I don't know what was wrong with Harden last night. Wish TD3 would've taken some of Harden's minutes, especially that disastrous 2nd half.
I can see the conversation before the game. McHale "James, Dwight is out tonight, so we are going to start a rookie who has more fouls than points or rebounds. We are also going to start another rookie, and a guy whose played 22 games before this year. We'll really need you to play great, because we are playing one of the best teams in the league tonight. Harden "Sounds great. I'll do my best". McHale" You'd better, because if you play bad, I'll bench you in a second."
I guess this makes most of the leagues coaches terrible lol. Most of them would have left Harden in with the exception of probably only Pop.
I still say play him. Play him spot minutes just like Garcia played last night. Daniels is a specialist. You have to see whether he's on or not. In the 1st half, I think he hit a 3. You design a play for him coming off a screen, esp at that point when we got behind by 6 (88-82) and everyone was misfiring.
The principal reason our 3-point shooting as a whole was poor last night, particularly during the second half, is that we had no, and I mean no, post game. Therefore, the GS defense pressed the long ball shot and did not compress much off the pass. Daniels would have made little difference in that regard because he would have been equally covered and is not the threat to drive that Harden, Canaan and others are. Further, his on-the-ball defense remains poor at this stage of his career, a problem that would have been exploited by the best perimeter shooting team in the league. It seems now we have another group of folks who want to create dissent and drama on the board. We went through the so-called YOFs/YOHs, LOF/LOHs, and there continues the McHale-only-Haters. Now we can look forward to the TOFs which likely will create TOHs. Such appears to be the dialectic thinking of many on this board. Good grief. We are 6-1 with our only loss to date coming against an undefeated team when we were missing 3 starters. If one recalls the negativity of this board during the off-season one would have thought we were lottery bound since we lost our high profile FAs, Parsons, Asik and Lin. Perhaps it would be best to lighten up.
Daniels is a 6'4 Steve Novak. He can shoot 3's, that's it. He hasn't really earned a spot over any of our other guards or wings. And, he hasn't been as lights out as we expected yet so I don't get why people expect him to play outside of garbage time. He really needs to hustle more if he intends on sticking in this league
Except that Garcia was actually playing PF when he was in the game last night and that was out of necessity. As people have noted, Harden, Canaan and Terry got all of the backcourt minutes and some of the SF minutes. We were playing 2 SFs at PF for much of the night and getting hammered inside. Replacing Garcia with Daniels would have made things even worse. The problem with Daniels is that while he's a terrific shooter he can't get his own shot, can't drive to the basket, doesn't create for teammates and he's not a good defender. If he's getting open looks from the 3pt line then he can be really good. If teams don't leave him open then he struggles to contribute. The problem is that teams aren't going to leave him open as we saw in game 6 of the Portland series. Last night GS used the same type of defense that we saw the last two years in the playoffs. Play up on the 3 pt shooters and have two big men camp in the paint to prevent drives. Last night it was even worse because Bogut didn't even have to worry about guarding anyone like he would if Howard had played. That's why you didn't see Harden drive much and consequently there were fewer wide open 3 point attempts on kickouts. Our bigs could get uncontested 3's anytime they wanted but papanikolaou couldn't hit and D-Mo only attempted 3 or so. For the rest of the players they were taking contested or semi-contested 3's when they swung the ball on the perimeter. Under those circumstances Daniels is of very little use.
Last time I checked Daniels is shooting 25% from 3 in his limited production. Although he's had limited time, he's already gotten time to produce and he's bricked a lot of 3s this year. You want to play him over Terry who gets steals etc? I dont see Daniels doing anything two way. Daniels is a specialist. He will get time when Dwight comes back I think.
Canaan & Terry play better on both ends of the court than Daniels. Daniels hasn't been hitting his shots this season and his D isn't good enough to keep him on the floor. Could be because he's now on the scouting report after the playoffs?
Daniels is basically like Canaan last year. Canaan was a known scorer but a terrible defender last year. Right now Canaan is bringing it both ends and will see increasing minutes. If we push Daniels too hard before he is ready we could hurt him offensively and that is all he has right now.
Well he has had only 36 minutes over 7 games and majority of them have come during garbage time with the rest of the 3rd string after they've been on the bench all game. That's not going to be very productive for anyone. When looking at his stats during the times hes had regular minutes hes shooting 40%+ from behind the line. He has been consistent when it matters. Now, Terry should be in over Daniels usually because not only does Daniels currently lack defensively and need to improve his ball handling, but Terry also has the experience and is the perfect person from which Daniels can learn from and eventually emulate. That being said when going up against a strong team when missing three starters maybe you don't grind your best player for 43mins while having a undersized line-up and instead use your bench to build experience from a real game against starters while resting your own. I wouldn't have had Harden playing more than 30mins.
The Daniels dude needs time. He is still fairly young. I think Novak came out of the draft and he was already 23 or 24.
When Terry's old legs start to get tired, and he struggles, then Daniels will probably get some burn, but for now, there is just no place for him. DD
[youtube]EqjjPTi-POY[/youtube] [youtube]RENZJLZjnLQ[/youtube] [youtube]STHbocQOUiw[/youtube] I would think some of his play from last year would at least warrant him some spot minutes here and there. With Canaan coming along nicely, he probably won't see the court that much until the second half of the season.
