I think Thornton will quickly position himself in front of Davidson. He’ll probably end up as our 11th or 12th guy.
I wasn’t impressed. He looked really short and the defense was awful (worse than Reed). On this team of scrubs where Nix is your second best player somebody is going to score. Credit 27 points but nobody else was any good at all. He looked very slow with the dribble. Slow, small, no defense is why he was supposed to go in the 50s. Clutch fans overract to everything. This site should change its name as the Rockets haven’t been clutch since 1995 (30+ years). I like the kid’s personality and HOPE he does well, but at best this guy can be a somewhat adequate Holiday replacement. Keep buying what Stone is selling, that we’re extremely close to a Title….just a Thorton and FVV away from the promiseland.
Hey, I’ll take something to root for in summer league. Glad he put on a show, but you gotta build on it. I think we’re gonna need a steady hand while Smart sits this year and this guy could be a better fit than Holiday.
He is a decent 2nd round pick. Very steady hand and sees the court well. He is too slow to be able to get in the lane when he faces real NBA competition. He does get beat on defense even in summer league, so that could be an issue, but he is a hard worker and strong so that might not be a long-term issue. He is very much in the mold of FVV. I think he will only get junk minutes this year and may spend some time in RGV as will Cluff. He won’t be taking any minutes from Reed, so BTG and DD can just relax with all the hate talk.
lol. Nice. I don’t put a lot of stock in summer league. I’ll wait for the regular season to see whether buyers remorse is appropriate with Acuff. but I’m certainly happy to see Thornton have a good first summer league game. Eager to see what he does this evening.
I watched the game - I thought Thornton looked decent for a 2nd rounder. He kind of looked like a stronger, more physical Aaron Holiday to me. There were several times where he got switched onto a significantly bigger player and he did a great job holding his ground and denying the ball into the post - he's still going to be abused by bigger NBA players but he isn't automatically giving up a bucket if the ball goes down low after a switch. It also meant he was more physical than expected at the rim. He seemed like a smart guy - he generally made good decisions with the ball - made a lot of those quick, not very exciting PG reads to get guys open shots. I definitely saw a little Fred Van Vleet in him - will be good to have them training together. He does that Fred thing where he is probes the defense to see where help comes from when he drives the ball and is deliberately trying to put opposing defenders in decision points he can exploit - in practice it looks like he is deliberately driving right into a help defender until they try to swipe at him and then he is dumping it to that guy's man...and it generated pretty good looks. He hit a few shots that were given to him - some open 3s and a mid range shot but he also had a couple of air balls. I also liked that he does an okay job of putting guys on his hip and using his body to control a defender's position(puts them "in jail" once he gets the position) - he could get better at this, but it's a critical skill for a small PG and something guys like Fred have mastered. In terms of the things I was less excited about - he didn't seem to have a quick "burst" to me. That's not necessarily a bad thing but generally guys of his size tend to be super fast downhill players. He seemed to be a little too physical and had a lot of fouls as a point of attack defender and he wasn't generally as engaged as an off ball team defender. He's definitely out there competing but he is going to have to learn to make players uncomfortable without contact too. All and all it was a strong start - I don't know if he will get a ton of minutes this season necessarily but he solidly looked like an end of bench guy today which is probably a good place to start for his floor. I will say, I thought that Quadir Copeland kid was okay. I don't think he will necessarily make it in the NBA but he had some nice plays. It just seemed a bit like he is a jack of all trades, master of none type of guy. He had a few plays where he appeared to have better handles than you expected for his size, better on the break than you would think, better touch on his passes than you would think but he also played 'quietly' so you wouldn't really notice much for minutes at a time and then you would say - where did this kid come from? ...and can we just create a rule now so we never have to see Daishen Nix in a Rockets uniform again? For a guy who has flirted with the end of NBA benches for like 5/6 years now I expect more polish from him. He had one of the dumbest TOs inbounding the ball that I have every seen just because he was being obviously lazy and tried to inbound the ball while standing half on the court. I saw it happening in slow motion and it was so obvious to me that Nix was avoiding taking even one extra step.
Copeland got some potential. He reminds me of the Wiggins kids that jsut got traded away from OKC. If he was drafted to OKC he would get built up and developed and in 3 years be a regular contributor like Wallace and Williams (the big). Here though with Ime and his staff , I have no faith in second rounders developing into regular rotations players. The days of finding diamond in the roughs like Beverley, House or Hartenstein are over for the short term.
Copeland is going to have to unlearn half of his coaching at NC State. If Ime works his magic, he'll be a decent bench guard.
Agree. I've always thought Daishen Nix was one of the worst Rockets players ever. So, having anyone predict that Nix would be better than Thornton is a joke. Embarrassing.
lol is there a more hated player from the Silas era than Nix. lol I rmemeber all the hype he had before he got called up to the rockets from dominating the gleague. It deflated within a week.
Not sure that game was a good indicator of much. Even for summer league, that was two pretty weak rosters. I don't believe that there was a single first round pick in the game. Am I missing someone? Thorton will have his chance to prove himself against better competition but that Denver squad was nowhere near even a bad NBA team.
