ball-handling and finishing ability

[winsomme]

I'm curious what others are seeing about these two skills especially with our guards.

I'm also looking at this with observation that this is a guard heavy draft and that "we don't need anymore guards."

When I look at Avery, Marcus, and Terry, I see players with the same deficiencies and they keep hurting us at key points of these games. None of these three has good touch finishing at the rim. They will get to the rim on a well designed play and just miss - weird spin, too hard, off balance. They also have very erratic ball-handling. The ball just does not sit easily in their hands and when they make aggressive moves, it looks clumsy and uncontrolled.

I think these are underrated skills and when three of your four rotational guards aren't good at them, it has an impact. As a result, I still look at guard as a need on this team because I want my guards to be able to penetrate off the dribble and finish strong at the rim. And right now the only one that can do that is IT.

The counter to this for Avery, Marcus, and Terry is that they all play extremely hard and play above average defense. There's definitely a trade off.

[LGC88]

Sounds like you are describing Paul, Parker, Irving, Wall, IT type of players' skill.
If our guards got those skills, they will be stars or borderline ones.
It is not an underestimated skill, it's a rare one that makes PG allstars.

[jambr380]

Hard to disagree with this on Smart and sometimes Bradley (remember he is often catching the ball on a hard cut and having to get it up immediately). However, for as fast and 'out of control' as he plays, I actually think Rozier is quite good at the rim - Rondoesque, at times, even. I am not saying there aren't other deficiencies in his game (ie, alley-oop passes), but I absolutely love it when he throws a hesitation, explodes through the lane, and lays the ball in softly, yet with purpose.

[Celtics4ever]

I think our guards is a nice group with varying skills.   We have guys who can shoot, guys who can defend and guys who can pass.   Some are deficient in an area.   Usually it is our bigs who have been lacking but not last night for sure.

Right now, I think we need a solid bench scorer and a PF because Amir does not do what he did last night every night.