re: Pels v Grizzlies: Zion vs Ja, and yes Zion is better than Ja

quote:

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Because he's been colder than JJ so they decided to try Kira in his minutes and it worked out better.

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Eh, Kira did a couple of nice things, and I know we all loved seeing him out there, but he didn't exactly light the world on fire out there. Part of his +/- rating of -16 was that he was mainly out there with the reserves, and Hernangomez really did not play well (if he's going to play like that, we'd be better off playing Hayes). But Kira is small, and there were a couple of times when he just bounced off bigger guys while trying to defend. I think that Griffin was right when he said that Kira needs to gain 15 pounds.

I think that part of the decision to play him over NAW last night was that NAW simply doesn't have the foot speed to effectively guard Ja, and Kira does. Kira did a pretty good job of staying in front of Ja, and that's hard to do.

All I'm saying is that I don't necessarily think that this was a permanent change. In my opinion, NAW is a better defender right now against bigger guards.

For example, Kira would give up 40 pounds to John Wall on Tuesday. I'm just not sure that Kira's strong enough to handle that assignment.