I'mWithDan
"Straight Cash Homie"
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2010
- Messages
- 11,955
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- 135
Zion, Reddish, and Jones showed some of their weaknesses, but used their strengths to bring Duke back in the end. Really fun game.
Oh yeah, Barrett...he kinda sucked. Worried about him. Not sure he holds off Morant for #2...
I thought last night was a positive for Barrett, even though I am a little cooler on him. Still think he’s #2 over Morant just given positional scarcity / his overall versatility.
Last night was the first time I saw Barrett defer after a poor half, which I think is a nice sign of maturity. He played solid defense, tried to chip in where he could but made a concerted effort to get both Reddish and Zion the ball, when they had it going. College is really stingy with assists but he was charted as having 7 NBA assists last night. And there were a few plays where he called for the ball on the perimeter, simply in an effort to then dump it in to Zion.
He was I think 2/5 from the field with 5 points, 1 steal and 2 assists. Looks pedestrian but he had a stretch of the game where he made 4 of the biggest plays during the comeback. He made the transition euro to finally get it to 10 points. UL answered on the next possession to push it back to 12. Ensuing Duke posession Cam didn’t take a great shot but Barrett corralled an offensive rebound and the sequence led to Zion going to the line, getting it back down to 10. That was a potential back breaking stretch for Duke if UL pushes it back to 14-15. 90 seconds later he had the anticipatory weak side steal that led to his layup, cutting it to 5. And then his between the legs drop off to Cam capped them coming all the way back. He scored, assisted or made plays that directly attributed to 9 of the 17 points during that key stretch and he didn’t force a single play after not having a great game to that point. He also deferred to his teammate (Cam), when I think 6 weeks ago, he probably forces his own offense in a 3 point game. If he gets killed for Gonzaga, he gets credit for what was described above.
For me, last night was a good scouting tape for Barrett but a pedestrian box score. UL opened the door and after a bad 30+ minutes, Barrett shook it off and made a handful of key plays to help swing the game. I agree there is more concern today with him than there was a few months ago but there’s still just no way I’m taking JA over him. Not when consideration positional value / scaricity. JA certainly has the tools to be as good or better but I just don’t value PG’s at the top of the draft. You can get them every year, at every lottery slot. Maybe someone can talk me out of that opinion.
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