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This is the Klay effect on the Mavs. They run a high pick for Luka, giving him a head of steam, but then watch Klay setting another screen on Wemby who’s the helper, and now it’s Thompson’s man who has to switch on Doncic, leaving Klay with Victor.
So now Lively dives inside and keeps Wemby under the basket while at the same time Klay sprints out to the three point line and gets a completely wide open look. Luka already knows that this is a swish and starts going back not even looking at the basket.
This is another example of the attention that Doncic gets in the pick and roll, as CP3 gets sucked in for just a moment, and that’s all it takes for the pass, the fake, and the wide open look for Thompson’s first points as a Maverick.
Klay got a bunch of open looks throughout the whole game and you could see that he was having fun knocking these down.
But Doncic was having fun as well…
And this circus shot was after the whistle and didn’t count but I was still amazed at how he got it to go.
Going back to the new guys however, watch how CP3 commands the entire Dallas defense here on this pick and roll with Wemby.
Goes middle keeping Lively on him and forcing the switch against a smaller guy for Wemby.
And with everyone now ready to help on that mismatch, Chris just bounces it to the corner to Keldon Johnson who knocks down this easy shot for him.
The very next possession, Paul knows that if he pushes it in transition, they will get some of the easiest points for Wembanyama, and he’s definitely happy about this.
Maan, having him on this team is almost like having Pop out there on the court and the young guys on the Spurs will benefit a ton from it.
They’ll also benefit from a 38% three point shooting veteran in Harrison Barnes, who also plays defense and is a solid all around player.
He is efficient as it is but against Dallas everything he threw at the basket went in.
Good game for him, but nowhere near as great as Minnesota’s new addition:
Randle was breathing fire against Sacramento and if he is hitting this James Harden contested stepback type of three, then there’s nothing you can do about it. (1Q 0:01 FILLER)
5 of 6 shooting from behind the three point line for a 33% career shooter from downtown.
The Timberwolves are sure hoping that he could replicate that one season on the Knicks when he randomly turned into Ray Allen and shot 41% forcing the Knicks to give him 62 million dollars.
But putting my Knicks fan frustrations aside, Randle battled it out against another newcomer on the Kings in Demar Derozan.
A solid 26 Point and 8 rebound debut for Demar, albeit a bit inefficient, going 7 for 18 from the field. And unfortunately for him and his new team, this back and forth in crunch time ended like this:
Demar’s less than ideal efficiency however was nothing compared to Westbrook:
Watch how far Carusso is from Russ, not even looking at him. The Thunder were sagging off of him, helping at the ball handler and basically forcing him to shoot it.
And Westbrook went 1 for 6 on threes and 2 for 10 overall in this bad 15 point loss for Denver at home. I personally still have no idea why Jokic specifically asked for him, the fit is clunky and the shooting is non-existent, so hopefully the Nuggets know what they’re doing.
One guy that absolutely knows what he’s doing however is JJ Redick. His genius offensive masterclass in the opener has the Lakers buzzing right now, and you gotta check out this detailed breakdown to see exactly what he’s doing. Talk to you in the next one. Peace out.