Look how fat he was lol. This was only a few years ago. And I think he was even a bit chubbier before this. Baby fat, I guess. But he has come a long way already. I mean, he looked like Two Sandwiches, Thomas Hamilton!
I am guessing they wanted a big wide body to clear a lane for Jalen green. Jalen has exceptional speed, but you need a big body to screen and clear the shotblockers, like what Gortat did for Wall and what Steven Adams did for Westbrook. With Sengun playmaking we don't have that, and that's one of the reasons Green has been stuffed quite a few times and is having some trouble converting.
He is athletic in a way that he has tremendous control over his velocity rather than explosiveness. His hammers over people are more of a product of his mass, timing and velocity. Plus he bends his back along with the wind up so opposing man bumps his chest as try and reaching for the ball. This sh*t looks random but he does it constantly. Ime is asked about how surprising the flamingo shot was and he responded that not at all, and Alpi has been practicing that shot all the time. Which also has the same bending backwards component.
Jokic game is more like a chess game so he sees other players move and he makes his slower move. NJ is surrounded by athletes........initially I thought Fred, Dillon and Bari were all not that great athletes as well.
Parents do tend to overfeed kids because that is when they are growing so I am not holding it against them. They also get a lot of food in camps and with youth national teams.
Silas was terrible and this recent discussion shows how incapable he was of adjusting his "system" to the team's specific talents even after evidence that his default approach was not working. Consider this paragraph from Psychology Today: "A heuristic is a mental shortcut that allows an individual to make a decision, pass judgment, or solve a problem quickly and with minimal mental effort. While heuristics can reduce the burden of decision-making and free up limited cognitive resources, they can also be costly when they lead individuals to miss critical information or act on unjust biases." Indeed. A good leader will acknowledge their biases as best they can (we are all human) and constantly test them against the reality they are experiencing. For example, if you're in charge of a fire and you frame your response based on your past experience and approach it like you did a previous fire, it may end up being OK, but you've also increased the chance of missing something and having it end badly. Not testing yourself leads to both complacency and an over-estimation of self. (Go read Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman.) Silas was not a good leader. Ime is not perfect, but he's at least willing to challenge his own assumptions and adjust as appropriate--this is not the same scheme he ran in Boston.
I think he will be fine. He passed the test with Sabonis and jokic. he doesn’t fulfill the expectations against longer teams where he has to cover up for others by dominating the boards or offering extra rim protection. We need Jabari and green get stronger and box out better. I don’t think Sengun will improve substantially in that area, other than getting stronger to box out and cover more space on the court.
I actually went and re-watched old game footage between Sengun and Embiid and man, it was not a fun watch. Sengun can stay in front of Jokic due to Jokic being slow but the Embiid matchup is a whole different animal. Embiid is so large, strong and athletic and he was impossible for Sengun to guard. Embiid is my only worry for Sengun to be honest, which is good since he is playing in the East.
How many teams have a guy that can hang with Embiid when he's not injured? That's the NBA--there are freaks everywhere. I just feel fortunate that we have a guy who can hang with everyone else. You just have to game plan around Embiid and do your best.
Also, let's see if Embiid can defend Alpi. And unless we end up in the finals, this matchup only happens twice a year, so who cares.
I have a lot more confidence in Udoka being able to game plan players like Embiid and Giannis. You can sometimes live with a guy "getting his" if you take away everything else and make them work for whatever they get.
If our worry now is that a 21-year-old Alperen might struggle against Joel Embiid on defense, that is an unbelievable success. Btw, the best defender I have seen on Embiid is Al Horford, who is the perfect defensive role model for an Alperen/Udoka future. With any luck though, Jabari is going to develop into the guy that we can throw on the freaks. The Chet/Giannis/Wemby/Embiid’s of the world. If Jabari starts packing on some real strength, he could be a 6-11 Shane Battier that could take a huge load off of Alperen.
Crazy that as of right now Sengun is the only bright spot from the entire rebuild... and he wasn't even one of the top picks. Without that trade up, things would be pretty bleak right now.
It certainly isn't (and never was) KPJ. Weird post, considering that our team is winning at the moment, with several young key contributors. Alpi is the franchise player, but he is certainly not the only bright spot.
