Yeah all of our starters played around 5 minutes more than theirās. We were down by 7 at the end of the first half. They pulled their starters and we kept ours in, but we were still down by like 2-3 points by the time as started pulling the whole starting lineup out at a time. Kon was playing off the bench, Diabate was in until he fouled out later in the game. Thereās no real reason our starters couldnāt get any defense in against OKCās bench.
I get itās preseason and defense is something teams work on last and is more tiring and physical than otherwise. Iām still not convinced on the team performing well enough for the playoffs. It doesnāt help that we put all of our cards in for guards, so if the center gets injured, our rebounding and defensive production plummets.
See that Jazian Gortman of Colombia, SC scored 7 pts for OKC last night. Niners had shown interest in him in the 2022 recruiting class but he ended up going the OTE route and bypassed college hoops altogether.
No real surprises on the final roster. Not sure when Grant Williams will get back. Got to figure out what we are doing with the Ceolin Deion project. After this year we will have paid him $15.3m. He brings incredible energy and hustles his butt off, I get it. If the hornets pick up his option next year they owe another $8.2m. Never understood the pick, to pick that raw of a project # 6 over all seems crazy. And this wasnāt a MJ pick.
Canāt help but to think of our own Rodney White everytime I read/hear no defense is played in the NBA. Heās an often cited āposter boyā for not doing so, which Bleacher Report did in ranking him the 4th worst ever one-and-done draft pick in a 2017 piece.
His defense looked promising at times, but heād fall asleep too often and never showed he cared much for off-ball scenarios.
And this AI response per the search parameter āRodney White didnāt play defenseā:
