Comments on: Phoenix 109, Clippers 103

By: Pboy

Pboy — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:49:25 +0000

Al could be a good player. Remember this is his second year in the NBA. He could work on does three problems mention before. Now if he does not improve drop him.

By: bootstrenf

bootstrenf — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:04:51 +0000

25 is not exactly young in the nba…..

and here are the problems you list:

1.) no 3pt shot
2.) bad court vision/passing
3.) bad defense

sounds exactly like corey maggette to me…..and did corey ever improve in any of those areas???

i know that al isn’t corey, but they seem to possess strikingly similar characteristics….

if corey never changed, what makes you think al will??? he’ll be turning 26 this year…..so much for your “give the young guy a break” theory…..

By: myspace.com/axockinrecords

myspace.com/axockinrecords — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:24:04 +0000

Al Thornton has the Second Highest PPG in the whole sophomore class right now. What else do some people want. The guy is young. He needs to improve in his head before he could on the court. He is either going to stay at 15-18ppg type of guy with little improvement or he is going to develop a consistent 3 point shot and be a 20 plus type of player. There are 3 things that are going to keep him away from elite status. I mentioned the first and that is he is not a threat beyond the arch. The second is he is not aware of any team mate at any time when he is holding the ball. The third is his defense. He doesn’t rotate as quick as he should and most of the time chooses bad decisions. Two of these things can be achieved by experience and proper basketball thought processing. Shooting is not a thought process, it’s a repetitive learning process that does improve with proper technique and execution. On the Kaman point, there was really very little hope for this team before we had zach. We couldn’t score the ball ever. With zach and kaman we are a serious threat. Lets at least witness 20 games before we are sending players packing, please.

By: bootstrenf

bootstrenf — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:35:26 +0000

thornton might have had a good shooting night, but he gave the game away during crunch time…..

everyone remembers the charge, but how about the shot clocl violation he had???

couldn’t have been a more crucial moment, and all he does is try to do some fancy dribbling…..only to have the shot clock run down for the turnover….

al thornton is a bonafide idiot…..definitely corey maggette part 2 in terms of basketball intelligence…..at least corey got to the line at a high rate…..

the only thing thornton does is shoot jumpers and turn the ball over during the most crucial moments of a game…..

whata fucking bonehead…..idiot has rocks for brains…

By: Benjamin Sandoval

Benjamin Sandoval — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:35:07 +0000

Clipper fans are looking more and more like they just dont care about this season anymore
REALLY REALLY EARLY

i think the Clippers organization should do something are they are going to lose so much this early in the season (in the form of attendance …)

By: Petey

Petey — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:03:24 +0000

“I don’t have any answers. Maybe that high S/R should be run with EJ and Camby. Maybe you feed Thornton in the post and lure the Phoenix bigs out of the lane [though with Brian Skinner, there's little incentive for them to follow and, besides, Thornton probably can't execute the sort of pass necessary to exploit a rotation].”

Via Musselman’s interesting blog, an anonymous coach notes:

One of the first clinics I ever went to Hubie Brown talked about having to admit that he “couldn’t win with just anybody.” He had just come of a season with the Knicks where his star Bernard King was hurt and so were other key players. I tell young coaches the number one key to coaching is to have better players. I like the saying, “It ain’t the x’s and the o’s, it’s the Jimmys and the Joes.”

You folks could use use B-Diddy and Z-Bo on the floor during crunchtime.

—–

Even before crunchtime, I caught some of the game, and the thing that amused me is that you were getting a bunch of 20 ft jumpers from Mardy Collins, Brian Skinner, and Marcus Camby. And they weren’t outside of the offense! It’s hard to beat halfway decent teams with the roster you’ve got in uniform.

—–

Everyone in the league seems to have long figured out that the key to defending Thornton is to deny the drive.

And on the jumpers, Thornton seems to have Carmelo Anthony disease, where a wing player is so in love with their ability to get a jumper off against any defender that they forget that making wild gyrations to get off a shot results in a very low percentage shot.

The jumper Thornton hit with about 4 or 5 minutes to go where he faked Richardson out of his shoes was one of those. Thornton made the shot, but Mike Smith correctly noted that he’d created a very difficult shot for even the best shooter to knock down.

When I was following the Nuggets, I’d see Carmelo regularly executing these beautiful and elaborate spin moves to free himself for an utterly clear look at an 18 foot jumper. But unfortunately, after all the spinning, he’d only knock down the shot around a third of the time.