The Good Kind of Mentally Twisted

An article by Mike Monroe in yesterday's San Antonio Express News points out that George Hill has missed "nearly every shot he attempted in the three games he played in the Las Vegas Summer Pro League this week."

Coach Popovich used the term "mentally twisted," to characterize Hill's shooting slump.

But, in what seems like a diliberate flaunting of his own mad genius, Popovich thinks this is great: because Hill has shown he can defend at an NBA level, and seems to recognize the amount of work it's going to take to start putting the ball through the hoop at this level.

Lafayette Lever was a similar style of 1-2 combo guard in the 80's, and averaged 18.9 points. 8.9 rebounds and 8.0 assists one season with the Denver Nuggets, despite coming into the league without much of a shot. Laver agrees with Pop:

“I made a bet with a bunch of scouts in Orlando (at the pre-draft camp). Some of them said George wouldn’t even get drafted. I told them I was sure he’d go in the first round. I’m just as sure he’s going to be fine for the Spurs, because he’s a basketball player and he knows how to play and he competes and he defends.”

There you go. You heard it from Lafayette first.

Please Don't Call Him a Soufflé

I've started my digging to see just who this George Hill cat is. The more I turn up the more exciting the pick seems.

Mike Monroe of San Antonio Express-News has an encouraging report on how excited the Spurs are about this guy:

All you need to know about George Hill, the player the Spurs drafted in the first round of Thursday's NBA draft, is this: There was a celebration in the Spurs' draft night war room when the Houston Rockets made Frenchman Nicolas Batum the 25th selection of the first round, leaving Hill to the Spurs.

He also picks up on the quote from Pop I referenced yesterday about some players needing to be left "baking in the oven" for a while before joining the team, and claims the Spurs think Hill is, as Mike Monroe puts it, a "perfectly risen soufflé."

Another Express-News piece by Jeff McDonald inflicts yet another food metaphor (Hill isn't big on Tex Mex yet), but gives even more detail on how stoked Pop and the other Spurs brass are on this guy.

A 6-foot-2 scorer who played both guard positions in college, Hill is projected as a point guard in the NBA. The Spurs expect him to compete with Jacque Vaughn for the backup position behind Tony Parker next season.

“He's a really solid player at both ends of the court,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “I honestly believe he will make our team better right off the bat.”

No D-League? No 4 years playing for an Eastern Block European team? If you believe Pop, then this is a very un-Spurs kind of draft. And in this case that's actually a good thing.

UPDATE: I may have been a little hard on the Express-News guys for their food analogies, especially considering some of the silly content of my writing so far. I just really, seriously, don't want "The Soufflé" to catch on as Hill's (or anyone's) nickname.