BEIJING – He threw down one slam in all four quarters, at least for a night taking over Anthony Davis’ title as the most prolific New Orleans Pelicans dunker. He constantly altered Houston shots around the rim, finishing with five blocks. He grabbed rebounds in his area and pursued several others. In another encouraging sign, he sank his free throws at a high rate.
After a 2015-16 season that he’d rather forget, 7-foot center Omer Asik has looked like a different player early in preseason, providing no better illustration of that than his 14-point, 14-rebound, five-block (6/8 from the foul line) performance vs. the Rockets. Asik, who averaged 4.0 points and 6.1 assists last season, appears to be in excellent shape, vital in an Alvin Gentry attack that seeks to play up-tempo basketball. He played 28:24 in Sunday’s game, a minute allotment he only exceeded in four games during the entire ’15-16 campaign.
“Omer has been playing awesome,” Davis said after Sunday’s game. “He’s been making free throws, playing great defensively, rebounding the ball, blocking shots, playing great offensively. Any pass that comes to him, he’s catching and dunking it.”
Asik has struggled from the foul line throughout his career, at just 53.1 percent over his six NBA seasons, but he’s worked extensively with Pelicans assistant coach Kevin Hanson on trying to improve, starting after the ’16 All-Star break. Although it’s a small sample, Asik is shooting 85.7 percent at the charity stripe in preseason, canning 12 of 14 tries. He was a perfect 6/6 vs. Indiana on Oct. 4, then 6/8 against Houston.
“I wanted to get him to get to the point where it was one fluid motion,” Hanson said of Asik’s shooting form at the foul line. “We wanted him to get a better rhythm in his shot. With a lot of bigs they have free-throw anxiety – they get anxious – so I wanted to take away a lot of the mental part of it, to where he has a good feel with the ball.”
Hanson described Asik’s offseason as “a great summer,” including extensive time training and playing with the Turkish national team.
“The previous summer he had taken off to let his body heal,” Hanson said of Asik’s offseason of ’15. “He wasn’t quite ready for the pace (the Pelicans) wanted to play at. He ended up getting hurt (in preseason), rushed back because he wanted to help the team, and never got a good rhythm. He was never able to pick up any steam. It was like a perfect storm.
“But now I think he’s in great shape, he’s got a rhythm, he’s catching the ball. It’s early, but he has a good feel at the free-throw line.”
“After last year, I just tried to be ready, especially on the defensive end,” Asik said. “That’s why I worked all summer on getting healthy and getting better on defense, where I wasn’t good last year.”
“I thought Omer had played extremely well in practice,” said Gentry, who called the 30-year-old one of NOLA’s bright spots during training camp. “I think his free-throw shooting has improved tremendously. He did a great job rebounding the basketball (Sunday), a great job on the defensive end at his position.”
Incidentally, if Asik’s 14-14-5 stat line Sunday looked vaguely familiar to Pelicans fans who closely track the team, there may be a good reason. The last time he reached those individual numbers was Game 1 of the 2014-15 regular season, when Asik had 14 points, 17 rebounds and five rejections vs. Orlando – in his official debut with New Orleans.
