Talen Horton-Tucker Discussion: Growing Pains

Actually used his length to his advantage defensively and has strung together a couple games of good, engaged defense. Either coaching staff got through to him or it's post deadline relief.

 

i feel like his defense has been largely good this year, but the advanced stats don't agree. and i'm not ox, so it does make me wonder if i've overestimated his efforts there.

 

To be fair, last night’s game does add some perspective to these numbers.

It was another game where offensively he was basically invisible, but as has been pointed out, he was great defensively. I didn’t have any qualms about him being out there to close the game. Back to back games where the THT/Reaves duo have given us good defensive energy to finish the game.

With that said, he WAS a liability out there offensively in the fourth. There were some plays where he was open and didn’t have the confidence to shoot, other players where he was open but the ball didn’t swing to him because you can tell his teammates didn’t have the confidence in him. He’s got to develop some consistency with his shooting, otherwise him and Russ on the floor together is a recipe for spacing problems.

But best way to develop is trial by fire. Our season has no hope, I’m all on board with consistently letting 2 out of the 3 between Reaves, THT, and SJ close out games. Their inexperience/inconsistency may cost us some games, but long term it will help their development.

 

Agree with last part for sure.

 

THT is at the point of his defensive development where he is putting in the effort and doing some things well but others not so well still. The next step is refining his technique and intelligence and as he does that, the advanced stats will reflect overall improvement. But I think the current eye test shows he is getting better there and can be very good defensively into the future.

 

re-watched the utah game, and three of his four 3pt attempts were contested shotclock bailouts (ellington missed three wide open jumpers). context matters.

his defense was shaky the first few possessions, but then he got after it the rest of the game, enough so that vogel put him on mitchell in some big possessions.

i still think he'll be good, and i'm glad we didn't trade him for terrence ross.

 

me too; we can maybe see how much of the struggles were mental. but even that doesn't solve that he's just an awkward fit with lebron AND russ. we basically don't play any minutes without at least one of them on the floor. and yes, he needs to learn how to be effective in those situations, but again, he's super young and still pretty inexperienced.

 

If westbrook wasn't around (or even if he is lol), I would think about a THT/Reaves starting backcourt. They both have a lot of PG in them and these lineups with both them seem to do real well.

 

Another excellent game. Wasn’t just that he made shots, I was impressed at how confident he looked on most of those releases. There is really nothing “broken” about his jumper that should preclude him from being more efficient, he’s just lacked confidence and rhythm for most of the year and it’s starting to feel like he’s turning the corner.

 

Great second half. Looked like the guy who shot out of a rocket ship to start the season. Hopefully he can ride that confidence. Biggest complaint was the miscommunication with Bron, where they both ran away from the shooter thinking the other was staying with him.

 

was looking pretty good until he twisted his ankle. took one shot after that, i think, so i'm guessing it was bothering him.

 

Having to play with Russ and the injuries have really slowed him down. But you can those flashes still where he could be a really good 2 way player: really switchable and you have to account for him on offense