Courtesy of Gsfanatic1 in the forum who was at the game.

The team has a ways to go on both sides of the court.

Offensively guys are looking to make the extra pass which is nice, but there appears to be no rhyme or reason to what they’re doing IMO. But there were instances where they did some nice things. I was hoping this would be a pick and roll team with Curry and Lee but that wasn’t the case at all in this game. In fact, they ran a pick and roll one time all game from what I remember. Not sure I get that at all.

Defensively, guys are talking a lot, during action and when action stops. I think they’re all trying to figure out what’s going on and why Portland was getting so many easy baskets at the rim. Couple that with the fact that Portland was getting to every loose ball and knocking down everything from the outside. Looked bad.

The players:

Ellis: Worked hard on defense. I’ll give him credit there. Didn’t always work out as it seems when he’s being posted our defense sags leading to the pass out and then rotation of the ball to open shooters. But he’s working hard. Disappeared a lot on offense. And when he did get it, he missed a lot of shots, and missed them badly.

Lee: He was guarding Cunningham tonight, not Aldridge. Not a big presence defensively, but he was talking out there…a lot. Nice to see his heads in it at least. Wish he was a shot blocker, but oh well, he kind of did what I suspected. Offensively, he’s incredible IMO. He really has a tremendous right hand and he score a ton with it. He also is clever with the dribble and around the hoop. His jumper was missing a bit. Again, only 1 pick and roll the entire night and he made a great touch pass when he received the ball to Radman in the corner for the three. Which reminds me, he really looks to pass the ball and can do it quite well. Hopefully we’re waiting to unleash the pick and roll/pop in the regular season. Oh, he also hits the glass and is good at tipping the ball to himself when he can’t just secure it.

DWright: I was disappointed to be honest. He was just quite during his minutes and his counterpart, Batum, did everything I was hoping Wright would do. Shoot, pass and defend. Batum was incredible and Wright unnoticeable. He did have a couple clever little passes in traffic, but really not much from him tonight. And i didn’t see any incredible defense from him either. Just looked out of sorts, but this is only one game so no big deal.

Curry: he had good moments and bad. He was frustrated very early as he hit Biedrins in the hands 2 straight times on good passes and he fumbled them away. Then he hit a cutting DWright along the baseline with a sweet pass only to have Dorel fumble it out of bounds and he could have just layed it in. Then in the 2nd quarter he comes in and has an offensive charge in transition which was questionable and then hits Radman in the hands and he drops it as well for the TO. I was 11 rows back and could see his frustration. I think he’s trying to limit his TOs and to get started with a handful that should never have even happened was disappointing to him for sure. With that said, he does look like a pg out there as he kept making good reads and dropping dimes to teammates. Defensively he gave a great effort. His shot was pretty nice. Made some dumb TOs late as well on a couple of lazy passes, and a couple more on trying to create in traffic. Biggest disappointment for me was not seeing him and Lee run pick and rolls/pops. They should be doing it all night every night, but that’s not Smart’s offense right now. Not very smart if you ask me.

Biedrins: Guarded Lamarcus and getting used. Just gets faced up and Lamarcus he scores on a jumper or gets fouled on the arm by AB. AB looks the part and he has a simple job description but he’s missing the key ingredient: toughness. He just doesn’t have it. With that said, his FT looked good in warmups. At least the motion looked so much better, but he rarely even gets to the line and he practically never touches the ball in this offense. And he’s not hitting the boards at all.

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