Bazemore is fine sometimes @ 3 but he's gonna get absolutely worked by the bigger 3s, The Clippers, Jimmy Butler, Tatum, people comparing Baze to Kuz or Ariza? Please Kuz has 25-30lbs and 4-5" on him. Ariza 3" and 20lbs. Baze is way too light on his feet for even normal-sized small forwards. He's a wing defender, not gonna take on the big 3s out there. Hell, THT has 40lbs on him. When he's back, I'd much rather see him on 3s than Bazemore.
lebron had some good moments, too. but yeah, it was a team-wide problem. i even caught AD napping a couple times, but he's such a freak that he recovered on one of them.
To me, Bron's help D looked on point. Helps when you have the recovery speed he does AD looked a little gassed at times. Caught him tugging on his shorts, hands on his hips. But it's game one. I don't expect conditioning to be the yet. He looked healthy, even with his 10 falls, which is the important thing this year.
Still like the defense, looked good early against Book. But his offense was so bad it ran him off the court. He wasn't the only one, but we need him more than we need the other available wings because of his defensive ability. But for that to work he can't be a worse option than DJ on offense.
Baze has been giving great efforts on some of the best guards in the league. Sure he couldn’t stop Ja but at least he did his best to make him work. Baze needs to continue to start for us for defensive purposes.
when morant's hitting from outside, there's basically nothing that can be done. dude can get anywhere on the floor, is a crazy finisher (haven't seen a small guy finish like that since iverson) and is also a great passer from all spots on the court. i'm sure baze did as well as anyone could, tbh.
he's not a killer from midrange like iverson, though. he's got tony parker-esque floater ability, though, which is nice. so i have iverson as the better scorer, but i agree that morant has better vision and is more likely to give up the ball early if it benefits his team (underrated skill that guys like harden have never gotten, imo).
Yeah Ja has the feeling of being a purer PG than AI. Inverson was more like an undersized shooting guard. They are both such fun to watch and share that fearless killer mentality. AI was one of my favorite players ever. Just incredible. Ja is starting to become one of mine as well.
His this generation's Isiah. Ja is freakishly quick like Iverson but he's still a PG unlike AI who was more of a SG. You have to back to Isiah to find a guy who was freakishly quick and was still a pure PG. (I guess Chris Paul should be in the conversation as well but guys like Ja and Isiah were just more electric in terms of scoring)
Not only is his shot MIA but his layups, especially in the open court are Fish levels bad. Why doesn't he dunk more? His D hasn't been great either lately. He's trying but the results aren't there at the moment.