First game impressions:
I get people hating on D Jackson's offense... His defense however is pretty solid. I can see him filling a Phil Pressey role where he's just out there to setup the half-court offense and play D.
Semi physically looks like a power forward (if you haven't seen him on the court you'll get what this means when you do) he's just built a lot bigger than everyone else around him. Some very nice things from him including one made 3 pointer from WAY back. I hope they don't send him to Maine.
It looks like Nader spent an entire season working on all the wrong things in the D-League. He looked like a potential 3-D NBA wing last year in summer league. Now he's looking for his offense every time he touches the ball but doesn't have the skill to score reliably in isolation against bigger faster more determined athletes... He looks like he's going to go down swinging however... He DOES play the same speed all game and had some solid takes and timely rebounds.
Kadeem Allen looks like an NBA player to me. Actually... he looks like 1 player specifically. Marcus Smart.
Tatum - Wow... patient, deliberate, fearless a lot better on D than advertised. Also, if you haven't heard, he took over the game in the 4th quarter and capped it off by hitting a shot to take the lead over 2 players with 5 seconds left. If he were white I bet he'd have drawn a lot more comparisons to a young Dirk before the draft...
Fultz was absolutely electric. I can't take anything away from him except his atrocious free throw shooting.
Jaylen Brown... Great progress, if his offense doesn't click this year in the NBA it will next year I think. I wouldn't be surprised to see him dominate Summer league. I also wouldn't be surprised to see him plagued by silly young player mistakes (he made a couple over-ambitious drives that turned into turnovers already).
Zizic... Ran out of steam after the first half (about ten minutes of playing) and staggered around the court for the second half. I think people imagining the next Jokic or Nurkic are going to be sorely disappointed. Those hoping for a Zaza Pachulia with less motor might be getting exactly what they're looking for.
Zizic was a man among boys in the 1st 10 minutes, as you said. However, he clearly is slow, deliberate and lacks conditioning. That said, he should be able to make the roster, but certainly won't be a starter on this team as some have projected. Ainge needs to go get a starting center and I sincerely hope he makes a move now.
Call me crazy, but I'm still pretty OK about us going after Nerlens Noel - especially if Hayward goes to Utah / Miami.
By missing out on George and Butler we've been kind of forced to lean more away from the "win now" mentality and more in the direction of the "keep developing/building" mentality. We will still be a very good team and should win a lot of games, but we have no hope of beating Golden State and little hope of beating Cleveland (even if we do add Hayward).
As such, I'm ok with us continuing on as a top 2-4 team in the East, while focusing more of our attention on building our core so we can compete for a title 2-3 years from now.
Noel isn't a guy who likely puts us over the edge right now, but as a 23 year old guy with truly elite physicals (7'0" height, 7'4" wingspan, 9'2" standing reach, extremely athletic) who can already rebound and defend at a very high level, I would be ok with overpaying a little on the hope he can flourish in Boston.
I feel like a youth group of Rozier, Smart, Brown, Tatum, Noel would fit together perfectly with a very nice balance between scoring, rebounding defense and ball handling.