Give it up for the bench

[cman88]

I will say, bench was a huge question mark coming into the season.

but hauser/pritchard have stepped up to make this a solid 8 man rotation. Pritchard finally finding his shot makes him much more deadly off the bench having 2 sharp shooters and horford such a steady hand.

hauser been giving us a solid at least 10 ppg on smooth 3's every game. and even when his shot isn't falling Pritchard has been solid defender and moving the ball.

and also have to give it up for the end of the bench guys. Stevens, banton, Brisett, kornet none have gotten much playing time. but when asked to contribute have stepped up to be serviceable.

[Surferdad]

All true, but just like the starters, the bench looks a lot better when the shots are falling, which has been the case lately. Recency bias.

I was pleased to see Stevens get some burn. He did good things out there and can body up to bigs. I like his energy and toughness. Great pass to Hauser for a 3.

Queta looks good too. He brings toughness and agility that Kornet does not have.

[ozgod]

This bench is never going to look as good box-score wise as other benches because of the quality of our top six. A good measure of them will be how good the lineups they are in are. It's going to be rare to have all-bench lineups where you have a gun guy scoring 15+ppg. Every lineup is going to have at least 2 of the Jays, KP, Jrue, DW or Al and they will exert the gravity. What the bench needs to do is defend, hustle, show effort, and be ready to score when put in positions to do so. Plus they are different enough from each other that they provide different looks both offensively and defensively for the opposition. In an ideal world the end of bench guys would shoot better, but I'm not really concerned about any of them at this point.

[cman88]

All true, but just like the starters, the bench looks a lot better when the shots are falling, which has been the case lately. Recency bias.

I was pleased to see Stevens get some burn. He did good things out there and can body up to bigs. I like his energy and toughness. Great pass to Hauser for a 3.

Queta looks good too. He brings toughness and agility that Kornet does not have.

agree, but I thought Pritchard looked pretty good even when his shot wasnt falling. rebounding, playing tough defense, making the right pass.