By my count, there are eight players coming to the NBA after spending at least a year playing overseas. Throughout the week we are going to look at each player’s individual game one by one, to see what we can expect from them this year in the NBA.
Kevin Seraphin was drafted by the Chicago Bulls with the 17th pick in the 2010 NBA Draft. His rights were immediately traded to the Washington Wizards. The 20 year old Seraphin is making the jump to the NBA this year as the Wizards and his French League team Cholet came to a buyout agreement.
This is a surprising move in my opinion, because I was expecting to see the somewhat raw Seraphin get another year of seasoning with Cholet Basket (Seraphin was starting to see more minutes with the French League winners, even starting a few games towards the end of the season). To me, the reason seems to be that the Wizards want to be the ones developing Seraphin, rather than hoping that he gets minutes with Cholet.
Strengths
Athleticism
Kevin Seraphin is a very athletic big man for his size, and he uses that athleticism pretty well. The two instances where you really see Seraphin’s athleticism stand out is when he runs the floor and when he rebounds. When rebounding, Seraphin covers a lot of ground from when the shot goes up to when the rebound is available. He is usually out of position when the shot goes up, but his athletic ability allows him to “go get it.”
After a ton of blowouts during the early portion of the Las Vegas Summer League, we are now getting our close games. In addition to the Wizards-Hornets game and the Cavs-Bulls game last night, we saw an overtime between the Wizards and the Knicks today. With just under ten seconds left, Tony Douglas was at the free throw line looking to expand the Knicks’ one point lead. Douglas ended up missed both of him, but he was still able to come away the hero:
Instead of pouting after the miss, Tony Douglas got back on defense and got himself in position to take the offensive foul. Was it a bit of a flop here? Sure, but credit to Douglas for reading Cartier Martin’s move and jumping into position to take the charge. Also, once Martin’s arm swings out when the contact is made, it’s foul no matter what.
Now, Sam Cassell was livid after the play, and it wasn’t with the officiating. According to the announcers calling the game, Cassell was giving it to Lester Hudson for not getting the ball and bringing it up. I get the logic, Martin isn’t a point guard while Hudson is. Hudson probably would have been more comfortable bringing the ball up late (Martin looked a little tentative then picked up the offensive foul). However, the way the situation transpired, Martin was the only option for the Wizards.
Sure, Hudson could have came down and me the ball, but he still would have been double teamed. Good work by the Knicks here, they identified the primary ball handler and made sure they didn’t let him catch the basketball. This is what allowed for Tony Douglas to take the offensive foul.
When the regular season starts, not many people are going to remember the buzzer beater that took place during the Wizards’ game against the Hornets, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it. Lester Hudson’s game winning shot showed how important a second option can be when running set plays late in games. Off the top of my head, I can think of a number of sideline out of bounds plays that fail because their is only one option for the man inbounding the ball, and the result is usually a turnover or a bad shot. Here, with the first option taken away, the Wizards’ simply moved on to option #2 and ended up winning the game:
This play is initially run to either get Cartier Martin an open shot on the curl off of a Javale McGee brush screen (he doesn’t really get set for the screen, they just rub off of each other) or to hit McGee on a backdoor lob.
John Wall made his debut last night at the Las Vegas Summer League in front of a sold out crowd at the gym on UNLV’s campus. Despite the nerves (and there seemed to be a good amount of them), John Wall had a fairly impressive start to his professional career. Wall put up 24 points and 8 assists, but more importantly looked really good when moving around the court for the first time with other professionals. To breakdown Wall’s debut, I am going to look at both the good and the bad of his performance.
The Good
The Jump Shot
Wall was impressive enough to draw comparisons from Derrick Rose from many people on hand. I held off from making the comparison in college, but it was obvious watching the game last night that John Wall does have a lot of Derrick Rose in him, from the physical skills to the style of play. However, there is one big difference between the two of them, John Wall has a pro-ready mid-range jump shot that he looks comfortable taking off the dribble.
Breaking Down John Wall’s Debut
Wall’s form when taking his jumper off the dribble is real solid. He always seems to be taking off using the right amount of steps with a solid load up dribble (A dribble that takes him from attacking the rim to rising up for a jumper), and he also seems comfortable doing when attacking either side. The only thing that bugs me with his form is that he has a tendency to kick is leg too far out from time to time (as in the top clip). When you do that, you don’t really land on balance and it tends to have you miss your shot. I’d like to see him do what he does in the bottom clip (landing on both feet) on every single jump shot attempt.
When the Wizards won the first overall pick for the draft that is taking place this Thursday, they were overrun with John Wall mania (as they should be). Now, John Wall is going to be the number one pick on Thursday, no doubt about it (they didn’t even work out Evan Turner) so the question becomes can the two play together?
Before we get down to looking at some game tape, let’s look at some numbers. 82Games.com is a fantastic statistical site, and maybe my favorite aspect of the site is they give you the top 20 most used lineups for whatever team you want. Looking at the lineups for the Wizards, one lineup in particular caught my eye. That one was the most successful lineup (in terms of +/-) with Arenas in it:
With the Rockets-Wizards game tied at 92 with 33 seconds left, the Rockets had a tough decision to make. With 22 seconds on the shot clock, they had to figure out if they wanted to go quick to preserve the two-for-one opportunity, ensuring that they will get the ball back, or if they just wanted to take their time, get the best look possible, and give the Wizards the final shot. The Rockets decided to go quick, and they run a quick hitter coming out of the timeout:
Aaron Brooks comes up the middle of the court, making himself available to the basketball. After Kyle Lowry inbounds the ball, he is going to cut along the baseline, running off of a Luis Scola screen.
After the Wizards hit a three pointer to send the game into overtime, I thought that the Wizards were going to be able to use that momentum to steal the game from the Bobcats. However, the exact opposite happened as the Bobcats outscored the Wizards 13-4 in the final 5 minute period.
The key seemed to be the Bobcats willingness to attack the basket. The Bobcats seemed determined to get themselves inside the paint every possession of overtime. Each time, it resulted in one of two things; a trip to the foul line or an easy basket:
Possession 1 – Gerald Wallace Gets To The Line Using A Screen
On this play, the Bobcats set up what looks to be an ISO set for Gerald Wallace. At the last moment, Tyson Chandler comes up and sets a screen for Wallace. Wallace uses the screen and gets all the way to the rim, where he is fouled.
