You hit the nail on the head. When teams decide to defend Novak, he is exceedingly easy to guard. IMO, he is more clueless on offense than defense. On defense he knows to try and stay with his man. On offense, he moves slowly, half-heartedly sets picks and doesn't try very hard to elude his defender. I don't care what his shooting percentage is if he can't get off shots when defenses guard him. Novak seems like an intelligent guy but he lacks "court sense". The difference between him and players like Korver and Kapono is those guys know how to get open. They are aware of spots on the floor that might be left open by the defense. Based on where the ball is, they know where they must be in order to receive a pass. Novak doesn't have a clue about either and just roams around without purpose doing mostly nothing. Sorry to be a doubter, I don't see Novak becoming a rotation player unless he gets some pep in his step. He should watch film of Reggie Miller and Rip Hamilton and observe how hard they worked to get open. He just needs to put in about half that effort.
^this man is correct. The more Novak plays the less effective he is. As soon as a team tries to stop him they can pretty much at will. At that point he is a decoy who is a liability on the other end.
Not true, they can run plays for him like the 1st play of the 4th quarter vs GSW. He would also open up Yao Ming/Mcgrady because teams will not double off of this man. Novak is horrible on D right now, but hopefully with more playing time he can approach mediocre D. He's obviously not a starter, but bring him in off the bench, put him on the other team's worst offensive player, and hope he can do well.
He actually rotated over for some decent D in the 4th quarter tonight. However, the team needs to move and set picks to free him and others up...they lose their focus too quickly when pressured. DD
Novak is a situational player. Ideally, he gets matched up on the other team's three-point specialist, then proves his three-point superiority. But...yeah. Penerating+Novak=Basket.
Novak did ok tonight. I think that he'll get better with more playing time. Remember last year when JVG used Novak in preseason. We were blowing out people left and right and Novak was scoring an average of 17 ppg. Then the regular season started and JVG benched our rookie so he could grow some splinters in his butt. Now we are seeing what Novak could have become had JVG not nailed him to the bench.
As of right now, Novak is just a zone buster, a guy you deploy for 4-6 minutes before the other team adjusts to him. But at least he's getting these minutes and slowly developing. You'll probably notice Novak do more and more and become less 1-dimensional as time goes on. Adelman is slowly easing him into the system.
Everybody is talking about Novak's defense. I think this is due to his slow speed , being pf at college. This also cause him unable to run off screen when opp put a player on him. Because the time off screen is very short, if you're slow, it's easier to get caught again. So, I would say Novak need to improve his peed.
We need someone to set the screen for him. If we want to play him, we'd better make play for him. Now he just got the ball with someone around and only several seconds left. What would you expect him to do? But anyway, he will be an important part of this team!
except that Padgett did a decent job missing wide open 3 point shots, whereas so far, Novak has made them.
A couple of times Novak came off picks, got the ball and fired it up right away. Then he quickly reverted back to form and drifted around again. Several times he clearly RAN AWAY from the ball. What's up with that? Aggressive shooters that have a clue find a way to get open and expect the ball. A lot of the time Novak's back was to the ball. I still maintain he is just as clueless on offense as on defense. He doesn't have NBA level instincts on either end of the court. That seems odd for a gym rat who is a coach's son.
He needs to run that Reggie Miller play. Run down one side on the lane go out of bounds and come out on the other side of the lane and let a guard or forward set a pick for you. Catch the ball on the run, line up at the 3 pt line and let er fly.
Mmmmmmm, Not what I saw. I saw a guy spacing the floor on the rotations. That requires that you separate from the ball. And I also saw at least two different sets where he was open and Rafer and Yao weren't looking for him cross court. He did have to force a couple shots at the end of the clock tonight. I don't think that was his fault. After he left the game, Bill and Clyde kept referencing the fact that the Rockets were standing around in the 4th quarter. Defensively, he gave up one long jumper to somebody, just kinda waived at the shooter, and he couldn't get back after he bricked that shot to beat the shot clock. But all in all, I thought it was a positive contribution. I don't want to sound like a big Novak fan. I love his shooting like everybody else but up until the Utah game, I didn't feel he was able to be a net positive on the court. I'm starting to see the possibilities though, if he can maintain over 50% from the 3 point stripe. If he can hit 2 for 4 from 3 for us on a nightly basis, we have the top zone buster in the NBA. I think that's worth something. I think he's got to be able to maintain over 50% out there though. If he slips into the mid 40's, then to me, based on his lack of D and rebounding, he becomes ineffective. However, 50% is a benchmark. When a player can hit a volume of 3 point shots at over a 50% clip, real live game action, that player is a force to be reckoned with. That's why I say, when Novak is out there knocking down like the last couple games, it takes our team to the nth dimension.
