Alex Speers

I thought there was a stretch there where you could clearly see, and Billy will play up how much on-ball uses he's had in the past, but you can see there that there were clearly more reps of getting him downhill, getting him in comfortable spots where he can be the kind of player that shows the flashes people are excited about.

He was scoring at the rim.

At will, obviously, he's a great transition scorer.

That's never been a problem.

He doesn't have a mid-range diet, infamously.

He tells this story, and it's in that story, actually, that you referenced about how they had this film session, and Billy was like, hey, throw that out.

When he shot a middie his rookie year, there were some middies mixed in.

A very sparse amount of middies, but middies mixed in.

You're just seeing him get more comfortable, I think, with the sort of tug-of-war he's having with Billy Donovan, and for what it's worth, like,

Modest of all the people in Chicago who are like, give this dude the reps, just throw the minutes at him.

Modest has been most fine with that and hasn't really budged on the whole tug of war with Billy.

He's actually been fairly understanding of it, which is... I don't want to call it... I think it's surprising from the outside.

With that being said...

Like, Billy's still very much on that side of things.

Modest didn't close last night in Minnesota, and he very much had a fine to above average game.

Like, he definitely could have closed.

I think when I wrote that story, there were times where he was yanking Modest a minute or two into the game or after a quick sequence that he didn't like.

Like, there's clearly some – I don't want to call it punishment, but there's a real short leash here historically –

Has it loosened?

Sure.