Whats Not To Love About Shabazz Napier Game?

Shabazz Napier Put The Moves On During A Boston Summer League http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVL0VeKFHFs&feature=plcp

Was that Shabazz dunking in the 1:49 mark?

I think he has the potential to be a good leader if he cuts down on his occasional over-aggressiveness and poor shot selection.

BINGO!

Yes! @ThRogers i couldn't believe it when i watched the video myslf HaHa

@Hungry Husky i couldn't agree more. Think last season he was looking to much into actually filling Kemba's shoes

He looks great in these homemade videos but wait until he plays against BE competition and better college players. Time well tell if Bazz can play that well against the best college talent.

Oh wait, Bazz did! In fact he won a Championship (from the floor not the bench) and outplayed them all. Kid does have moves and some.

Seriously though it must have been hard for him to watch a 'smaller' kid dunk all the time and everyday. Good to see him dunk at least once in my lifetime.

Amazing what this kid has accomplished in 2 years, a kid who they asked to skip prep school to fill a void as a back up PG for Kemba...........and yet people complain about him. No doubt he takes some bad shots but he also makes some big one's, has the balls of a bull and can play for me any time!!!

I for one will not be surprised if he does not end up being our primary point guard and Boat plays more off the ball. Whoever is the primary, it's great to have 2 point guards, as we have seen in the past. My primary hope is that his foot is really healthy and stays that way through the season.

Shabazz's sophomore season was one of the more interesting ones I can remember from a Jekyll and Hyde perspective. Check out his game-by-game stats from last year http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools...2/misc_non_event/shabazznapiercompletebio.pdf

He averaged 13 PPG on the season, but he almost never had an "average" game where he would score around 13 with a few assists. You can describe almost all of his games as either really good (11 games with over 20 points) or really bad (12 games with fewer than 7 points). When he was really good, there were plenty of games when he was unquestionably the best player on the floor. Then I think of his bad games, like the two games I saw in person last year (@Seton Hall and home vs. Syracuse) where there was no doubt that Napier was the worst player on the floor.

The next step for Shabazz is for his "bad" games to be 8 points, 6 assists, and still run the team effectively. We know he's good for a 27 point explosion where he carries the team on his back once every 3-4 games or so. But we can't afford to have Shabazz be a guy who hurts us on his off nights.

I like

I think he's going to have a good season if he avoids making mistakes, makes more shots, and plays better.

I doubt it. We're a better team when Ryan is distributing. Bazz's job this year will be to score. I think he's comfortable with that.

Jim Calhoun mentioned in late spring that Napier's role will be "off the ball" this season. There is a better than 50% chance UConn will start Napier and Boatright together. It's easy to say that this would be by necessity do to the sparsity of frontcourt talent, but my intuition is that Calhoun was going in this direction anyway.

Starting both Boat and Napier should open up UConn's offense considerably. As good as Lamb was at shooting the ball, he was very limited when it came to putting the ball on the floor and creating a shot. He turned the ball over at an alarming rate trying to penetrate off of curls. I can see Napier turning this former offensive weakness into a strength.

Napier's game better translates as a combo/sg rather than a pg anyway. He's a shooter who can sometimes pass rather than a true facilitator. He will thrive.

I like Nappier's guts. He was the guy who looked to take the shots late, looked for the ball when better players seemed to shrug off into the shadows. But he absolutely need to show much better consistency going forward. Whoever posted the information on his play, 13ppg average but almost no games in the 12-14 point range had it I think. If he can regularly get 8-10 with a few of those 20-25 point nights rather than last year's all or nothing games that would be what I'd like to see. though i don't want him to lose the late game guts.

Watch some of the games played against zone defenses last year and see who was able to make the pass into the zone (Bazz) and who was rarely able to do so (Boat). I want them both to be great, but I could see the argument made for Boat to be a scorer and Bazz to play as primary point. It would be nice if both are very effective doing both.

The guy just needs to be/stay healthy. That's my main concern.

Agreed when healthy he is a pest on defense kind of like Chris Paul. Needs to work on overall instincts of the pg position though, makes some horrendous decisions at times.

Who you talking about; Tyler, DeAndre, Giffey, Boat, Wolf............ ???

All of them. My BOLD prediction is that if they all improve in shooting, rebounding, defense and ballhandling, they will have better seasons. BOOK IT. You heard it HERE FIRST.

Similarly, I predict that if our team can consistently score more points than our opponents, we are going to have a good season.