Im starting to get a little concerned with a few of our guys here lately. Jaylen is NOT looking like a superstar whatsoever. Careless turnovers, terrible ball handling, lazy defense, and now hes missing bunnies and mid range shots. There was one play last night where he just completely ignored his man in the corner and basically just stood in no mans land and watched as the guy backdoor cut and scored a wide open bucket. He threw an inbounds pass to Tatum who wasnt looking and he threw it way too far ahead of him and it was stolen and put up for an easy layup. And JB has the nerve to say "Jay Teeeee, come on Jay" (you could hear it on the broadcast). Im just not liking his energy lately.
Another is Grant Williams. He's been more trouble than anything lately. He's been getting into it with refs and picking up techs, he's played matador defense, and his only real offensive weapon (his corner 3) is just not dropping like it was the first 20 games. For a guy who bet on himself this offseason and is in a contract year, hes not really improving his status to me. I dont wanna pay this dude 15+ mil a year to stand in a corner and hit the occasional 3.
Lastly we have Derrick White. The 1st 20 games of the year he was so solid. As Gorman said during the games you could basically pencil him in for 13-15 points a night with solid defense and 4-6 assists. Now I have no clue where this guy went he's just fallen off a cliff. Since the Nets game (where our struggles first started showing imo) hes avg 5.6 pts on 24% shooting and 18% from 3 and hes had over 3 assists only 3 times in that span (9 games). Those are some brutal numbers. His defense has also been horrendous too, I saw TJ freaking McConnell torch him for a layup last night. I feel like he was a big part of our success early this year. Coach Joe needs to get him some plays early in games to try and get him going. He should be running the high PnR with Al with Tatum and Brown in the corners and just try to work that more often imo.
And the defense as a whole has been alarming to say the least. These guys have been looking LAZY lately. No ball pressure and we are so late on rotations sometimes. With Rob back these guys should be attacking the ball handler like pitbulls knowing that if they happen to get beat we have TL to clean up the mess. But instead they are playing off and letting ball handlers get to wherever they want and relying on switching too much. So many good defenders on the team and it just feels like theyre not trying as hard. Did the early success this season go to their heads? Are they bored already? I dont know what to make of the past 2 weeks lol
Topic: Pacers (15-16) at Celtics (22-9) Game #32 12/21/22 (Read 12300 times)