[Craig Ackerman] coaches considering Troy Daniels for spot in playoff rotation

There is no difference between wide open 3's in RGV and wide open 3's on the Rockets. Now....contested 3's. We don't want Daniels shooting contested 3's. Daniels isn't going to shoot contested 3's. But what Daniels does is take the open 3 immediately without hesitation, no matter what the shot clock says or who is under the basket...because it is an extremely efficient shot for him to take.

Now...if he gets a reputation (which will come soon) he won't be wide open in the playoffs. What happens then? Ok....dude is standing 28 feet away from the basket with a defender glued to him. That leaves Harden and Howard and 2 other guys playing 4 on 4 with a lot of space to operate.

OFFENSIVELY there is no question in my mind that Daniels will make our offense sing. Doesn't matter whether he is open or not. Because of his quick and accurate trigger he will have to be accounted for. You put Harden/Dwight on the floor with Daniels (best shooter on the team) and two other very good shooters (Parsons, Garcia, Bev, Lin, Covington) and that offensive unit will kill it.

Defensively is where the question marks would lie. Daniels is essentially a 2 only defensively. There's no way he can check NBA point guards and he is simply too small to check 3's. So, a lineup with Daniels in it has to have Harden defensively at the 3 or 4. I'm ok with Harden at the 4. He's the second best defender at the 4 on this team (behind Asik). So that leaves you needing essentially a point guard defender (Bev) and somebody at the 3 that can defend and shoot (Parsons or Garcia).

Putting that all together...Bev/Daniels/Parsons or Garcia/Dwight or Asik/Harden. That's the lineup formula that seems to make a lot of sense with Daniels.


The other possibility here (remember we're talking about increasing variance), is to insert both bigs (twin towers) in the lineup for defensive purposes along with Bev out top and either Harden/Garcia/Parsons at the 3. You then run off the defense with Daniels running down early spotting up at the 3-point line and simply firing before anybody gets back down. Some sort of line with 3 small quick guys that can shoot the basketball around Dwight and Asik. Where we basically overplay on the perimeter, forcing teams uptempo and into the heart of our D with Asik scrambling the floor and Dwight laying in the weeds around the rim...where we get the turnover or the rebound and throw it up the floor and let Daniels fling it or Bev/Harden finish it.

 

Who was better since Novak?

 

Honestly I'd be pretty surprised if we started using Daniels at this point in the season. Maybe in situations where we need a 3, or if Garcia is really struggling Daniels will take his minutes in the second half. But Daniels is going to be a defensive liability simply due to his inexperience, and I don't think we can trust having him on the floor for too much time before Portland starts exposing him.

That being said, our crop of rookies this year looks fantastic from a potential standpoint, which is amazing considering the lack of picks we had. I think Canaan, Daniels and Covington all have very real chances at taking Lin, Garcia, and Hamilton/Casspi's spots in the rotation next year, respectively.

 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EqjjPTi-POY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Daniels is different from Novak and his shooting will translate imo. That release is just too good and he spaces himself well on contested shots. He should be able to get them at will. Even when he misses...they look like good misses (if you believe in those). Novak was also never an in game shooter. The good shoot lights out but out of the NBA game but never really followed it up as good in the pros.

 

Daniels has def. more upside than Novak because he has an athletic build; he shows promise with his mid-range game and has some layups.

I also think he has good court vision; he passed up the open shot to pass to DMo

hope this dude can bulk up and contribute and become a solid 6th man when jeremy is gone

 

Either Luther Head or Brooks. Head was playing with Novak though.

 

This video shows me 3 distinct things:

1. What happens when you make defenses really scramble out on shooters.

2. The one clip where Daniels catches at the arc and feeds it to DMo in the corner for the 3 and the other clip where he feeds the ball to Hamilton. The kid knows how to move the basketball. He sees the floor, takes the wide-open 3-ball and if he's going to be covered he very quickly makes a decision to move the basketball.

3. Daniels has the ability to upfake, go under the D, and still hit the shot.




This guy is a loaded NBA gun. It's just like having Kyle Korver out there. Only Daniels has an even quicker release.

 

LOL. Come on guys. Morey said other than Novak he hasn't seen a better shooter come through here than Daniels.

 

I had thought Brooks, but would put Daniels as better. I think he is probably referring to Head who did play one more season later than Novak. I forgot about him.

 

Next question. Will Troy Daniels cut in to Jeremy Lin's minutes? I think so.

 

I did not hear the quote and was responding to the post. That would make sense.

 

I still have nightmares of Luther Head playing against those bad Jazz teams in the playoffs.

 

He seemed to make good rotations and generally new what to do but he has a tendency to go under screens (bad) and he gets over powered. He could not prevent Tyreke from getting to the rim at will.

 

he'd be deadly once he develops more confidence and feel for NBA pace. keep playing him

 

I don't think him not being able to handle Evans means much. When Evans has the jumper working he's a handful for any NBA defender working off picks. Harden sure couldn't have done any better and I seriously doubt if Bev or Parsons could have contained him last night....because....we had DMo or Jones sitting in the middle. If you don't have a defensive big on the floor that can work defensively in the pick-and-roll you can pretty much bank on the fact that even Lebron James and Paul George are going to look crappy defensively against pick-and-roll action.

We were fine early defensively when Daniels was in there with Dwight. And we were even up although Daniels was missing a lot of shots early.

 

No arguing that Tyreke is a legit NBA scoring weopon. I was just pointing out Daniels weekness on defense. I like the guy and hope he is in the rotation because I think his 3pt shooting could really be special for us.

 

Yeah, I just don't know how bad (or good) he actually is defensively. I know he's not a defensive star obviously. But I'm not convinced that he's actually that bad defensively on shooting guards. And frankly I can't see him being worse defensively on two guards than Harden is.

 

I think Dwight just wants to win. He'll accept less paint touches if we're winning.

 

Does Powell have the chemistry with the core yet? He seemed out of sync with the rest of the team last night.