The Player Development Thread

[HermanG]

Looks like I called it, at least in this game tonight against the Wolves. Great effort from Ace. And they handed him the keys, and he responded, 20 points, 4 boards, so that is good to see. Of course he is still chasing Key himself at 40 pts this game tonight, so far. Wow. I mean we earned a win here with the triple double from Nurk at 14/16/10/1/1, just wild. And Collier with an 18 point double double. One of those nights when everything clicks. And the wild thing is our defense is so bad we could still lose this, even with performances of the year from like 5 of these guys. But a good example of chucking Ace in the deep end to see if he responds, and he did! Good on him!

That is not true at all. They handed him the keys for like 2 possessions in the first half and that went horribly wrong. Then they put him back to play his usual off ball role and he flourished when Minnesota started focusing on trying to slow down Key.

Ace had his best game as a pro but mostly because of him playing clean disruptive defense and finishing well on his cuts/spot up shots. And even though he only got 5 rebounds they were mostly very important rebounds and I was very impressed about the two near the end where he also got the ball out fast to Collier before Minny players could try and steal it from him.

One moment where he also showed maturity (and opted NOT to use "the keys") was with little less than 7 minutes left in the 4th quarter he had plenty of open space to take his favourite midrange jumper but he realized there was time on the clock to look for a better shot so instead he dribbled it out and gave it to Key (who ended up taking a worse shot, but thats besides the point).