Nolan Traore has lifted his game up another level before the NBA All-Star break. His play even caught the attention of a past championship coach.
One past NBA Finals winner dropped a rave review of rising Brooklyn Nets star Nolan Traore.
Rick Carlisle faced the task of game-planning against the cat-quick passer and shooter. The same Carlisle who won the Larry O'Brien Trophy in 2011 with the Dallas Mavericks, plus led the Indiana Pacers to the Eastern Conference crown last season.
Carlisle used "crafty" as one description for the prized Nets rookie.
"[Traore] causes problems,” Carlisle said to reporters before his Pacers won 115-110 over the Nets on Wednesday. "He’s on our prep video a lot, which tells you something. There’s seven, eight, nine clips of him."
Carlisle explained how Indiana attempted to counter the speed and vision of Traore.
"We gotta keep him in front. He’s crafty, he drives it, he shoots it from all four levels," Carlisle said. "He just creates a lot of issues for a defense.”
Traore entered the Barclays Center fresh off dishing a double-double with 13 points and 13 assists -- the first of his career.
Carlisle's team even faced an early 13-point deficit early on against a much younger Nets squad. Indiana managed to attack the Nets and take advantage of defensive lapses -- erasing the large margin in the process.
Indiana is in a somewhat similar predicament Brooklyn is in. The face of the franchise Tyrese Haliburton is sidelined with his torn Achilles -- forcing Carlisle to turn to a much younger lineup like the Nets.
Except Jordi Fernandez is working with as many as five rookies this season. Often times three of those first-year players earn starter minutes.
Traore cracked the starting lineup but mainly due to injuries. Especially with fellow rookie Egor Demin and Michael Porter Jr. out of the lineup on Wednesday.
But Carlisle, who also won an NBA title as a Boston Celitcs player in 1986, tipped his hat to Fernandez on how he's developed talent in Brooklyn despite the record.
"They do a great job of developing young players here,” the Pacers coach said. “Jordi [Fernandez] has been really top of the heap with what [his staff] has done the last couple of years."
He already believes Traore is on a trajectory.
"Traore’s gonna keep getting better," Carlisle said. "Demin’s getting better. Their young bigs have progressed a lot over the last couple of years. The future here is very bright.”
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