He looks like someone that will be good defensively because he has great upper body strength... I think that'll help him out in the long run.
When all the fans are screaming and everyone is watching, Jermaine Taylor still can't dribble and he can't go left. Look at the NBADraft.Net report and how he was defended during summer league play. NBADrat.Net said (and was proved true in summer league), " His first step is marginal and what compounds that even more is that fact that he is not much of a threat off the dribble … If he is forced to use more that 2 or 3 bounces, he becomes uncomfortable and ineffective, even more so going to his left … Handling the ball in transition or under any sort of pressure is also a major weakness … As a result, he is fairly one dimensional, limiting himself to being merely a spot shooter … He has numerous opportunities to attack closeouts, yet he settles for contested shots … His vision and passing ability are pretty good, but due to the fact that he has a hard time creating space and drawing help, he doesn’t get his teammates many open shots and even more troubling is the fact that he has always averaged more turnovers than assists
To say that he was rated lowly by draft pundits is just restating the obvious. I made this mistake with Brooks and Landry. "Oh this guy is small and has no court vision and can't play point in the NBA." "Oh this guy is undersized and injury prone and should barely have gotten drafted." We know the draft "experts" didn't like Taylor; that's why we were able to pick him in the second round. What we also know though is that Morey selected him and signed him first out of all our picks. I learned pretty quick what side of the fence to get on. Taylor deserves the benefit of the doubt at this point.
Every time people start talking about a player tearing up the summer leagues I think about Dan Langhi. He played very well in 01?? and he didn't pan out at all. I just think it is really hard to compare what guys do in the summer league to the regular season. I hope both of these guys pan out, they certainly both have some strengths.
I believe in Morey too but he WILL make a few mistakes along the way. If I was going to bet I would bet that this may be one of them.
If you want to bet against a Morey move, bet against the one that everybody universally likes. Remember how much more positive the responses were when we drafted Donte Greene last year, and look where he is now.
I thought Greene was going to have problems because of poor ball handling and on defense,but I thought he would be better than what he did with the Kings. Greene would have gotten more chances to shoot in Houston,but he has looked pretty weak so far. DM got lucky with the Artest trade.
Whether He got lucky or not, the point is that Morey makes moves that He believes would make the team stronger. Nobody can be perfect when it comes to making decisions however you could see the trend on what He is getting and how it is panning out for the team.
