2014-15 Lakers Season Thread (21-61) KAT

This summer, if the chance comes, Love, Rondo, Neither, or Both?

  • Love

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Rondo

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Neither

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Both

    Votes: 0 0.0%
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LiCeNseD To BaLL said:
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check out hanibal lecter, aka frank hamblem lol
 
I must say our front office is doing a mighty good job of tanking. I just hope they are actually doing it under their own power :lol:
 
Nuggets beat writer:
Quincy Miller has talent, but needs time

Quincy Miller's 2013-14 season was all about playing time: getting it, and learning what he needed to do with it.

Miller played in 52 games, up from seven as a rookie. He started 16 times. He averaged 15.2 minutes per game, up from 3.7.

That's a big jump.

And yet Miller, who would have been a junior at Baylor had he stayed, was out there learning on the fly and finished with averages of 4.9 points and 2.8 rebounds.

One thing's for certain: One look at the 6-foot-9 Miller, who has small forward skills, passes the eye test. He looks like an NBA athlete. He's in the process of raising his game to match.

Miller gave an indication April 6 at Houston. He scored 19 points, including 3-of-5 from 3-point range. He displayed ball-handling skills, driving to the bucket for layups with both hands — and flying in for a baseline dunk on another. He grabbed six rebounds and blocked four shots.

That's the player who has Nuggets brass salivating. There is talent in Miller, a McDonald's All-American coming out of high school.

He finally felt like himself this past season after suffering a torn ACL two years ago and got the opportunity to play more when teammates got injured. As with any young player, he battled through mistakes and confidence issues, but he set a good foundation for his professional future.

Offensively, Miller got the bulk of his field-goal attempts from spot-up and transition situations. They accounted for 138 of his 257 field-goal looks, a healthy 53 percent. Miller was not a great 3-point shooter (31.9 percent), and 36.5 percent of his field-goal attempts came from behind the arc.

Miller identified 3-point shooting as his main focus of improvement during the summer. Right now, Miller is at his best as a catch-and-shoot guy. Pulling up for 3-point shots will be on the next level after he gets his foundation down.

Miller was at his best on offense when he was going to the rim. He was no stranger to finishing with a dunk, even in traffic and was probably underutilized in cutting situations that put him around the rim. He was just 6-for-6 all season long on cutting, according to Synergy stats.

Miller has to increase his offensive efficiency. That includes being comfortable on the court with his role in Nuggets coach Brian Shaw's system, immersing himself in knowing the plays and getting to the gym to improve his shooting percentages.

Defensively, the first thing Miller has to do is clean up his close-outs, his defensive slide and his quickness. He was susceptible to blow-by drives because of bad closeouts, and he struggled to stay with offensive players on drives because of a lack of quickness and initial positioning. Miller's length helped him out of some of those situations, where he was able to recover for a blocked shot even if he was trailing on the play.

Miller will get stronger, and he'll need to for those instances where he finds himself being posted up, or even posting up himself. He needs to shore up his ball-handling skills to reduce turnovers.

An increased awareness will also spare him some of the poke-away turnovers he surrendered.

Miller is a work in progress, just like many young players in the NBA. This, however, should be a huge summer in transitioning from youthful mistakes to veteran focus and effectiveness.
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Nuggets blog:
#NuggetsRank No. 14: Quincy Miller

The very fact that Quincy Miller has ended up at a lowly 14th in our #NuggetsRank series – below two of Denver’s three newly arrived rookies – speaks volumes about the less-than-encouraging state of his development.

At the beginning of the 2013-14 season, following a rookie year in which he played a total of merely 26 minutes over seven games, it appeared that things were looking up for Q-Mil. Danilo Gallinari’s injury meant Miller would have his first real opportunity to get extensive playing time. And Brian Shaw raised the bar on expectations of Quincy’s potential during training camp when he compared him to Pacers All-Star Paul George, stating, “I think he has a chance to be a real special talent.”

While that chance may still exist, Miller was mostly unable to capitalize on his opportunity to prove it when his role expanded last season. True, he did show some signs of improvement. The addition of a 3-point shot which was nonexistent his rookie year was a positive sign that he was extending his range and diversifying his offensive array. Still, per Basketball-Reference.com, he had the lowest offensive rating among all Nuggets players with significant minutes. More troubling, after the All-Star break he trended downward, dropping off in both true shooting percentage, from .503 to .422, and offensive rating, from 90 to 84.

Some of that might be chalked up to a young sophomore being called upon to carry a greater burden than he was prepared for following injuries to his teammates. But in addition to his offensive struggles, Miller was more often than not lost on the defensive end as well. Jan Vesely, a player with arguably less raw talent, was able to make a greater impact simply by virtue of being an energy guy. Similarly, if Quincy is to find a long-term niche in the NBA as a reliable role player, he will need to find at least one area of his game to cultivate and specialize in.

But this has always been, and may always be, his biggest problem. He’s decent enough at a wide range of skills, but doesn’t really excel in any one of them. He recently tweeted that he’s grown taller than 6’11”, which may even further confound the confusion about what position he should play. He’s too lanky to go up against the league’s stronger, bulkier power forwards and centers, but lacks the lateral quickness to effectively defend athletic small forwards.

By all accounts, it seems like Quincy is a pretty great guy who has been working very hard to get better. So it would be fantastic if he could break new ground this season with sufficiently significant improvements in his game to rekindle optimism about his future development. The Nuggets coaching staff still appear to be upbeat on his upside, so although he’s currently on a non-guaranteed contract with veteran training camp invite Alonzo Gee nipping at his heels, Miller still seems to safe as frontrunner to make the final cut. But even if he does, he’ll need to make some meaningful progress this season in order to prove he truly belongs in the NBA.
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I was a huge Quincy Miller booster for a long time but that ACL injury in high school just derailed him, he just not quick enough and his reputation as a shooter just has never translated. :smh:


but im telling you in highschool, he looked as close to KD as you can get in high school :lol:
 
Sooo in terms of coaching rank

Mike D'Antoni









Mike Brown















Byron Scott














































Brian Shaw
 
I want all you dudes that were convinced Brian Shaw was going to be a great head coach and the Lakers made a mistake passing on him to show your face.
 
Great now P's drinking some of that CP juice on his "I told you so tip." :lol:

mike brown, MDA, and Byron Scott all look incompetent as HEAD COACHES.

Nothing we have seen has changed any of that. They all do something well but neither of them can be the complete package as a head coach.

MDA didn't have enough talent to work with, I can admit that but clearly... Neither does
Scott.

At the end of the day we won't be competing for a few years minimum, I think even anyone who was delusional in the past can see that now.
 
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