Bull ****. Stitches posted a clip of Dante boxing out friggin' Bogut successfully. I don't think he's afraid of contact so much as letting his teammates down. I was at the Portland game with good seats, and one of the first plays of the game was Dante driving in the lane and missing a floater. He's obviously afraid of something, but I believe he just doesn't want his teammates pissed at him for missing shots when he could have passed it to them. If that's the case, he WILL overcome this once he starts having some success offensively.
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Having said that, I can understand why people might think he's afraid of getting creamed by driving to the basket. Boxing out a big man like Bogut proves this kid isn't afraid of contact, but driving in the lane and getting hammered is a lot easier way to get hurt than boxing out. I wouldn't blame him for being afraid of getting hurt by driving to the rim, but right now I'm convinced his problem is not wanting to let his teammates down by missing shots, which is something he'll overcome with experience.
He is a really weird case. I can't quite figure him out yet. Cy might have a point about his legs being dead... you have to realize that he's been playing basketball for close to 8 months without any rest after not playing any basketball in the previous 7 months. He got in SLC after the draft, had summer league(6-7 games), had pre-world cup camp(10 games), World Cup(6-7 games), then a week later he had to be in SLC for pre-season(6-7 games), then has had 50 games in 4 months in the league. He's already had about 80 games in the last 8 months and he's said that the most he's had before that is about 25-30 games in a year. That must be a crazy increase both in quantity of the games and in the quality of the competition.
I have no idea what's with him not attacking the rim even when he has clear path to it. If you remember summer league, he tried to dunk twice through defenders but got hard fouled and had to be scraped off of the floor. I wonder if this has something to do with his hesitation. Just look at him even when he attacks the rim. It's like... he searches in the lane, probes... and looks for the pass... and looks... and looks... and then sees that he's almost at the rim and there's nobody around him and he flicks a somewhat weird layup without even jumping much off the floor, simply because he seems shocked that he's gotten that far without anybody picking him up... I think this has to change. When he goes in the paint he needs to go with the idea to score first and pass second. The thought process should be:
0. get into the paint
1. attack the rim
2. if not possible(i.e. if it's well defended) seek the interior pass
3. if not possible swing it to the corner 3 or outside of the paint
What he seems to be doing right now can be characterized this way:
0. get into the paint
1. probe and looks for the interior pass...
2. look for another pass ... maybe go to the baseline for the pass to the corner 3
3. if by any chance you are allowed close to the rim without anybody around you... maybe you can lay it up... but no... that's never going to happen... just look for the pass...
To me he genuinely looks surprised when he gets close to the rim and some of his layups look off-balance and scared, like he's trying to avoid a non-existing defender... he changes his shot on the layups because he expects it to be blocked or something... I really just want to see him go to the rim decisively and consistently... I want to see him attack the rim like he means it, not like he's found himself under the rim by accident and he wonders if he should shoot it or get out of there before he turns it over...
