Tacko has been so much better...
His positioning is better. His speed better...hands better
Confident on defensive end talking to his mates, using his size well underneath. Alert and accurate on offense.
Granted he needs most of the Celtic's front court in quarantine to get minutes, but he was legit good tonight. Wizards attacked him a few times, but really got nothing.
Huge improvement.
I was pleasantly surprised with him tonight. He can keep up with the game, which is the big thing I was concerned about. It looks like we can use him when necessary... run a zone defense and call a couple of timeouts to help his endurance a bit. He won't hurt us like, for example, Waters did the other night.
I don't think he has a lot of chemistry with our guys on offense. We need to learn when and how to feed him on offense... we kept turning the ball over trying to throw it into him when he wasn't even looking for the ball. And I think that's mostly on him, just learning where his eyes need to be. But that's a thing that improves with time. He's an undrafted player, and if he's even a situational roleplayer, that's a win. And he looks like he might hit that benchmark.
On the Red Claws last year, Water, Edwards, and his other teammates really got him the ball just where he wanted it, and he got a ton of easy dunks.
Usually those passes would be straight at the rim, and he just catches it and throws it down, often using his long arms and the rim to block defensive angles to his dunk. Of course, there is a certain timing to all of that. The Claws players knew when he would break inside to get position, and would be ready to feed it to him before a three-second violation. HIs current teammates don't have that familiarity yet. And the defenses he is facing are better.
But there is potential for him to score a lot more than what we saw tonight.
On defense, he has his limitations as far as switching and mobility on the 3pt line. But he has made great strides in knowing when and where to challenge. Sometimes he intentionally surrenders long 2s or 3s because it simply doesn't make sense to waste energy on challenging them. This is actually OK so long as they are the RIGHT shots. Shots where he has no real chance to contest, or long 2's that aren't very efficient.
The benefit of that is he grabs more rebounds and really dominates the paint defensively. There is a tradeoff there, and he has made huge strides in knowing his limitations and playing the odds.
Topic: Wizards (2-6) at Celtics (6-3) Game #10 1/8/21 (Read 34145 times)