Respectfully disagree no doubt. Not sure I used "elite" athlete anywhere if I did I was wrong. And I did have Stanley on another level and Stanley was elite. Not sure we are far apart and not sure how Ed Nelson or Richard Simmons got on here but whatever makes you drive your point home
. Kentan had hops no doubt must've been watching on a smaller TV, he jumped over people and yes, used his length and reach also to grab rebounds. But people see different things.
Kentan always had a sweet stroke on his jump shot, but for the first three years of his tenure here, he seemed to avoid contact, and was not a very physical player. Ollie wanted him to be an interior rebounder, and he wasn't comfortable with banging. Most of his modest rebound numbers came on "long reach" rebounds, because he was doing it from 2 to 3 feet too far away. He tended to get the balls that bounded off the rim too high for the guys who were in position, and he got them 5 or 6 feet from the hoop, where the people he was jumping over were often guards rather than other bigs.
It may be just the way I look at the situation I guess, but I believe that the urgent need for his minutes last year may have allowed him to force the issue of getting a little more offensive freedom in exchange for a willingness to get into the bump and grind in the paint a little more. He didn't suddenly develop the offensive fluidity we saw last year, but I felt like it was the first time he was able to uncork that bottle without fear of being benched. But I do think the interior work wore on him over the season, and may have contributed to his late season shooting woes, because until the last 5 or 6 games, he was money from 12 to 15 feet. Then the last few games, he'd short arm a couple, then over compensate and bang it off the back rim a time or two.
