Kostas is making a lot of rookie mistakes to go along with nice plays. Dude is a rookie, so I expect he will play better as the season goes along. Kostas is definitely a keeper.
He's exactly the kind of guy you wont on a contending team. Doesn't need the ball to be effective, amazing passer, plays stellar defense, keeps the morale high, fires up the crowd.
Sleep now Papanikolaou. For you have a big night ahead. Revenge game for K-Pop tonight vs the Knicks. New York threw him away in a trade, but at what Kostas?
Hopefully he'll rub off on DMo. We need DMo playing hard and defending right now. He's the ONLY big we have other than... Dorsey. LMAO.
Coach needs to bench Kostas for not shooting wide open shots. I love Pap, but he really needs to learn that it is okay to shoot the ball when you are wide open, even if you aren't shooting well.
I came to post that he needs to freaking shoot when given wide open shots- stop passing papa and shoot the freaking ball dammit
Dude is the Greek Jeremy Lin. Streaky shooter who is afraid to take open shots most of the time. Makes flashy but risky passes and turns the ball over way too much compared to his minimal offensive production. Lin 2013-14 per 36 AST 5.2 TOV 3.1 KP per 36 AST 4.1 TOV 3.2 Doesn't deserve playing time, but we don't have any play makers besides Harden. He's 2nd in total, per game and per36 ASTs, but also has had games with 4, 5, 5 and 6 TOVs in his first 14 games. Eight of those 14 games were against the 6 worst defensive teams in the NBA @ this point.
A disastrous night for kostas against KNICKS. Once more failed at his open shots and additionaly had many stupid mistakes. But i have to say Cannan had a big part on those mistakes. Despite its height he has no idea of the PG position. He shoots the ball well but that s all he is good at. Yestarday ,in my opinion, confused Kosta with his erratic moves Finally , Kosta shoot the f..... ball when you are open!!!!!!!!!!! If you do not believe it , you will never make it
TLDR Hello, I’m a greek BB fan and a huge Hakeem fan (he reinvented the C/PF position imo). A few things about Kpap. I’m glad that a lot of you appreciate his effort on the court but I can’t understand the ppl that are bashing him or compare him with Lin or some other players. First of all Kostas is a Rookie and you should judge him as one. It takes some time to adjust to the NBA rules, the number and the intensity of the games. The Greek and Spanish league are mostly a two teams race (easy wins most of the year until the playoff final); the same goes for the euroleague until the stage of 16 starts. He isn’t the best at anything but he is good at everything and participates at every aspect of the game (offence/defense, scoring, assist, rebounds, block, steals etc) and he gives his heart for his team to win. He’ll always fight and he’ll double his effort if he makes a mistake (p.e. against Knicks at the 3dQ he lost the ball but he followed his player and block him; too bad no other was there). A point that a lot of posters make is that he is a streaky shooter which is a ½ truth; at Europe when his 3pt didn’t land, he would drive for a lay-up or a pass but he can’t do that atm, especially the way Rockets are playing. Personally I would like him to shoot more but he doesn’t have the mentality of a Yugoslavian or Lithuanian player that could miss 15 shots and keep shooting, Kpap prefers to create an opportunity for a teammate and to secure a hoop(?) instead of taking the shot (his former teams didn’t expect from him to be a scorer; especially at Olympiakos at almost every game there was a different hero/scorer, whoever was on fire, with the exception of Spanoulis who always takes a lot of shots). Another reason is that he doesn’t care about his stats; either he scores 0pt or 20pt, he simply doesn’t bother him as long as his team wins. But what it matters more is that he feels under tremendous pressure atm, bc he wants to prove that he deserves to be a Rocket/NBA player; if you check his stats, he performs better at the road than at home where he feels the pressure. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kpap are the 1st greek players that have the hard work mentality along with talent to be NBA players (Koufos and Kalathes are USA bb trained players). A poster above made a comparison between Lin and Kpap for the TO; despite the fact that Lin is in his 4th year at NBA and Kostas is a rookie, there is a big difference in their stats; Lin makes usually at least 2 TO each game, compared to Kpap TOs that he made the most of them in 4 out of 14 games; I could argue more and say that in 10 out of 14 NBA games he averaged a 1.1 TO, taking in to account that against Mavs he played 38 mins with 0 TO(high intensity game) along with the games against Miami(37m) and Utah(22m) with 0 and the other 7 games with 2 or less TO. Please give him some slack. On a side note, you have a rookie that in his team is 2nd in assists, 3d on steals, 4th on blocks, 5th on OFR, all this as an SF and you keep complaining about his shooting …. ( I want to contradict you but he should shoot when he is open, even if he miss ). His passes to Black or Dorsey are wasted…. A few thoughts about the Rockets gameplay; sometimes (actually a lot of times, especially when you play against lower ranking teams or have a big point advantage) the players are static, there is no cutting, no movement w/o the ball, no screening; probably I’m biased bc in euroleague there is a lot more strategy but Rockets can’t even PnR w/o DH. PS1 Forgive me for the torment of the English language. PS2 I know that you’ll hate me for that but along with Hakeem (1 of the top 5 NBA players all time) , I like Charles Barkley(I love that guy).
Some good press for Kostas http://www.nba.com/2014/news/featur...kie-ladder-week-5/index.html?ls=iref:nbahpt6f
This is the song I think of when I think of Papa. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GGXzlRoNtHU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
It's great to see that he gets some recognition. But kinda sad that basically his argument why Papanikolaou made the rankings seems to be: If he gets this much playing time for a good team, he can't be that bad, despite the stats (horrible shooting numbers in particular) that I just checked out before writing this column. Papanikolaou has so many obvious strengths that don't show up on a stat sheet, that it should be hard to write something actually positive about his skills. That is, if you have ever watched him play of course.
That comparison is kind of unfair. Lin usually makes 2+ TO at every game he plays. Kostas,as a rookie had 4 bad games as you mention but at the rest 11 games he averages 1 TO w/o making more than 2 at any of them. Actually he has 4 games with 0 TO (especially against Mavs 38 mins, Miami 37 mins), 3 games with 1 TO and 4 with 2 TO. So i would guess that he isnt as bad as you think. A good article about him at bleacher that describes him perfectly imo. A player that isn't great at anything but good at everything .http://http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2275543-nba-rookie-ladder-how-the-top-contenders-stack-up-in-mid-november/page/3
Yep, it's terrible. However, people still close out on him so he does't bog down the offense like other terrible shooters do. Teams don't dare him to shoot yet.
At this point it is a race -- between when Papa will get used to the longer NBA 3 pointer and when scouting reports will catch up to the fact he can't actually shoot. Here's hoping Pumpernickel wins the race, because I am super excited about everything else he does.
