Boston Celtics: Summer League assignments for JD Davison
Boston Celtics need JD Davison to improve his ball control
The last thing the Boston Celtics need is a player that likes to turn the ball over. So JD Davison must improve significantly in this area. The turnovers per game sounds bad on the surface (2.9), but turning it over at that frequency in just 25.8 minutes per game sounds worse.
Davison had just two games at Alabama where he didn’t commit a turnover, which is, well, not good. To put that in perspective, Davison’s per 40 minutes for turnovers is 4.5 according to Basketball Reference. That’s unacceptable.
The worst of Davison happened early in the season. He had seven giveaways in just 20 minutes against Drake and eight in 23 minutes against Tennessee. Those were career highs. He didn’t get better over time either. Through his first 16 games, Davison had equal or more turnovers than assists six times. That became 10 times over the remaining 17 games.
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Many of Davison’s turnovers come from poor decision-making. And apparently he can be pressured because his ball handling isn’t tight. It will be interesting to see if teams apply full court pressures and traps on Davison regularly in Vegas to test him. And what will Boston’s coaching staff do if Davison can’t handle the pressure? Will they take the ball out of his hands, or potentially even pull him from a game?
Thankfully, the Celtics can take their time with Davison. Summer League is the place for Davison to screw up. It will hurt, and it will be frustrating. But better now than in a year or two. Because if Davison can’t clean this up, he won’t get much of a chance to play in Boston. Hopefully Davison learns from his mistakes, because on paper it looks like he will make plenty of them.