Charlotte Hornets power forward Grant Williams emphasized identifying what other teams like to do following Sunday’s 111-106 road loss vs. the Toronto Raptors.
(via Charlotte Hornets):
Reporter: “Transition defense hasn’t been a problem by much for you guys. Besides Toronto being good in the open court, can you put your finger on something for what didn’t work for you guys there today?”
Williams: “It was just the effort getting back. It’s not like we were offensive rebounding and crashing and putting pressure on the rim; it was just simple mistakes of not identifying our man in transition. I had one myself where I allowed Kelly [Olynyk] to get one. It wasn’t just our guys off the bench; it was the guys who start too, and we had to be better in that. Understanding the priority of what teams do, and taking that away from them, because that’s the first step being a young team, you have to understand what makes other teams good. Is this team a paint team? Like Orlando is a team that we have to really protect the paint and make sure we finish plays. Or is it a team that plays in transition like Toronto? Is a team that shoots a lot of threes, and we have to get them off the three-point line, but also being mindful that we can’t run them off, we have to get into their bodies. It’s just understanding what teams want to accomplish on the offensive end of the basketball, and then continuing to play good offense on our side, because we have a lot of talented players, we have the potential to be a great team, but we have to commit to playing the right way over and over every single night.”
