July 7, 2007

DET vs PHI – VSL Game 1

Well, to kick off this year’s VSL I bounced on down to Thomas & Mack with the girlfriend and brother in tow.

I noticed a handsome young man named LA Dre hanging out across the arena getting ready to enjoy the action. Spotted everyone’s favorite beat writer and caught a glimpse of Joe Dumars and Mo Cheeks.

This year we were hoping to keep a closer eye on certain commodities as some of the lesser members turned out to be ineffective at best in years prior. This year appears to be more of the same, so I would recommend that you prepare to catch up on as much as I can provide on Johnson, Stucky, Maxiell, Afflalo, Mejia, and Samb.

• Points of note: Today’s game felt very slow and unfamiliar for a lot of these guys. I’m pretty sure this is mostly due to their not having played with each other for very long.
• DET seemed to get very little out of there offensive sets and turned the ball over a lot more than they should have.
• DET didn’t really shoot well to start the game, but seemed to take advantage of PHI’s dry spells.
• DET also didn’t seem to be attacking the basket with strength (with the exception of Maxiell because that’s what he does).
• PHI also seemed to be able to get some scores in the paint pretty early as Samb appeared to be late on a number of rotations.
• The first half seemed very methodical and slow moving to me…very tedious.
• I really hope this game isn’t an indicator of how well Stuckey and Afflalo can attack the basket and/or create their own shots. I was somewhat disappointed judging from all the excitement from some fans.

AJ
No Amir at this point. Still haggling contract issues.

Stuckey
Says that he patterns his game after Wade, but appears to lack the speed and strength. I was looking for him to be much more aggressive than he was. He seemed to dribble away from most double teams instead of looking to split or attack the weak side.

Afflalo
Hit a few shots here and there, but didn’t do anything eye catching in my opinion.

Samb
Appeared a bit slow and out of sorts today. He stayed near the basket and grabbed a few rebounds and knocked down a couple shots. However, he seemed to be very late on several defensive rotations. I’ll need to see his next couple games to see how this guy is rounding into shape.

Mejia
He didn’t really amaze me, but he did do a nice job of knocking down shots (including the game winner)

Maxiell
What can I say? Max was Max. He lead the team in scoring and was very aggressive on offense. I think the VSL officials really dislike him or something because he appears to pick up a lot of fouls that don’t get called on other players. He did a good job of knocking down his mid-range jumpers and attacking the basket with the same force we saw during the regular season. This year’s summer league will be the last for Maxiell and he plans to make lunch meat out of the competition on his way out the door.

I’m pretty sure that I am in the minority in thinking that today’s game was kind of blah as I understand the fans that caught the webcast enjoyed today’s action. For me, being there in person, the play just seemed very sloppy and the DET players seemed to get very little in the way of execution when running their offensive sets. I’m going to be looking forward to the following games to determine whether or not I’ll take a certain level of enthusiasm and/or interest into the regular season.