7'3 wingspan. Size shouldn't be much of a problem for him.

 

[ESP47]

Giles is 6'11, 230 lbs. with a 7'3 wingspan. Size shouldn't be much of a problem for him.

Skal's stats are nearly identical with a 7'2 wingspan. I don't know what he weighs now but he was 215lbs during the 2016 combine. He's put on muscle so he's probably closer to 225lbs now. I go off of what I see out there and when I watched the practice clips during training camp, Giles was much much closer to Skal's size than he was in comparison to our centers. He just looks much more like a PF to me.