As he prepares for his second NBA season, Sixers swingman Ricky Council has been participating this summer in the private runs held in Los Angeles by Sixers assistant Rico Hines, writes Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Council is working on fine-tuning his game in the hope of earning rotation minutes in Philadelphia in 2024/25.
“This summer has been a whole lot of work, maybe even more than last year,” Council said. “Keeping my shooting touch up, working on different finishing moves, just learning the game, playing against good competition every day. All that’s going to help me in the long run.”
Having spent most of his rookie season in 2023/24 on a two-way contract, Council didn’t see a ton of action at the NBA level, but he impressed in his limited minutes, averaging 5.4 points in 32 outings (9.0 MPG), with a shooting line of .482/.375/.746. He knows that in order to get more playing time in ’24/25, he’ll have to show he can excel in a complementary role.
“We have Paul George. We have Tyrese Maxey and we have Joel Embiid,” Council said. “I don’t expect they’ll need much off the dribble in that nature. So I just need to be able to hit open shots and guard people.”
Here’s more from around the Eastern Conference:
- There’s “zero truth” to rumors that billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is interested in bidding on the Celtics, a source close to Bezos tells Nick Wingfield of The Information. As Kurt Helin of NBC Sports notes, there has been speculation in league circles that Bezos may have interest in being involved in an expansion franchise in Seattle, but it doesn’t sound like he’s looking to gain control of the defending champions, whose majority ownership group put its stake up for sale earlier this summer.
- Appearing on the Club 520 Podcast (YouTube link), Bucks guard Damian Lillard admitted that his first year in Milwaukee last season was a “harder transition” than he expected. In addition to going through a tumultuous period in his personal life at the time, he also found it challenging to adjust to playing alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton after being traded from Portland to Milwaukee just days before training camp. “I’m having to get used to playing with two (great) players and I don’t want to stop them from doing what they do,” Lillard said (hat tip to HoopsHype). “But I got to find how to be the best version of me within this too, so it was just a lot of moving parts. It was more difficult than I thought it would would be.”
- The Celtics sit atop ESPN’s predictions for the 2024/25 Eastern Conference standings, followed by the Knicks, Sixers, Cavaliers, and Bucks, in that order. The Magic round out ESPN’s projected group of top-six playoff teams, followed by the Pacers, Heat, Hawks, and Bulls in the play-in group. For what it’s worth, ESPN’s panel sees a big disparity between the the top two and bottom two play-in teams, projecting 46 wins for Indiana and 45 for Miami, compared to 31 for Atlanta and 30 for Chicago.
Celtics team to beat …… yes.
KP situation imo will hurt them this yr.
It’s Knicks, Bucks, Cavs, Sixers to me. Heat I’ll have to see them do it. But don’t count them out.
Pacers and Magic should take a step up. But you got to do it, we’ll see. East is deeper this year. Going to be fun.
“KP situation imo will hurt them this yr.”
I only see that hurting them if he ends up missing the entire playoffs. Winning individual regular season games are much easier than a playoffs series and the C’s finished 21-4 during the season without KP. Their playoffs record without him was 10-2 but they’ll need him on the court if they want to have any hope of repeating.
Between Horford, Kornet, Tillman, Queta and possibly rookie Anton Watson at times, they have enough big man depth to still have a successful regular season. KP will be back at some point and I’d expect the coaching staff to plan it so he’s good to go come playoffs time. (barring a season ending injury which this one isn’t expected to be)
He’s banged up already. Won’t be ready for start of season. They are not winning unless he’s healthy. He’s been hurt and missed big mins in every team he’s been on.
I agree and he was banged up at this time during last offseason. IIRC he rolled an ankle during the Fiba games and his summer and training camp got put on hold until the coaching staff felt he was good to go.
This current injury (torn retinaculum and dislocated posterior tibialis tendon) was actually a pretty weird one that rarely happens and he had surgery right away and his expected time to return puts him somewhere between late October to early December, barring any setbacks.
I fully expect the Celtics to pamper his recovery time until they feels he’s good to go. They’ve got to the point where they’re actually pretty good at this after dealing with Robert Williams injury history in recent years as well as from making sure Al Horford gets plenty of rest throughout the season, mostly on G2’s of B2B.
Kristaps injury history speaks for itself and I won’t even try to predict if he’ll hold up a second time all the way into the Finals, if they even get there, but I trust that Boston will do everything possible to make sure he’s out there.
Boston trading for Porzingis sort of reminds me of when the Celtics added Bill Walton in 85/86. Both came to Boston with a lengthy injury history and both helped the C’s win a chip in their first season in green.
Walton only played 10 regular season games the following year (86-87) but did play more games (12) during their playoff run that season that ended in a 4-2 Finals loss to the Magic’s Lakers.
If Porzingis has a similar second season in Boston then so be it. You can’t control players getting injured, the C’s front office & coaching staff know this and prepared enough to mitigate not having him during the season.
Yes, Celtics will actually benefit from KP being out. It will give them the needed time to incorporate another big in the rotation and who knows maybe add another style of play. Who knows, Luke may even start shooting threes again. Go Celtics!