The players all looked thinner so I guess they are buying into Nellie's
system. Unfortunately, they still can't shoot. The only way I see them
scoring is if they get a lot of fast break points.

Murphy tried to bull his way to the basket a couple of times. That's a
couple more than all last year. He doesn't look any smoother working
inside.

Nellie said they would be using a zone about 15% of the time. He said it
would start as a 1-1-3 and shift into a 2-3. The only good thing I saw on
defense was more pressure on the ball. Otherwise, they made Roberson and
Thompson look like all stars.

Wagner is definitely a slasher and scorer, but his outside shot is as
suspect as the rest of the teams.

O'Bryant was definitely winded. Not surprising since he had the broken foot
and couldn't get into NBA shape yet. He has a nice 12 foot jump shot. He
has the size. He makes Biedrins look small. His role is going to be
student, but he looks to have enough to keep around instead of sending to
the development league.

Nellie looks like he is laying down the law. He called out a couple of
players even in a show like this. He tried to make it seem like a joke, but
it sounded real. On a bad pass he said, "I don't know where you learned
that spin pass, but it makes coach pissed." When Cabarkaba passed up a shot
from the corner, he said,"What are you doing out here if you're not going to
take that shot?" And this was during the drills before the scrimmage.

It looks like he will get the most out of the players, but this team still
needs more talent if it is going to get anywhere.

I thought all the players looked real sloppy. A lot of players missed
easy shots including dunks...most notably Matt Barnes who picked
someone and had a wide open dunk to himself which he blew and got
booed. Baron also missed a dunk himself. I was pretty dissappointed
with Dun tho. He got a lot of good looks but kept bricking them. He was
hitting them with ease during the drills but couldnt hit a jump shot
during the scrimmage. He had a three point play lay up and a few good
dimes. Pietrus looked like he was hustling hard. He probably lead all
players in rebounding and a lot of them were hustle rebounds. Couldnt
hit his jumpers though. I was actually pretty impressed with Patrick
O'Bryant. I saw him take about 5 jump shots, all of which he made.
Including some from just inside the 3 point line. But he looked like he
was getting bullied whenever he tried to post up on anyone.

Angelo Meola wrote: