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Finishing games continued to prove to be an issue for the NBA G League Ignite in the team’s second showing of this year’s G League Winter Showcase, losing another contest by double-digits.
Head coach Jason Hart’s group dropped its second straight contest of the showcase, losing to the Grand Rapids Gold, 113-90, Thursday, Dec. 21 from the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. As the schedule prepares to flip over into the regular season, the Ignite close the first half with a 4-12 overall record. All four of the team’s wins came in the last eight outings.
The regular season will begin with back-to-back road games against the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, the first of which comes a week from Thursday on Dec. 28 with tip-off scheduled for 5 p.m.
In both of the games in Florida, the Ignite held a lead after the first quarter of play but would proceed to lose the next three quarters in both instances. In fact, the team was outscored by 43 points in the last three quarters of games over the two-day span.
For more than four minutes in the second quarter, the Ignite went without a point and went nearly six minutes of the 10-minute frame without a field goal. To make matters worse, Grand Rapids connected on a buzzer-beating three-pointer just before halftime to take a 14-point lead into the locker room. The team had a similar finish at the end of the first quarter to close the gap to two.
After being down 17 points in the first half, this year’s developmental group fell behind by 32 points in the third quarter and eventually 36 points before the final buzzer.
Projected Top-10 picks Ron Holland and Matas Buzelis had a rough go at things through the first half of play. Holland came off the bench but would find himself in foul trouble for most of the first half. The pair was limited to just four points with no makes in 10 total field goal attempts including eight tries from downtown.
Holland would start in the second half and pick up his first basket of the night on the team’s first possession coming off an assist from Buzelis. Later in the frame, Buzelis would score his first points of the game on his way to 10 points while Holland closed the night with 12 of his own.
First-year Ignite forward Tyler Smith led the team in scoring as he shined bright in front of scouts and executives with 18 points and seven rebounds off-the-bench. In the two games played, Smith shot 50% from the field on 22 combined attempts.
Veteran guard John Jenkins had another first quarter explosion with 11 points on three made threes in the first 12 minutes. In fact, his 3-for-5 mark from downtown was rivaled by a 2-for-16 number by the rest of the team.
He’d finish with 15 points for the second straight night.
Forwards Babacar Sane and Izan Almansa were the final Ignite players in double-figures with 11 and 10 points respectively.