Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Notes on the Second Game of Summer

Boxscore

A fundamental question regarding the evaluation of Summer League play is what to do about the free throws. Get in the lane here and you'll likely get to the free throw line. I'm not sure that doing so has much relevance when projecting performance from Summer League to the regular season. Thus I suspect that Jordan Crawford scoring just 5 of his 20 points at the free throw line bodes better than Jeff Teague getting 11 of his 15 points at the line.

Yet, as for the game itself, the Hawks, following a dreadful first half, got back into the game by getting to the free throw line. The free throws did exhibit a will to win of sorts even if they didn't impress. So, I'll credit Teague and Trey Gilder for their 15 second half free throw attempts while also acknowledging that Teague's 9 turnovers (as well as Curtis Jerrells's stat line) and Gilder's 6 fouls are probably the more telling stats.

Crawford was encouraging again, scoring inside and out and showing impressive court vision. He got some time at the point with Pape Sy out due to a sore right achilles. Richard Hendrix and his nice collection of post moves impressed as well though Lester Conner found his inattention to detail on the full-court press offense troubling. Randolph Morris wasn't bad himself, scoring 11 points. It says something of the standard he's set for himself that a three foul, four turnover performance is noticeably above average.

Alade Aminu failed to replicate his fine performance against Memphis, scoring 4 points on 5 shots, grabbing just 2 rebounds, and generally failing to impact the game. Luke Jackson couldn't match the energy he added Monday night in a longer appearance. Sergiy Gladyr missed all 5 of his field goal attempts and got shoved around pretty good when he tried to hit the defensive glass. James Augustine left early with a left ankle sprain.

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