Last roster spot showdown: Bradley, Payton, Mulder, Galloway, Bell
Last roster spot showdown: Bradley, Payton, Mulder, Galloway, Bell
Let the games begin
This is the first training camp roster in history where I’ve known every single player. Here’s a micro scout of the competitors for the last spot.
Avery Bradley
He once had a rep as a tenacious guard defender who could hit a jumper.
From Basketball-Reference:
He bounced around last season, but here is his scouting from LAL 2019-20. We may be hitting some small sample size issues, because like with Quinn Cook above, I don’t think of Avery as someone who can just go one-on-one and get a bucket. But the Perimeter D and Perimeter Shooting ring true.
Gary Payton II
We saw his upside and downside in Summer League. He can adequately handle the ball. He can play rugged dogged defense. He can get up and dunk. He can pass all right. It’s just the whole throwing the ball into the basket from a distance thing. He could even do that at times, though obviously the consistency isn’t there in small samples.
Jordan Bell
Newcomers may not realize that I had irrationally good feelings about Bell, which are carefully documented:
I don’t fully know why Bell has fallen so hard out of the league, as in his GSW days, he showed some hops, some decent defense, some decent court vision, and a whole steaming dollop of off-court knucklehead.
Langston Galloway
Okay, I don’t know what happened to Galloway. He was a promising rookie, then was a decent role player for DET, then ended up in the doghouse for the Phoenix Suns.
Here’s a snapshot from last season:
And then his even better season in DET in 2019-20:
But then again, if GSW knew he’d be this 2019-20 version, then he wouldn’t be fighting for the last roster spot on a random team.
Mychal Mulder
The devil you know. He has been a reasonable bench piece. He shoots a solid average from three, though diehard Warrior fans think he only hits them when it doesn’t count. He can get up and dunk. He is active on defense, though some observers are very negative about his team defense.
I have very limited expectations for him, so he’s never enraged me. I think he’s a perfectly good 15th man. If he doesn’t come back, it will be because of fit, not worthiness.
Let the games begin…
Galloway and Mulder are excellent off-ball spot-up shooters. Bradley and Payton II are more shot creators. Jordan Bell is probably here as a favor, to let him show off to other NBA teams.
It looks like a real competition to see who can earn the spot in training camp scrimmages, and I assume that the big decider will be the fit with the offense. Let’s just keep in mind that Coach Kerr and company will see way more of the players than what we see in the preseason games.
Rolling Stone article on NBA ant-vaxer player. Nothing new but this, if true, is so out there.
"Irving, who serves as a vice president on the executive committee of the players’ union, recently started following and liking Instagram posts from a conspiracy theorist who claims that “secret societies” are implanting vaccines in a plot to connect Black people to a master computer for “a plan of Satan."
https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEE3bNE5QkFjsCf5-YGLDIxoqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow9MSGCzCKpYQDMKGt7wY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
The issue of Jordan Bell’s knuckleheadedness brings to mind one of the many reasons I’m excited about Kuminga and Moody, who both appear to be mature beyond their years. It seems to me like you can be a knucklehead and be successful, but it’s quite a needle to thread.
It’s always seemed so crazy that NBA franchises depend so heavily on being able to determine how teenagers are going to perform under pressure, on and off the court. When I think about who I was at 19 and how I would have handled it….oh man.