While the Golden State Warriors are excited to get their corps back in full strength next season, assistant coach Ron Adams sees potential in some of the rookies this year.
Adams, appearing on Tim Kawakami’s TK Show at The Athletic, spoke about the growth of Eric Paschall, Jordan Poole, Alen Smailagic and what each needs to work on to advance in their respective careers.
Eric Paschall
Paschall, in Adams’ words, is “precocious” and more polished due to spending more time in college.
Already 23, Paschall played a year at Fordham before transferring to Villanova and getting three seasons of play there.
“He’s more like the old guys that used to come into the league 20 years ago, 25 years ago,” Adams said. “They were pretty polished from college.”
Paschall averaged 14 points, 4.6 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 27.6 minutes per game this season.
Adams commended him for playing well on both sides of the court, and said he’ll play more of an off-ball role next year.
“His mission is to kind of keep expanding his game to make it more of an NBA game,” Adams said.
“He’s a really good one-on-one player, that will change a little bit probably moving forward — he won’t have those opportunities like he did this year given Steph (Curry) and Klay (Thompson) and (Andrew Wiggins) being here now.”
There is plenty of room for Paschall to grow.
A power forward at just 6-foot-6, he is going to have to develop different skills to be productive at a high level.
“He’s more power forward-ish now than anything else, but I think he’s going to have to expand that,” Adams said.
“For all these young players, it’s not only a matter of their skill set and what they need to expand in their skill set. But it’s also a matter of training and conditioning. How your body will develop, what your body needs.”
Obviously, developing his 3-pointer will be a big part of that.
Paschall shot just 28.7% from behind the arc and attempted just over two 3s per game.
“The 3-point shot is a big item for Eric,” Adams said. “I think he has everything in place to be an effective shooter, but that’s going to have to come around in his development, which I think it will.”
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Jordan Poole
Another player who needs to improve his 3-pointer, Adams said that one of Poole’s issues is the learning curve of know when you’re open for a shot and when the defender can rotate over in time.
“The real trick is knowing when you’re open to shoot and when you’re not open and you do the next thing – whether it be penetrate, pass,” Adams said.
“He seemed to, early in the season, when the ball came to him, and he was open, he shot it and made it. And then he went through a period of time during the year that he seemed a little bit hesitant in determining when to shoot.”
While his shooting percentages were not good in the first part of the season, he certainly shot more over the first dozen games. He attempted about six 6-pointers per game but converted less than a third of them.
After a 3-for-12 outing, he shot much fewer over the next 20 appearances, attempting just 3.4 per game.
Over Poole’s final 25 games, he averaged five 3-point attempts per game. While his 32.5% mark wasn’t good, it was much better than the other two time periods measured above.
With all that said, Adams complimented Poole: “Jordan is a really talented guy. He’s talented with the ball, he’s a very talented passer, and he can score the ball … I think adjusting this year was as much growing up as a youngster as anything.”
The area Adams expressed the greatest desire for growth, more than the shot, was on defense.
“He’s going to have to do more diligent, more consistent. He’s gonna have to see the pictures a little better, the defensive pictures. But I think he is capable of that,” Adams said.
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Alen Smailagic
At 19 years old, Smailagic played just 14 games and about 10 minutes per appearance.
“He has a ways to go,” Adams said. “He has potential and he showed bits and pieces of that when he played in games this year.”
Adams said he showed real improvement though, in part from learning head coach Steve Kerr’s game plan and digesting Kerr’s teachings.
“He began to understand the game in a different way, begin to understand the game how Steve likes,” Adams said.
The thing Adams was most impressed with was the Smailagic does not express fear on the court.
“That was noticeable this year – his confidence, his savvy,” Adams said. “Having said that, I think he is here because everyone felt he’s a good long-range project that he will develop and will be helpful to the team.”
Adams said that Smailagic is viewed as a power forward or center, but Adams could see the 6-foot-9 player as a “3.5” moving between the forward positions.
“When you’re looking at a positionless league … he’s a frontline player,” Adams said.
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