Roundup: Gallinari is Back

With Armani Jeans Milano struggling badly (firing their coach, GM , and hiring a new point guard) the team has embraced Gallinari as a hope for some visible improvement ever since he returned from his injury a week ago. Despite this weekend’s victory against Cimberio Varese, we can’t say there’s still much change in the direction of the team: still winless in the Euroleague, they have only been able to collect victories against the three worst placed teams in the domestic competition, and all three came at home. Not the happiest times for the former European champions.

Anyway, it’s still remarkable that a 19-year-old kid becomes the leader of a Euroleague squad. Danilo had 18 points, 7 rebounds and 3 steals against Unicaja in the Euroleague, and went for 16 points, 6 rebounds and 6 steals against Varese in the Italian Lega. We’re not talking about a guy who randomly gets points in the flow of the game, but a player who actively takes decisions on the court. Not surprising since Gallinari is arguably the best one-on-one player on the team. As we could see against Unicaja, he repeatedly attacked his opponents off the dribble. It’s a combination of his excellent ball-handling skills with both hands, great use of his body, terrific footwork, and very nice ability to finish around the rim with difficult layups. He delivered the play of the game with a wonderful coast-to-coast play, dribbling in traffic and finishing with a left-handed lay-up. With his team trailing in the last quarter, he went as far as to demand the ball and take it up-court himself.

2696[c]Photo: Armani Jeans Milano[/c]
A pretty decent shooter, Gallinari uses his size advantage and the slashing menace he represents to release his shot even with an opponent in front of him. However, he needs to get more consistent, and indeed he credited a combined 1/11 from behind the arc this past week. He’s also looking pretty straight forward whenever he decides to attack his opponents, in the sense that he looks for the basket himself, usually with excellent results, while passing the ball emerges as a very secondary option. Actually, he’s yet to credit a single assist this season after 5 games, and by any means, it’s not like he can’t pass the ball…

The amount of steals he collected this past week was really impressive. His length on the wings becomes very annoying for his opponents and pretty helpful for him to reach the ball, while he’s pretty smart attacking a player’s dribble. Still he looked a bit slower than usual in terms of lateral quickness on the defensive end, perhaps as a temporary result of his recent injury and absence from the court. On the other hand, he delivered in the rebounding department, and showed some leaping ability dunking the ball from a standstill position off an offensive capture.

Above anything, he showed character against Unicaja, despite the tough moments his team is going through, fighting throughout the game until he fouled out with a couple of minutes to go. He’s a winner, a player who steps up in the decisive moments.

You never know how Vitor Faverani is going to look in any given game. Fortunately, coming off an increasingly bad run after his promising season start, this weekend he rebounded for a very positive showing against Alicante Costa Blanca in the LEB league. Perhaps not by coincidence, he recovered his place in the starting five for this game. After all, he’s very much about momentum and motivation, still not a consistent guy from a mental point of view.

What Faverani brought to this game was aggressiveness and a lot of activity. He repeatedly attacked the rim, trying to take advantage of his wonderful physical conditions. The guy is so long, so greatly mobile, and already pretty strong, that he becomes a headache for any defense whenever he decides to use his gifts up to his potential. Vitor delivered three powerful dunks: the first one, after a pick and roll play, a situation where he feels extremely comfortable; the second, just rising up from a standstill position for a one-handed dunk after receiving the ball in the paint, and you can bet he managed to put the ball way above the rim; while the final one happened after he received the ball just in front of the basket on the three-point line, and as nobody came to cover him, he just took a few steps and smashed the ball with his right hand in spectacular fashion.

Faverani kept attacking the rim all the game long, drawing fouls and sometimes scoring off contact for and-one plays. He also had a very nice finish with his left hand, showing soft touch also with his off-hand. In some other game you would see him killing the opponent team from the low post or the mid-range distance, but this wasn’t the occasion. There were no low post situations for him to play one on one, and barely any shooting from range. He only once went for an off-the-dribble mid range jumper--in a very complicated move that didn’t work, but looked pretty decent-- as the shot clock was running out.

The overall activity he displayed was obvious in the rebounding department, managing to grab 13 captures (to go along with 15 points), 5 of them off the opponent glass. Vitor worried more than usual about boxing out his opponents, and was always ready to pursue the ball on the offensive end, eventually being pretty effective just by tipping the ball to a teammate. Also looking more solid on defense, he still overreacts in some situations, such as fakes or defensive helps. Indeed, he was fouled out after 16 minutes of playing time according to the official stats, although it looked more like 20 minutes at least. Anyway, he particularly shined in the three times that the opposing players challenged his lateral quickness from the perimeter. And one of the highlights of the game was a terrific dunk he had on Henk Norel.

Anyway, if we have learned anything about Faverani, it is not to get carried away by his good performances. Chances are he will struggle soon, and a lot. However, whenever (and if) he figures out how to stay consistent, the guy is going to be really good.