Pretty much everyone on our team expected to see PT this year, sans Terry, is at least a slightly above average athlete (I guess Thornton is average or a little below). Dwight Howard: May be getting older and still a tad stiff, but still an elite vertical athlete. Clint Capela: One of the most fluid and explosive young bigs in the game. Terrence Jones: Not an elite athlete but still fairly explosive, and one of the more fluid PFs around. Donatas Motiejunas: Not much of a leaper but he runs the floor like a wing and moves laterally very well for a 7-footer. Montrezl Harrell: Strong and explosive big with a motor to match. Trevor Ariza: A solid athlete who runs the floor well and can matchup with most anyone on D. Corey Brewer: One of the fastest players from end to end in the league. Sam Dekker: Solid athlete for his size. James Harden: Underrated athlete because he knows how to conserve his energy. Very explosive in bursts. KJ McDaniels: One of the most explosive wings in the league. Ty Lawson: One of the fastest, if not the fastest PGs in the game. Patrick Beverley: Solid athlete, who like Ariza, can matchup with guys bigger or smaller. The other contenders are not as athletic across the board: Golden State: They have some athletes, but guys like Klay, Green and Bogut are not great in that department. LA Clippers: Obviously Blake/DeAndre are incredibly explosive, but many of the other rotation players are not. Oklahoma City: Very athletic squad, but some of their potential rotation guys are not great athletes (Kanter, Morrow, Augustin, McGary etc) Cleveland: Another athletic squad, but Love, Varajao, MoWill and Dellevadova are nothing special athletically. San Antonio: They're obviously not built on athleticism like most of the other top teams. Memphis, Chicago etc: Not really built on athleticism either, aside from a few guys. Maybe some young team like Orlando (Oladipo, Gordon, Hezonja, Harris, Payton etc) could match us athletically, but they aren't close to being ready to fully harnessing it. So how do we best exploit this advantage? Is it really as much of an advantage as some make it out to be? We were #2 in fast break points last year after G-State. But their superior ball-security, spacing/shooting and defense overrode our athleticism advantage.
We still have Dwight, Capela, Harrell, Jones and D-Mo up front to match. And their perimeter is anything but explosive - Paul (he is underrated in this regard, but as he gets up in age, he's going to be conserving his burst even more), Redick, Pierce, Stephenson, Crawford, Prigioni, bad Rivers etc...
Same can be said of any other team considering your wide definition for "athletic" If guys like Dekker, Harden and DMo are considered athletic, you can make a case for several players on all teams
Klay, Green and Bogut not that great athletes? All I know is Green shuts all of our bigs down, Bogut dunks all over Howard and Klay is definitely an athlete.
No. All NBA players are athletes lol. Gonna go with clippers, Griffin, Jordan, Smith, Paul, Stephenson, Johnson are all elite or near elite athletes.
depends on your definition of athletic. theres plenty of teams with a list of athletic players on their roster. that's part of the reason why they're in the league in the first place. now if youre talking about being athletic explosive, thats where you can narrow it down cause theres not many explosive players that are your core players either.
Josh Smith isnt half the athlete he was in Atlanta. I'm not even sure he qualifies as "athletic" for an NBA big at this point in his career.
Lob City LA has solid athleticism in its rotation. Josh Smith can still rise for a strong dunk, he's not in the Vince Carter stage yet. OKC might have best good athletic trio in Durant, Westbrook & Ibaka. Thatd be your NBA Jam team. Orlando has young athletic players. (Toronto was good last year with Derozan, Ross, Amir Johnson, James Johnson) Rockets do have a case as all around athletic team. Howard, KJ, Capela, Harrell, Jones can play over the rim. Lawson, Brewer, Ariza are fast and agile. D-Mo is very fast for a 7 footer. Don't sleep on Dekker's athleticsm. But like FTW mentioned, including guys like D-Mo invites other possibilities like Heat's Hassan Whiteside, D Wade, Gerald Green, Bosh, Birdman, etc.
I don't care that much for super athleticism personally so I don't think that it's the most important factor anyway but the Wolves and the Bucks and the Magic are more athletic than the Rockets. Probably Portland too -haven't watched them yet in preseason. Ofc that's normal because most of their players are also bellow 25.
josh smith was probably the reason we made it far last season. We need tjones to step up and play like josh. smith could guard Blake, he could guard dirk. We either need tjones to step up defensively or find another pf like that
