When we started thinking about the Five-Star Hawks game last night, we
realized there were two things we didn't really say enough about:
- Jason Williams' ball pressure. It was pretty intense. We'll reserve
judgment until we see him play D on D-1, but the talent, the fundamentals,
and the desire all appear to be there. That was really great to see.
And when Andre Buckner comes in, his responsibilities are really simple: a)
maintain pressure on defense, and b) hang on to the ball. Right now, that's
it, but we get the feeling he thinks he is capable of more than that. - Matt Christensen's play. The links should be still around here, way
way deep somewhere, but when we saw him as a freshman, we said that he was
really smart and calm on the court, and that has stayed true. But he showed
us a lot more last night than we expected, frankly.  He had
tip-ins He had thunderdunks. He got out and tried to take
charges. But the play which most impressed us was when he grabbed a
rebound with three guys surrounding him. He fought hard when he got
the ball, and no matter what you think of the competition, being surrounded
by three 6-8 guys when you can't dribble is a dilemma. He got out of
it, which is impressive. It was hard to watch him and not think that
he is going to surprise some people this season.
We had a weird thought about Matt and Ken "The Animal"
Bannister. If you plotted their relative skills and talent on a
graph, you'd have to think that Bannister, who is obviously a few years
removed from the NBA, is on a downtrend. Matt is younger and on an uptrend,
but if you accept the conventional wisdom that he is a big slow white kid with
limited ability, his line is not going too far up the old grid, if you take our
meaning. So at some point the two of them intersect, Banniser descending,
and Christensen ascending to at least some extent. Is it fair to assume,
given the conventional wisdom (which we don't necessarily accept), that they
should be intersecting soon? And if that's the case, then you'd think that
Bannister would have the edge, as he's had years of NBA experience. So why did a
guy who is reputed to be limited outplay a guy who has years of NBA experience
and knowledge?Â
Put that way, it's a very intriguing question. On the other hand, maybe
Bannister is a lot older than we're thinking, in which case forget we brought it
up.