The struggles of Sekou
It felt like Sekou Doumbouya was able to regain some of his confidence in Detroit’s previous outing against Denver, scoring 17 points in his return to the starting lineup.
Unfortunately, some of that confidence may have left him after tonight’s performance. Doumbouya scored just 6 points on 13.3 percent shooting (2 of 15).
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During the first half he had multiple shots rejected at the rim, and after a Pistons timeout Casey was the first person to give him a few pointers on how to protect the ball when attacking the basket. Doumbouya was visibly and understandably frustrated in the first half.
He’s a project that Detroit is more than willing to take their time on, and being the youngest player in the NBA is certainly going to show itself at times. He was having trouble finding his jump shot all night.
What was encouraging was that he never lost his focus, and frankly (though this may be contradicting to a previous point) he never lost the confidence that he could make a shot. He was just as aggressive in the fourth quarter as he was in the first.
He was rebounding the ball well and was defending well, both are traits that haven’t really wavered in his last month of playing. He’s gotten more opportunities to score in these last two games than he did in the two weeks leading up.
He’s going to continue to get better, it’s just going to take some time.