Hi all!

It's Dan again, here to try and pluck a sliver of meaning from the pain and suffering of Sunday's loss to the Utah Jazz. Lucky for me, on a night where most of the team was obviously physically exhausted and mentally depleted from the heart wrenching loss the night before, as evidenced by the complete lack of passing and the slumping of the shoulders that followed every single turn of misfortune, one member of the team took the opportunity to shine:

THATS. MY. GUY.

This preseason we all got H4H. How could we not? He was a former unanimous number 1 pick, we'd all seen his high school mixtapes. Then in the preseason itself the dude dropped dime after dime, his shot was smooth as hell, and he seemed like a tone setter on Defense, which was something we were especially attuned to because every single Scouting Report on Bagley (Dimedrop notwithstanding) warned that we had just drafted a big so incompetent on defense that Coach K was forced to change schemes to cover for him.

I remember one conversation I had with a friend who's a Laker fan. It was right after we had played them the final time in preseason. My friend said Fox was liable to get MIP. I argued that his 3p% wouldn't be sustainable in the regular season, that I'd be happy if he shot 35% just to indicate improvement (my fandom just slightly outweighs my desperate need to be right). I said, however, that Harry Giles should be considered equally likely to win ROTY as Bagley, stating specifically that his "passing has LeBron level potential". Hyperbolic, maybe, but I felt it in my soul! My friend laughed at me and I gave him back my half of our heart shaped friendship necklace.

Then the season started. While Bagley's preseason woes seemed to be less of a deal than we worried they might be, Harry picked up the "worrying the fanbase" slack. How? Fouling. The dude could not stay on the floor. According to Basketball-Reference.com, Giles is averaging 8.5 Fouls per 36 minutes. At this rate, if he was our starter, we would lose a starter after 25 minutes. Even this number isn't representative of his early season troubles, as over the last two games he's contributed 29 minutes of solid gameplay with "only" 6 fouls, bringing up his average.

There are other problems too. The shot that was so beautiful all summer suddenly wouldn't fall, and though he has an exceptional ability to see passing lanes, he consistently either doesn't see or underestimates his opponent's, allowing them to cut in at the last second. For example, according to cleaningtheglass.com, Harry is responsible for assisting 18.6% of his teammates' baskets when he's on the court, which puts him in the 90th percentile for bigs. On the other hand, he's also responsible for turnovers on 19.1% of his possessions, which puts him in the 8th percentile for bigs.

This weekend Harry finally managed to put together a couple very solid outings and remind us all why we were so excited this summer. Let's dig into his game against Utah. If your boss is H4H, consider this post NSFW:

(A note, when possible I used a GIF made with the NBA.com video, there's less of them watermarked "Demo Mode", however for some of them I wanted more context than was provided by NBA.com so I made the gifs myself with Screenflow's demo mode, hence the water mark. Again, if anybody has good ideas for a screen capture program that's cheap or free, let me know!)

Defense:

Harry's first major contribution was this steal. It was certainly a pretty careless pass on the part of Burks, but good on Harry for keeping his head up and his hands ready, a theme throughout the night. (One interesting note, Harry comes into the Utah game with 4:26 left in the first which to my memory is the earliest he's come into a game in quite some time. It seems like he either earned some trust from Joerger with his strong showing Saturday, or the reports of Joerger being pressured into giving the young'ns more minutes are true and I'm gonna cry when he gets fired at the end of the year.)

This is my first time scouting defense, so please correct me if I'm wrong on anything, and add anything you think I've missed, but from my eye test, this seems like pretty damn good defense, both from Harry specifically and the team as a whole. First Harry switches off Crowder when Crowder sets a pick for Exum, then, when Ingles bolts for the other side of the arch, Harry and Fox double Exum. Exum is forced to chuck it to Ingles. Up until this point in the play, Justin Jackson has been on Neto, who's been posted up in the corner. Knowing Neto isn't a threat from 3, Jackson has just been clogging his path to the basket. When the ball gets tossed to Ingles, Jackson closes quickly. Ingles can't take a shot so he passes it to Neto, the uncovered man. Neto heads towards the basket, but Giles is filling the Vacuum left by Jackson, Neto zips by him, is picked up by Bagley, tries to pass it to Favors, the man Bagley has just left. Giles is nothing if not handsy. Jazz Turnover.

This one I'm not sure about. It results in a steal, which is good, but I can't fight the feeling that he was supposed to trail after Gobert, who would have been wide open for a dunk. That said, sometimes what makes a player great is knowing when to break from what they "should do", so maybe this is an instance of that. Or maybe I just don't understand defense well enough and he did exactly what he should have done! I'd love your input.

This one's really the best and worst of Giles in one clip, first he forces Favors to turn it over by crowding the incoming pass from Neto, as Favors starts to fall out of bounds he forces a pass back to Neto which Fox pokes out and Giles picks up. Then Giles sees Jackson cutting to the basket and tries to whip it to him, not noticing Ingles closing in. The snake of Giles' aggression bites itself and we're left with an ouroboros of Giles-based turnovers. Question for those who know more than me: What are the rules surrounding the contact Giles is making with Favors? It feels to me like a foul is occurring but a ref is looking right at them and no whistle is blown.

I love lots about this block, but more than anything I like how he doesn't break his "go f*%k yourself" eye contact with Gobert while receiving his high five from Bagley.

Technically Harry was credited with 2 blocks this game, but after watching one of them, he doesn't block Neto, he fouls him pretty flagrantly. If you're interested in seeing it, click here.

Finally, let's follow Harry's lead and transition from Defense to Offense:

Once again, Harry helps the team by getting into the offensive players' face and forcing an errant pass, this time off the hands of Fox. Harry then scoops it up and reminds us all while he was the unanimous number one ranked recruit in a class with Fox, Tatum, Ball, and Fultz.

Now then:

Offense:

Pretty straightforward, Harry sets the pick for Fox, rolls to the basket and floats it over Gobert, following it up and showing his inner Bagley, cleaning it up before the defense has a chance to get near it.

Harry did a pretty good job of this all game, crashing the boards to make sure other people's shots landed, this is just the most violent example.

Pretty straightforward. The Jazz have a comfortable enough lead at this point that Gobert gets a little lazy getting back on defense (who can blame him?), Harry notices, calls for the oop, gets the oop.

There was one other layup made by Harry, but

a.)it was pretty uneventful, nobody even tries guarding him.

b.)the nba.com file of it is horrific. Click here if you're nasty

Now for the part of Giles' game that I'm personally most excited about:

Passing:

Harry's first assist of the night. He waits til Fox and his defender create a pick for Bagley to roll around (are there more accurate terms I should know here?) then he passes to Bagley and once again does an excellent job of crashing the boards, just to be safe.

This is one that I think shows one of the best things about Giles' passing: the velocity with which he can whip it, allowing him to squeeze passes into windows others can't. I actually don't mind his turnovers because of this, I like that he's testing his limits. Once you look at another angle of this one you'll see that Favors actually gets a hand on it, but because Giles has thrown it so hard it still ends up in the right neighborhood and Bagley is able to corral it and turn it into two.

In the broadcast Doug said that Harry faked a low pass in order to get the defenders hands low then tossed it over. I don't see that, to be honest, but he still manages to make a perfect pass through a tight window against good defense that Buddy can catch in stride. He does this routinely.

See? Routinely. There's actually I think some confusion on this play as both Jackson and Mason cut to literally the identical spot on the court, (let me know if you see or know something I don't) but Harry straight shreds it, once again whipping a perfect pass through a tight window for Jackson to catch in stride and turn into 2.

It's ridiculous. The velocity on every single pass is out of this world.

And finally, the coup de gras. The proof that I wasn't totally crazy when I compared his passing potential to LeBron. Something that made me excitedly yell "oh shit!" even though we were losing 130-106

At this point in the game, it was pretty clear we had lost, and Harry was sorta just using the time to flex his skills. Sometimes to the team's detriment, as shortly before this he missed a wide open Troy Williams on the arch and opted for a lazy floater that was easily swatted away by Gobert. Sometimes, however, it served as a good opportunity for him to get comfortable using his full range of abilities in a game environment. Here he shows off his handle, which is pretty damn good for a guy his size. He does lose control of it for a second, but manages to make even that look good by recovering and whipping a behind the back pass to a wide open Troy Williams for 3. Consider cha boi H4H.

That does it for this edition of Learning Hoops With Dan! Have thoughts about what I should do next time? Leave it in the comments. Have answers to one of my questions? Leave it in the comments. Think my analysis was horrible and I should die in a pit? Keep it to yourself. The pit part, I mean, I'm eager for your feedback on my analysis, obvi!

Smooches!

Dan