I was actually extremely impressed by an assist he had in the first quarter. Caught the ball in traffic into a double team while rolling, kept the ball up high, and delivered a perfect pass to Troy Brown for a corner 3 all in one motion
Mo had a much better all around game than I expected he was capable of. Very happy to see that I was wrong.
12 & 7 in 22 minutes, 3/4 from 3. I'll take it. My biggest complaint, aside from certain skill limitations, was the misread he made where he turned down a 3 and swung it to Vando in the corner. Know your roster. I want Mo taking that shot instead of Vando 10 out of 10 times.
He is, indeed, a worse defender than Thomas was... which is a feat in itself. Well.. can't be that bad for 10 minutes a game, once AD decides to stop being a beta and sitting winnable games, while playing non-winnable ones... The genius would have been to sit AD both games...
*scratches head* bryant's been a career-long negative on defense, and bamba's been a career-long positive.
I'm not sure our small sample "eye test" is of any relevance here. You have years worth of data out there, so it is interesting to compare.
Neither are defensive stoppers, that's true. Difference is Mo is a legit 7 foot with the longest wingspan in the league -- 7 ft 10 in. Creating a rim deterrent, rim protector, and weakside shot blocker. TB has a much more polished offensive game but has none of those things defensively.
bryant's got better quick finishes in traffic, but bamba's already made more good passes than bryant did in either stint here. and bamba's a better shooter from distance, tbh. but yeah, bryant's slightly better on offense. but substantially worse on defense. i think we upgraded backup c. and we should have--bamba costs 5X as much. is he worth that? probably not quite. but it's not too far off.
I would still like to see Bamba and AD on the court together for a few minutes. It probably won't happen Friday, but eventually KAT will be back, and if we play them in the postseason, we'll have a counter for him and Rudy together. The Clippers can go big too. I'm just intrigued by the idea of some type of a zone scheme, that employs MO, AD and Jarred. Orlando used Bamba more as a stretch PF, than a Center. It opens up some possibilities. Maybe next season, adding Lebron and Max to those 3 for stretches, that would be a huge lineup. What can I say..I like bigs.
i loved when cleveland was using three bigs last year. that was a fun inversion of the modern game that worked pretty well. but it required some specific skill sets that i'm not sure we could put together here. still, though--it proved creativity wasn't dead in the nba.
I would split the baby with Bamba. I think there is a disconnect between what he provides and what he could provide. Just being a gigantic human being with long arms and some mobility makes him have a positive impact on defense. Most defensive stats have consistently shown somewhat mobile big centers almost always have a positive impact on defense. That being said Bamba is not yet a smart defender so the amount of positive impact he could provide is way less or even negates the fact he is big and mobile. These mistakes are pretty noticeable
he'll be impossible to play against starters in the playoffs. but as a regular season minutes-eater, you could do a lot worse. we've proven it many times!
