Kostas has performed very poorly in the last 2 games. The time passes and he is not improving his offentive productivity. If he continiues like this he will follow Garcia soon. I am very disapointed by him. I knew that he would need some time, but after 3 months he still misses open threes and lay ups.
The only explanation is he still needs time to have full confidence in his knee. He looks very slow out there. That said, he's still 6'8" with good passing skills. There are many more ahead of him as candidates to be cut from the team--guys like Black or Dorsey or Johnson. The only guy he may get traded for is Goran Dragic but PHX right now is unlikely to do that to strengthen a Western conference rival. Time will tell. But Kostas needs to do extra work to make sure he is defending well. Shooting we can live without for now, but he cannot be a minus on defense.
3 months is not a lot of time for a young euro to get to the NBA. Different culture, different speed of the game, different Level of competition and a lot more games played. How long did it take DMo? I know, different Situation, but still, we have to give Papa a lot more time to find out how good he really is.
wtf man. he just got back from a knee injury that kept him out several weeks. and it usually takes a season for foreign players to get accustomed to the nba.
Yes, two 2 games since returning from an injury. They aren't players in a video game with instant recovery. That said, if the Rockets trade for Dragic he'll be the one dealt ahead of Terry & Brewer. The typical reason of young player, different direction, team is ready to win now.
Tbh, Kpap wasn't exactly setting the world on fire before the knee injury. I liked him at first and thought he had some good intangibles. Overall, he doesn't bring enough to offset his bad shooting. Hopefully with recent trades and possibly more additions to happen in future, Kpap should be at the end of the rotation.
Yup. I haven't really been impressed with the guy. Seems he is not adjusting to the speed. Not to say he can't become something but I just really haven't seen that much to be excited about out of the guy 1/3 through the season.
Come on, rookie missing time because of knee injury. Give him some time. This is a guy who has been tested in high stakes games, I don`t want him to fall on the rotation, I want to keep working him, come playoff time we need these kind of players. One thing it`s true, players in the 2nd unit need to shoot better, it is easier to hide bad shooting if you are surrounded with Harden, Terry, Canaan. But this guy will be running with Dmo, Brewer, Shved and in case it happens likely with JSmith too. Someone will need to make threes in that line ups if we don`t want the paint clogged.
We can't even begin to judge what Big Papa will be in the NBA until next season. He made a big jump coming here and has been pretty successful so far IMO. He has the chance to be a complete NBA player and no matter how talented this team is, it is short on complete players.
In the 9 games before his injury he was averaging 9 Pts and 3 Ast in 28 Minutes. More importantly his FG% was 47%, and his TO rate had been decreasing. In the 3 games before his injury he was averaging 11 and 3, on 62% shooting, and he only had 1 TO in those 3 games. It seemed like he was just getting used to attacking the defense instead of just settling for jumpers or forcing a pass. He was rounding into form, but he has been back to square one since the injury. People want instant gratification, give him some time.
He better start hitting his shots are he is going to be glued to the bench. Creative facilitator, but horrible shooter so far.
Apparently he was shooting field goals at ~ 50% clip in his last three seasons in Europe. So he might still be adjusting to NBA defenses. If not, that's a bummer. He's a great playmaker, but shooting 36% from the field is just not acceptable on a title contender.
