Tiktukno: summary of today's events in sports, 8.11 (Sport1)
A lot of the things that happen in the first few weeks of the NBA season don't last.
But sometimes something comes along that leaves no doubt, that makes it clear that this is an event, a new beginning.
The first weeks of Paolo Bancro are such an event.
The interior player who was selected first in the draft by Orlando attacked the season and already it can be said that he is an almost certain candidate for the title of rookie of the season, only a long injury can stop him.
Bancro is not one of the obvious first choices, of the players who are marked as the top potential in the cycle without a doubt, of the bunkers (it was impossible to avoid the play on words).
Until the last moment, most draft experts thought that Orlando would select Jabari Smith at all and that Bancro would be selected third by Houston.
After summer league the hype was around OKC's Chet Holmgren, who was injured and will not play at all this season.
Bancro is considered a gifted scorer with some question marks and a feeling that he will need time to acclimate to the NBA.
That's why his dominance from the moment the season started is very surprising, even though it is the first choice.
Such dominance from the first moment is very rare even in the players who develop to be the most senior.
Almost everyone needs at least a few months to figure out how to deal with taller, physical, athletic, experienced, smarter and more talented opponents than anything they've met to date.
Not in Encro.
The feeling he conveys is that he is comfortable, that it is easy for him to face NBA players, that the opponents are the ones who need to understand how to adapt to him and not the other way around.
Question marks?
You made him laugh.
Bancro (Photo: GettyImages, Douglas P. DeFelice)
A true point-forward and point-center
When you think of the evolution of basketball in the last decade, especially of the interior players, you think first of all about shooting from the outside.
Almost every tall player who comes to the league today at least tries to throw three-pointers, and those who are able to score them with reasonable percentages give their team the option of maximum spacing and create a problem for the heavier centers who have difficulty when they have to get out of the paint.
But in the senior interior players, the biggest revolution has to do with their ability to function as creative players.
Players who used to be taught to play close to the basket, to focus on post play and blocks for guards, are now learning to function as ball carriers for everything.
They are the ones who start attacks, who others block, who attack with their faces to the basket, who shrink the defense and arrange convenient shots for the shooters.
We are increasingly entering the era of the point-forward who can also function as a point-center.
The best player in the world today, Giannis Antetokounmpo, belongs to this genre.
The moment when Jason Kidd, then Milwaukee's coach, put the ball in Giannis' hand was one of the most important in the last decade.
Zaion Williamson also quickly became the central ball carrier for New Orleans, and with time Pascal Siakam is also becoming more and more like that.
Bunkero (2.08 m, 113 kilos) is probably the first interior player in the history of the NBA to receive the ball at his hand from his first moment in the league.
Officially his position is power forward, but he is the one who initiates most attacks and the one who creates most of the significant action.
Orlando's intriguing coach, Jamal Moseley, has recently put together a rotation in which Bancro serves as a low-lying center on Wendell Carter's rest minutes.
So when he's not being used as a point-forward, he's being used as a true point-center.
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Bancro with Magic coach Jamal Mosley (Photo: GettyImages, Dustin Satloff)
Born for it
It is no coincidence that Bancro is the first interior player to receive the ball at hand from his first moment in the league, he is probably the first one who did not have to acclimatize to the position but arrived ready for it.
He carries the ball with ease, his ball control is excellent, he is most effective when he attacks with his face to the basket.
Most infielders are not quick enough to handle his changes of direction and speed, most outfielders are not strong enough to handle his physicality.
Many times he doesn't need a block or drill to create the initial advantage in the attack, in most cases he just gets to a comfortable shot himself.
Bancro's most impressive feature is his mastery of the finer nuances of possession.
He recognizes the right direction to attack from, the most correct way to attack, when to continue to the ring and when to stop on the way, when to turn and in which direction, when to deliver and to whom.
And once he recognizes the right action, he has the tools to do it.
He knows how to get aggressively to the ring, he has a soft hand from any position and any type of shot in the more distant areas of the paint, his passing ability is high.
The combination of making decisions and executing them does not seem to belong to a rookie who has not yet celebrated 20 and is in his first weeks in the league, but to a player with years of experience in the NBA.
To hang on a very high tree, when I see Bancro I feel that this could be a good answer to the question of how Karl Malone would play if he grew up in this day and age.
His second most impressive trait is his desire to be dominant.
Bancro is one of the players who wants to leave a mark on every possession, who feels at every moment that it is his job to create something.
If he recognizes an advantage, he has no problem creating a shot situation for himself even five attacks in a row, until the defense has to react in a way that turns other players away.
His usage percentage is 29.4, not at the psychic level of Janis and Luka Doncic this year, but yes a usage percentage reserved almost only for the most senior players.
He is shooting 17.5 field goals and 8.3 free throws per game, en route to 23.5 points per game, along with 8.3 rebounds and 3.6 assists.
This is what it would look like if he grew up nowadays.
Karl Malone (Photo: GettyImages, Todd Warshaw)
question marks
Of course, it is very early to start tying crowns to Bancro and get seriously into historical comparisons, right now it is mainly a huge potential that shows an early ability to be realized.
We've seen in the past players who started strong and faded quickly, Tyreke Evans is a good example of this, and we've seen a series of first picks find ways to complicate their careers.
But in the vast majority of cases such an impressive opening indicates a great player in the making.
Hoping he stays healthy, I allow myself to assume that Bancro's range will range from an All-Star with limitations in the style of Blake Griffin or Karl Anthony Towns (two first-round picks with excellent rookie seasons) to a player who changes the fate of a club that is starting to forget what a good team looks like.
The main question mark surrounding Bancro has to do with the fact that he plays in a team that is not yet trying to win but mainly to let the youngsters develop.
The most important screening of talented youngsters comes at the point where they have to lead a team that is expected to succeed, and Orlando is not there yet.
In the first month in the league, no one is judging him on a moderately weighted shooting percentage of 55.6, or on fluctuations during games, but in two years the expectations will already be higher and he will have to prove his ability to be efficient.
The main offensive question mark is Bancro's outside shooting.
He throws 3.9 threes a game and hits them at 25.6 percent, from half distance he hits at 33.3 percent.
Giannis and Zaion prove that you don't need outside shooting to function as a senior point forward, but to do so, the efficiency in the paint needs to be exceptional.
It's hard to know how Bancro will perform away from the ball, alongside other senior players, because at the moment it almost doesn't happen.
He does not have an ideal pick-n-roll partner in which he will serve as a blocker, and this is an ability that will be important for him to develop.
Giannis' big change in Milwaukee's championship season was that he switched to functioning more as a blocker in the pick and roll than just a ball carrier.
Defensively, Bunkero overall is acclimating better than expected in the league.
He uses his size to make it difficult for opponents to get shots, he has a presence in the paint.
But this is also one of the things that will be seriously examined if and when Orlando develops into a winning team.
Will it really be possible to use Bancro as a defensive center?
Will the protection of the ring be good enough?
Will he be able to deal with fast foreign players in exchanges?
Will he master the nuances of the defensive game as he masters the attack?
These are all still open questions, but it's certainly good that he doesn't seem lost on this side as many expected him to be and as characterizes many early Rockies.
Inconspicuous, not lost.
Bancro in defense (Photo: GettyImages, Richard Rodriguez)
Start of a group
Bancro is not the only reason to watch Orlando games this year.
This is a young, talented and intriguing team that plays differently from most teams in the league.
In the last week Mosely settled on a very unusual five, probably the highest five in the league.
This five includes three players with a height of 2.08 m - Bancro, Carter and Franz Wagner, who plays one of the guard positions.
And the starting small forward is the player with the wonderful name Bol Bol.
For those who don't know, this is the son of Manot Ball, 2.31 m, who was the second tallest player in NBA history.
The son fell only a little far from the tree, he settles for 2.18 m and a limb bar of 2.34 m.
In his first three years in the league the thin Ball was considered a curiosity, this year he suddenly looks like a legitimate player in the making.
Despite his height, he functions as an outside player for everything, one who throws from the outside, dribbles and passes.
He is currently the best outside scorer in Orlando's top five, and defenses have a hard time stopping him from going up for a shot.
When he has the ball in his hand it's mesmerizing, unlike anything we've seen before, and with time and minutes he gains confidence and more of the attacking game goes through him.
Defensively, his height creates deterrence in the paint, but he struggles to deal with both quick and physical players.
In any case, this is a 22-year-old player who is just beginning to understand how to use his unique abilities, his development into a legitimate NBA player is one of the most interesting of the first weeks of the season.
Wagner is currently the supporting star of the Magic.
He has the ability to get into the ring, which together with his height makes him a very effective penetrator.
He shares with Bancro the management of the offensive game and while the threes are not going in for now, he proved as a rookie that he has a good shot.
Carter settles comfortably into a secondary role as a center who can play both inside and outside and serves as a defensive anchor of sorts.
At the age of 23, he already looks like a veteran and efficient player, perhaps because he is indeed the oldest player in the quintet.
The one who completes the five is Jaylen Suggs who is still trying to find his place, he is an energetic athlete with good defense who occasionally shows his offensive potential.
When point guard Cole Anthony returns, it is likely that he will get the role of the sixth player that suits him and wake up the bench a bit, which is currently made up mainly of other young athletes who are not able to improve.
If Markelle Foltz and Jonathan Isaac are still basketball players, they could solidify the rotation later this season.
One of the biggest stories of the beginning of the season in the league.
Bull Bull (Photo: GettyImages, Mike Ehrmann)
The high lineups make Orlando a very difficult team to guard.
They look like an even bigger version of the Toronto, only much less stable and polished.
There is always a mis-match that can be exploited, and Moseley's players know how to exploit it.
Almost every attack includes penetration by Bancro or Wagner and from there you can continue in all kinds of directions.
There is a lot of play between tall people, because almost everyone is tall.
The ability to get to the paint is the key quality of this offensive game, Orlando ranks in the top seven in both points in the paint and free throws.
In defense, the size is still less evident, and in general it is still difficult to characterize the Magic's defensive game, because some of the players are just learning to get to know themselves on this side.
Winning games is not enough right now, Orlando shares with Houston the worst record in the league.
But most of its games are close, and in most of them there are quite a few minutes in which Moseley's group looks dominant and strong.
This could definitely be a team that over the course of the year will learn to settle down and win a large portion of the games it is currently losing.
And if not this year, then there is a high chance that in the next year or two this team will also start winning.
Bancro's amazing start makes Orlando a team with a much more promising future horizon than a month ago.
sport
NBA
Tags
Orlando Magic
Paolo Bancro
