by Chicagojayfan » Fri May 05, 2023 9:48 am
Regarding Kaluma, people get heated during games and sometimes go too far in criticisms, but I don't know that it is better or worse than what we see from other guys having bad games as well. Bottom line for Art is that he's got great physical talent, and brought great hustle on defense and on the boards about every night out. He was able to match up physically with 4's in the BE and when his shot was falling outside he could be a really bad matchup for many of them, but the knee injury in the off season hurt his ability to work on the skills he wanted to add last year, and he had a lot of rust as well - so he struggled offensively to find a rhythm in the offense where he either got a shot or got rid of the ball fast enough to keep the flow of the offense going
So we saw a lot of inconsistency over the year and even during games. When he focused on getting into the paint as part of the offense and getting offense off of hustle plays, I thought he made the team a whole lot better, but that didn't show up every game. Similarly, if we'd had a bit more consistent 3 PT shooting, I suspect he may have had more paint opportunities off of the spacing he would have gotten.
Either way, we can all see the talent and can guess at how good he can get if his skills catch up to his ability.