Jared Weiss

And he doesn't have the pinch post face up yet where he can catch at 18 feet and he can reliably get into the paint from there.

He was trying.

And there was a play, I think later in the fourth quarter or in game five, where he just finally went through the point of attack defense on the mid post and he got into the paint.

And I think it was when he got fouled.

And it was just finally this like, oh, wow, he's finally actually fighting through instead of just trying to get the edge where he's comfortable.

It was about just...

pushing through whatever the defense was giving him to fight for that spot to get to because you know once he gets two feet in the paint he usually can rise up or he can step through but the other part was like he didn't seem comfortable holding the ball in the paint and trying to pivot and find that opening that he was really good at doing earlier in the playoffs but really just mostly in the regular season and so because he doesn't have the like the post-up technique and strength

to really establish deeper position against guys like towns and Robinson, because they really had trouble getting him cross matches on the smalls.

Like there were like one or two possessions.

I can remember where he got Josh Hart and he tried to post it up and the team was ready to try to enter the ball into him.

It was just so hard for them to get the offense organized to where they could get a clean entry pass into, to him deeper in the post with a mismatch where he could draw an actual double and pass out of it.

I think it's a credit to the Knicks defense that they disrupted the movement around the perimeter so well for San Antonio that San Antonio never really got comfortable entry options to get him the ball into the post.

And then he just isn't at a point yet where he can like really work Towns or Robinson deeper into the paint before he catches the ball.

not directly with him, but talking to people around him, there's a pretty clear understanding.

His game, probably scoring-wise, needs to look a little bit like Joel Embiid right now, where Embiid has that face-up from 15 feet that he can just do a one-step dribble pull-up into very cleanly.

And obviously, Embiid can own post position better than anybody out there, and you're not expecting that out of Victor.

But

the big thing that a great post-up center does is they catch and they're either feeling for position so they know how they want to leverage a defender or they're just going straight into a move right off the catch and victor i think a thing he struggled with in the post is that because defenses are very good and they know how they want to guard his post-ups the passes into him require him to leave his feet a lot of the time and defenses especially like robinson

They're really good at shoving him when he lands in a way that doesn't foul him, but makes him fall over and he has to regain his balance.

And this is just natural to Victor.