Anyone watching this? Strange how there's barely any game threads, if at all, on the Dish these few weeks. Miami down 7 away to the Magic in Orlando. I'm pretty confident they can come back.
ETA on PJ Carlisimo being shown the door? The guy just shouldn't be a head coach. 5 points in the 3rd quarter tonight. How is that even possible? In other news, I am happy that Reggie Jackson is finally getting some burn out there. Maynor would be effective on occasion, but more often than not quite bad. Tonight in 13 minutes Reggie posted a 4/4/4 with 1 steal to offset his 1 turnover.
Talk to me. I missed the 2nd half of Rockets/Hawks (but not the 2nd quarter!) and all of the OKC/Suns. RJ ended up 15 mins, 6/4/6 on 3-3 shooting with 1 TO. Stellar boxscore. How well did he actually run the offense? Was the "eye test" as good as the boxscore? 6 assists in 15 mins blows me away. Would he have had 2-3 more if missed shots were made? Was he on the court with KD & Ibaka (and K-Mart) because of WB's eye? Be specific please.The DNP for Maynor is very telling. I feel sorry for him. WB's 9 assists to 1 TO looks good too. I can't remember the last time OKC had only 5 TOs total.
Sadly, the eye test was not as good as the boxscore - but he's running Brook's offense with the 2nd unit, so I am not sure how many pgs are going to look good out there. Yes, about 5 of those minutes were while WB was getting stitches. And it should go without saying that he seemed a lot better with the starters than with the Martin/Thabo/Collison/Thabeet defensive squad, even if he was converted into Fisher out there with them (standing around on O). Two highlights that stand out, he stole the ball from Dragic, and gave the ball to Thabo for the easy dunk on a 2 on 0 (Reggie was in easy layup range, but did the standard pass to the trailer move). One play in quasi-transition, he ended up about half way from the free throw line to the basket, and defense sagged off, and so he just pulled up for the mini jumper and made it. Standard basketball plays. But, plays I would without hesitation say he'd be iffy on last year. He's not the golden ticket - he made a dumb defensive mistake that was somewhat cringe worthy, and a lot of the 2nd unit, it seemed like they were attempting to give Martin the old Harden role of creator with limited success. But, he seems a ton better on defense than Maynor, and for all that 2nd team's worts, they certainly seem decent on the defensive and rebounding side. I didn't watch the last 2 minutes, so no idea where the extra stats came from. Perspective - he went down to D-League about a week or 2 ago and averaged 28 points on 60% shooting with 8 assists and 7 boards. So, he has definitely improved over last year (averaged 37% down there last year.)
I've watched RJ a couple of times in d-league. His stats were good but the "eye test" results didn't impress me. If the 2nd unit offense is going to run well, Maynor will have to fully recover and take control with RJ playing off the ball (or sitting on the bench). K-Mart does better with a PG directing traffic instead of isolating play-after-play and, unfortunately, RJ takes way too much time getting the ball up-court and setting a play in motion.
