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Want a change: Abdia must jump at the chance in the second season in the NBA

After the not-so-easy baptism of fire alongside Westbrook, Danny Abdia arrives at an entirely new reality in the new Washington.

With a coach who can become one of the key figures in his career, a vacuum that can change his development trajectory but also no small potential for a fall - this time it will be a real test year for him

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• Danny Abdia

• Washington Wizards

Assaf Ravitz

Tuesday, September 28, 2021, 4:00 p.m.

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Danny Abdia on the Washington Wizards Open Day (from the Wizards' Twitter account)

Danny Abdia's second season in the NBA, the Supermore season, kicks off today (Tuesday), with the opening of the Washington Wizards' training camp.

Abdia, according to reports, is expected to get into things gradually, reminiscent of an ankle fracture from last season, but as far as is known at the moment should be fully fit for the Wizards' season-opening game, in Toronto on 10/20.

That injury, as well as Omri Caspi's recent seasons, are a reminder that before anything else, to fit in and advance in the NBA you have to stay fit most of the time.

Danny will need a combination of luck and consistent work on his body to stay healthy and allow the rest of the issues to manifest.

Assuming he is indeed healthy, he is expected to have an intriguing year that is very difficult to assess at the moment how it will develop.

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Danny Abdia: "Westbrook strengthened me a lot mentally"

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A new season, a new challenge.

Abdia (Photo: GettyImages, Rob Carr)

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The new situation

Abdia stayed in Washington, but Washington did not stay the same team from last season.

Russell Westbrook and Scott Brooks left the capital, and Wes Ansald Jr. was appointed head coach, for the first time in his career.

Ansald was in charge of defense in Denver and is considered first and foremost a defense expert, we know very little about his offensive philosophy.

Even the remaining star, Bradley Bill, is not an actor identified with a particular style.

After a season where the ball was most of the time in the hands of the two stars, especially Westbrook, with very few complex sets or ball-free movement, there is an opportunity to start over with a style that allows more players to express initiative.

But not at all sure this is the new coach's plan.

The second big change that happened in the summer was the expansion of the rotation. Last year Washington was sparse in Danny's forward positions, this year it will be one of the deepest teams in the league in those positions. Abdia, Roy Hachimura and Davis Bartens have been joined by Kyle Kozma, rookie expert Threesome Corey Kispert and can also be considered Cantabius Caldwell-Pop, who is expected to get minutes in the small forward position and could very well start in the top five in that position. These are six players who are supposed to get minutes in two positions, part of a roster of 12-13 legitimate NBA players. This is not a coherently built roster, Washington just took everything it could get in a trade on Westbrook and did not make follow-up moves as many thought she would do.

Except for Bill and Spencer Dinvidi coordinator, no one can feel he has guaranteed minutes, including Abdia, who is the youngest of the rotation players.

Washington is looking for contemporary success, also to persuade Bill to sign a long-term contract, she will be much less busy this year developing young talent.

If Abdia wants to get minutes, he will have to convince Ansald that he has something to contribute here and now, as he struggles for minutes with players who won the championship two years ago and with one of the best outside machine guns in the world.

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Abdia needs to convince him, and fast.

Wes Ansald Jr. (Photo: Reuters)

Keyword: Playmaker

How will Abdia gain minutes on this roster? Perhaps the first step will be to listen to what the people who make decisions about it expect from it. Both coach Wes Ansald and general manager Tommy Shepherd have been talking about Abdia for the past month, and both have one key word back: playmaker. While Danny has barely performed with the ball in his rookie season, Washington does not forget that he was selected in the top 10 much thanks to his potential to be a creative player. No one expects him to be the center ball leader right now, but it seems the Wizards plan to create opportunities for him to act as a secondary creator on offense, the second player to get a ball, perform creative actions, even call a blocker and conduct pick n roll moves in front of an already moving defense.

Abdia showed sparks of this ability mainly in the reserve team and in the final stages of his last season in the Israeli league, back to the corona lag when many of the foreigners were no longer and the level in the league was quite low. On the one hand, a player who does such things at the age of 19 in the senior league is supposed to develop into a player who can be a playmaker even at the highest levels, on the other hand the leap is huge and it is a process that did not really start a year ago. Abdia's impressive game vision could be spotted in a few single moments, but he didn't seem confident with the ball in hand, especially as he tried to create shot situations for himself. The fact that he has not played in the summer league in any of the years does not help, because the summer league is exactly the place to experiment with parts that are not reflected during the season.

Talking about Abdia as a playmaker is also a code name for the possibility, which Shepard even explicitly stated, that Ansald would prefer to get the young Israeli off the bench. This way he will be able to play in the rest minutes of Bill and / or Dinvidi (it is not yet known if Ansald will try to divide the rest minutes so that one of them will always remain on the floor) and more of the game will go through him. In that sense, going down to the bench could be a gift for Danny, an opportunity to develop the part of his game that he must develop to become a significant NBA player. The question of who rises in the top five and who rises from the bench depends, many times, on needs and not on ability. If this is Abdia's way of getting regular minutes and taking advantage of them to be a more dominant attacking player, going down to the bench is definitely an opportunity and not a problem.

It seems that Abdia is going to get this opportunity, partly because Ansald's staff do not have enough creative players.

None of the other forwards on the roster is a player who knows how to lead a ball, manage attacks and make decisions at a high enough level to do so consistently in the NBA, if Abdia proves he is capable it will be his important advantage over his competitors over minutes.

In such a situation, he may function as a kind of shooting guard in certain substitute formations, allowing Ansald to play with three of his forwards together.

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The hope: The lack of creative actors will open up a new chance for Danny.

Kyle Kozma (Photo: GettyImages, Rob Carr)

The bread and butter

Last year Washington had another young man who came down to the bench to function as a secondary playmaker.

Troy Brown cleared the place in the top five for loss also because the coaching staff wanted the ball to be more in his hand.

But pretty soon it turned out that Brown just wasn’t good enough as a playmaker, and didn’t develop enough as a guard and outside scorer to get consistent minutes.

Eventually Brown, who started last season as a promising talent, finished it out of rotation, moved on a trade to Chicago and is now replacing a margin there.

Brown should serve as Abdia's warning sign.

In the NBA today it is not enough to be quite fine in many areas, one must be good in some of them.

Abdia has more pure talent than Brown as a playmaker: he is taller, sees better play and has a higher potential to develop an effective rise to shoot from a dribble and an effective finish in color.

But even if that's what his coach and general manager emphasize, in order to earn consistent minutes he will have to be effective in areas that are the bread and butter of the complementary wingers in the league today: personal defense and threes.

Personal defense may be Abdia’s most important advantage over the rest of the forwards on the roster. Compared to the playmaking ability, the personal defense he has already expressed in the NBA. In the month before his injury he developed into a very good personal guard, not only relative to Rocky but in general. He knows how to use his size to make it even harder for senior players to get good shots and excelled in the small nuances that players with a sense of personal retention have. Abdia is also a good and smart team keeper, one who makes the right rotations and calls for high level moves, he is also a good defensive rebounder in a team that may have a rebound problem this year. These qualities can make him one of Ansald's favorites, who comes, as mentioned, on a defense expert standard.

Every team in the East must have a proper guard on high and physical forwards. This is a conference by Yannis Antocompo, Kevin Durant, Jason Taitum, Julius Randall, Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris, among others. No one else on the Wizards' roster looks like someone who can take on such tasks: Hachimura and Bartens are just bad guards, KCP is too small physically and Kozma has evolved as a team guard in recent years but has yet to prove he is also a high-level personal guard. Danny Abdia probably won’t slow down Yannis and Durant, almost no one does, but he may be the only Washington player to be able to make it difficult for some of the players on this list. It can make him a player who finishes many games, even if he does not open them.

On the other side of the 3-and-D the starting point is less good.

Abdia has yet to demonstrate the ability to maintain stability in shooting from the outside in a way that allows it to be treated even as an average three-pointer.

That does not mean it will not happen.

He continued to work on shooting this summer as well and for a large part of the players this is an ability that improves with the years and training.

Danny started the rookie season with two months in which he scored more than 43 percent off the arc, which may indicate that he has found the right throwing technique for him and his main goal is to maintain it throughout the entire season, despite the load and fatigue.

But his low penalty percentage may indicate not very high potential as an outside slinger.

The goal for the coming season is mainly to get closer to the average percentage in the league, which is a 35 dialing area.

What will the shooting and defense look like after the injury?

Abdia (Photo: GettyImages, Will Newton)

The importance of maintaining proportions

The second season in the NBA is an important season, but no more or less than others. It's still an early stage in a long and arduous journey, and many players take longer to adapt to the league. To understand this point Abdia can simply look at his teammates. Dinwidi scored 4.8 points per game in his second year and only made a leap in the fifth year, Bartans scored 5.9 points in his second year and broke only in the fourth, both needed a new situation to become significant players in the league, both currently earning over $ 15 million per season. The overarching goal is to maintain proportions, keep working hard and wait for the right moment, both individually and as a group.

This season of Washington can develop in every possible direction.

Abdia can find himself fighting for a few minutes in a tight rotation or becoming a significant player on a legitimate team.

Enseld can turn out to be one of the most important figures in his career, as the right man in the right place who knows how to develop youngsters and connects to a smart player with good defense, he can also become another temporary figure with little importance.

During the season there can be a trade on Bradley Bill that will fundamentally change the team's goals, a trade on other players who will turn to Danny Minutes, a strike of absences that will change rotation (e.g., due to Corona matters) and also a trade on Abdia himself because he may be the player with the second High on the roster after Bill.

Boring, apparently, will not be in Washington this year.

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