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Kasparas Jakucionis took some time to find his foot during his NBA Summer League experience, but Bleacher Report was way too critical in their assessment of his performance. Giving him a “D+” in their summer league grades wrap-up breakdown was completely too harsh for several reasons.<\/p>\n
The large reasoning behind the “D+” grade revolved around his struggles in his first three games. And that’s 100 percent fair. However, the grade doesn’t truly reflect the improvements that Jakucionis made during his final three games in the Las Vegas Summer League.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, Jakucionis was quite terrible during his first three games. Over that span, he was 1-15 from the field and finished with a total of six assists and 12 turnovers. Not great. However, he did a great job of turning things around in Las Vegas, as he would go on to average 15 points, four rebounds, and three assists on 45 percent shooting from the field and 35 percent shooting from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
That type of improvement shouldn’t be glossed over, especially for such a young player. That’s the type of improvement that the Heat should be proud and excited about.<\/p>\n
The biggest problem I had with BR’s criticism of Jakucionis is that they consistently harped over his negatives and gave little credit to his positives. I also think they graded him on a negative curve just because he was “supposed” to be selected in the lottery.<\/p>\n
Even though Jakucionis was considered a “steal” for the Heat at No. 20, I do feel as if many have lottery expectations for him. And that’s not fair. At the end of the day, Jakucionis was the 20th pick, no matter where he was “supposed” to be drafted.<\/p>\n
None of this is surprising, though. The Heat have constantly been an easy target. And that’s what Jakucionis quickly realized. Sure, there was some disappointment with how Jakucionis looked throughout this first couple of summer league games, but he should get some credit with how he managed to evolve in such a short time.<\/p>\n
It would’ve been one thing had Jakucionis consistently struggled throughout the course of summer league, and that simply wasn’t the case.<\/p>\n
Plus, it’s almost as if he was playing an entirely different role with the Heat. Jakucionis was playing more without the ball in his hands, and that’s not something he’s used to after his freshman season at Illinois. That should also be taken into consideration when grading his overall summer league performance.<\/p>\n
Was Jakucionis perfect? No, and far from it. However, it’s hard to look at his criticisms from BR as fair. And that’s the honest truth.<\/p>\n Kasparas Jakucionis is being unfairly criticized for his NBA Summer League performance, but the Miami Heat should ignore the noise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":81979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"yoast_head":"\n