Thread Tools

Display Modes

**Coatesvillain** · 04-05-2004, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Willie Green is a prime example of how NBA game experience can help a rookie's confidence grow, and, as a result, enable his potential to blossom.

To get to that point, however, the player has to earn the confidence of his coach. Green has done that, as evidenced by situations during the last two weeks when he played a significant role at crunch time for the 76ers.

Despite being a relatively late pick (No. 41) in the second round of the 2003 NBA draft, the 6-foot-4 guard earned the confidence of his first coach, Randy Ayers, as well as his second, Chris Ford, who started the season as Ayers' assistant.

"As a coach, you look to see how he's progressing in practice on a daily basis," Ford said yesterday. "He was getting spoon-fed early in the year by Randy. I think we all as a coaching staff had confidence in him from what we saw from day one in training camp. We were just bringing him along."

Green played the entire fourth quarter in Thursday night's 88-82 loss to Portland, scoring 10 of his career-high 22 points, including a monster dunk off an offensive rebound that tied the game with just over five minutes to play.

He also made major fourth-quarter contributions in wins last week over Dallas and Phoenix. He finished with 19 points against the Mavericks and 18 against the Suns, including nine points in the final period when the Sixers rallied from 12 down.

LINK

It's sucks that Philly.com makes you register, but that's a pretty good article that goes over the positives of Willie Green's play. It's from the Saturday Inquirer, so it's not exactly completely fresh.

The main reason I bring this up though, is while we take every opportunity to badmouth the management and such, we have to admit that it was quite a feat for us to pull whatever we needed to pull to get a hold of Willie Green, and Korver for that matter. We had one pick in last year's draft the 50th selection, and found a way to turn it into two players who have at least solid futures ahead of them in this league. I think that's pretty impressive.

The guy we drafted and eventually traded for Green, Paccelis Morlende, is playing over seas, so I'm not exactly sure how good of a player he is.

**Coatesvillain** · 04-05-2004, 11:47 AM

Oh, and in related news, I was looking at NBAdraft.net and it seems that we have two early second round picks. We get Golden State's second rounder, and Orlando's second rounder while giving up our second rounder to Atlanta via the Efthimos Rentzias trade.

So that's two chances to land quality young talent. If we can manage to get two solid talents with the potential 31st (Orlando) and 42nd (Golden State) picks we'd be taking another step forward in the process of rebuilding.

**BEEZ** · 04-05-2004, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by <b>PhillyPhanatic</b>!
Oh, and in related news, I was looking at NBAdraft.net and it seems that we have two early second round picks. We get Golden State's second rounder, and Orlando's second rounder while giving up our second rounder to Atlanta via the Efthimos Rentzias trade.

So that's two chances to land quality young talent. If we can manage to get two solid talents with the potential 31st (Orlando) and 42nd (Golden State) picks we'd be taking another step forward in the process of rebuilding.

Wow we definitley getting a 1st round talent in the second

**Kunlun** · 04-05-2004, 09:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by <b>BEEZ</b>!

Wow we definitley getting a 1st round talent in the second

It's not too rare to find first round talent in the second round anymore because of the increase or early drafted foreign players and high school players.

JGKoblenz · 04-06-2004, 05:22 PM

Nice article, Wille impresses coaches and probably almost every basketball fan, he was a nice surprise.

Bruno · 04-07-2004, 06:17 AM

Paccelis Morlend is playing in France and playing good i see him play one time in Portugal this year with my portuguese team Queluz in the court i see he play but in that game he wasn´t so good because only score 4 pts and the portuguese player Armando Costa a guy that have 20 years old score 31 pts but Queluz play 2 more games and then score more then 20 in the first and in the second score more than 30 in the final 3 european league against Queluz that he won . And its great to read this and Green doesnt score 24 pts yesterday against atlanta ??

jsa · 04-07-2004, 04:44 PM

Willie Green has the potential to be an excellent first guard off the bench, one his experience grows. He has enough skills, though unrefined, to give give a team a fine lift, once he is experienced enough to recognize quickly what that need may be at any given time. He drives and defensds well, but he has no one killer skill, so a #3 would be perfect. That is quite good for a late pick.

Thread Tools Display Modes

Thread Tools

Display Modes