Ed Davis' Bayhawks debut

[Balls of Steel]

Raps should bring the kids back and play them,
instead of talking that nonsense of playing Peja at 4...

Unfortunately, this is the scenario that the team is presented with. The team and upper management needs to be careful in rushing their picks into action. They did it with Bargs (had to fire Mitchell to do it), Derozan and now Davis? What's the rush? Also, please remember that Davis was injured in College. I don't want him to have the Oden syndrome. Slowly and carefully.

[Buddahfan]

1st thing that struck me was the knee brace--Chris Bosh flashbacks during his rookie year and CBs current knee brace... At any rate I agree about assessing a guy's readiness based on D-League, which I rate as glorifeied NBA garbage time in regards to the skill level.

It's just very obvious why these guys are in the D-League, NBAers just have that extra gear or 2 in every phase of the game--it must be hard to get motivated to play there but HE NEEDS conditioning for another week to ten days or so... I'm grateful that I live in an NBA city!

I like the fact that he played few minutes to begin with and is 'playing slow' and not 'playing fast' by being forced into NBA action right away as players are just beginning to hit their stride. Also he won't be hitting the dreaded Rookie Wall as the entire season will be about strength and conditioning.

I agree on the brace.

I debunked the rest of your post above on the prior thread page.

The kid is athletic, has talent, can defend without fouling and knows how to play the game.

D-League, Q-League, XYZ-League it doesn't matter.

1. Athleticism is athleticism period
2. When you are 6'10" and can defend in one league you can defend in any league. I do think that Davis could add some more muscle but that will come
3. It doesn't take an Andy Katz to know whether a player knows how to play the game the right way or not. All you have to do is what what they do on the court. Proper spacing is proper spacing, good timing is good timing, moving your feet and not using your hands on defense are all what they are all translatable regardless of the league or level of competition that you play in.

No he won't come in and be a Blake Griffin from day #1 but he knows how to play the game and is tall enough and athletic enough to go with a really nice soft shooting touch for anyone who watches him play to come to conclusion that one day, assuming his body holds up, he will be a really really good NBA player.

You can put that one in the bank.

[Buddahfan]

Unfortunately, this is the scenario that the team is presented with. The team and upper management needs to be careful in rushing their picks into action. They did it with Bargs (had to fire Mitchell to do it), Derozan and now Davis? What's the rush? Also, please remember that Davis was injured in College. I don't want him to have the Oden syndrome. Slowly and carefully.

Davis is light years ahead of DeRozan and Weems in knowing how to play basketball the right way. He is even ahead of Johnson in this regard.

The Raptors could drop him in the regular rotation from his first game with them and he will be better than Reggie, period.

[jlongs]

All they want from Davis in the D-League is conditioning. They didn't put him there to "hone" his skills like they did Alabi.

I remember last year during Reggie's first game back after the injury. After just 5 minutes of running up and down the court he was gassed. He left it all out there during those 5 minutes though. They're taking it slow for Davis. But watching his two games down there, he seemed to be running up and down fine without looking tired. So it shouldn't be long 'til they call him up. We need his shot-blocking.