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new_skool91 writes:

He's doing pretty well and I'm glad for him. Tonight he was 18-13-4 blocks, 2 assists, 2 steals in 31 minutes of play.

Things that are translatable and encouraging:

1) FT shooting - 11/14, including 6/6 tonight with a nice, soft touch. NBA FT's are the same as anywhere else! LOL.

2) His scoring is "within the context of the offense"; I don't know that his 68% FG percentage will translate, but in the D-League, this pass to the open man under the basket concept is relatively foreign. It is highly guard dominated, yet Thabeet has led his team in scoring (and rebounding and blocks) both games that he has started with the minority of plays being run through him.

3) It looks like he is beginning to more firmly grasp some of the fundamentals at this lower degree of difficulty. Thabeet has had notoriously bad positioning for rebounds, but he showed some signs of having a clue about the whole "boxing out" thing tonight. He also showed some good court awareness with his two steals and two assists, and he made some pretty decent offensive moves, both toward the basket and around it. He still has a LOOONNNNNG way to go and is still bobble-prone (and he had 3 TO's), but he converted some bad passes including one at the ankles. When Hollins said earlier in the season that they were teaching him like an 8th grader, he wasn't exaggerating by much if any, but he's getting better.

What's scary is that he's probably still has a C or C- game at this point and is still pretty much dominant against "lesser" competition. Is it just his size? Tonight he played against another 7'3" center, Alleyne (who apparently went to Kentucky, but I can't remember him); his stat line: 2 points, 3 rebounds, 2 blocks. You draw your own conclusions.

And, I hate to bring this up because it is so unsexy and upsetting to people, but the Albuquerque's 36% shooting percentage was no coincidence. They pretty much abandoned the inside game for the 31 minutes he was in tonight. There was one stretch of three possessions were he had two blocks (ending them), followed a circus shot alteration resulting in a miss, which was rebounded by Aberquerque but resulting in a missed jumper that he rebounded; he pretty much single-handedly stopped the other team for three possessions in a row.

I know that his D-League performance is not going to magically awaken his inner beast at the NBA level, but I'm just glad that he is starting to look something like a basketball player, and not just an athletic 7'3" dude in a jersey on a basketball court!
