Tony Was MVP of Practice

I’ve said this on the forum on the thread about how well POB has been doing:

I wouldn’t put much stock on this kind of statements. They’re pretty much par for the course. During the pre-season everybody looks great, in the best shape of their lives, have outstanding practices, shows signs of promise and seems ready to be a major contributor (except Eddy Curry). All NBA coaches are saying these things about their scrubs. I’ve just read a very similar thing about Austin Croshere, who’s in Pacers’ training camp fighting for a roster slot. You practice and after the practices you spin. It’s way too soon to talk smack to the Warriors’ fans; let’s hope we’ll be able to do that coming December or March.

Training camps and pre-season practices are funny for coaches. It’s almost schizophrenic. One day the guys look great and you think “Wow, we have a hell of a team. It’s going to be hard to beat us!”. The next day, they look like crap, nobody seems to remember how to switch or rotate, and you go “Damn, we need new players or else we’re not winning a game this season. These guys wouldn’t even beat the girls’ team” (or, if you’re training a girls team like myself, “they wouldn’t even beat the Knicks”).

In time, everyone will get his own fluff piece.

cordobes is right. If these guys didn’t have the physical abilities to one extent or another they wouldn’t even be in camp. Effort,self confidence and uptake of the playbook can be built in camp. I expect to hear “Scal is shooting the 3 much better”, “Tony is playing, not thinking” (not thinking is good for a bad thinker), “Pruitt is really getting it this year” etc. Everything is right about that. I’m not critical of it but us true junkies will see for ourselves soon enough.