Wes Goldberg

But a couple of bad days at practice or shoot around, and he could be back in the exposed doghouse, and that's just the way it's been for two years.

But look, I like to zoom out when it comes to Kal-El, and I look at what he was when he came into the league.

and where he is now.

And he is leaps and bounds so much better than what he was when he came into the league.

I remember the first time I, you know, the first heat game I covered of his, um,

It was at the California Classic, whatever they call it, the Summer League before the Vegas Summer League in Sacramento.

And he was awful.

He was so bad in that first Summer League game.

When I even did the scout work on him ahead of that draft, what I said was he's a guy who should play like a Derek Lively, like a run-to-the-rim kind of guy.

Instead, he does a bad impression of LaMarcus Aldridge almost every single night.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what he was in that first summer league game.

He was just sort of spinning around, kind of trying to face up, sometimes back to the basket, fadeaways like LaMarcus Aldridge, but just like the shots wouldn't go in, unlike LaMarcus Aldridge.

And so I think the Heat were just like, no, we're not going to do any of that anymore.

And they basically said, go from A to B. A is the screen, B is the basket.

That's what you're going to do.

So he became more of that sort of run and jump straight line athlete.

And then in the second year, they're like, we're actually going to not run any pick and roll.

How about that?

All that stuff that we got you to do as a rookie, we're just not going to do any of that.