Last 10 games for Kemba:

[Gurleyman]

53 assists, 13 turnovers (after 8 and 1 today).

Not too shabby - his point skills and decision making are really improving (when Reggie Williams was hot - he found him three or four times to keep him going).

I know his FG percentage needs some work (5-15 today), but he'll get better. Twice in the fourth quarter today he got all the way to the rim and made the shots more difficult than they had to be - like he's hearing footsteps he doesn't have to hear. Second of those misses was dunked off the offensive rebound, so it worked for the team, but not for his stats (and one of his misses was a 35-footer at the first quarter buzzer). And his last assist was a great feed to Diaw with 45 seconds left to stretch the lead from 2 to 4.

 

[champs99and04]

Obviously Kemba needs to shoot better, but usually Kemba has at least one half court heave per game which probably deflates those percentages a little bit. Some guys will wait till the buzzer to put up a heave so it doesn't hurt their percentages, but Kemba just doesn't care.

Just something I've noticed.

 

[61cygni]

Came up with a couple of nice big plays at the end of the game that did not involve him scoring.

 

[champs99and04]

Came up with a couple of nice big plays at the end of the game that did not involve him scoring.

Last season many of Kemba's better plays went unnoticed in the box score. He'll do anything to help his team win. For example, he beat his man off the dribble late in the fourth quarter, blew the layup, but took two men with him so that his teammate could easily make the tip-in. This will show up in the box score as a missed FG attempt, but he really created those two points.

I remember a similar play in the final couple minutes of the Pitt game last year, except it was Oriakhi doing the honors. I believe it was to put us up 74-71, just before Gibbs hit the three to tie it.