Bayless is playing very good and for as much HATE Nate gets... he knows WAY more about HIS players then any of us posting on a online message board do so I will give HIM the benefit of the doubt, even if I don't always agree with his methods.
That's because half of the fans don't know shit about basketball talent. Bayless didn't struggle as much as is implied in his extended playing time last year. He struggled when he'd play sporadic minutes as most players do. There's a reason I said early on last year that I wouldn't trade Bayless straight up for Devin Harris. There's a reason I wasn't downplaying his performance based on spotty minutes. It's because I saw his talent in his play. It's obvious that a whole lot of posters weren't able to and now they are trying to save face by alluding to his lack of production without acknowledging much in the way of its determining factors. Yes, he is a far better player this year. No, he was not nearly as bad as the majority of the posters made him out to be last year.
Here is data http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/bayleje01.html If you go there you will see a per of 8.2 last year vs 17 this year. If anything I would say that Nate has grown Bayless perfectly, double even.
I'm losing a lot of respect for posters tonight who attribute Bayless' improvement to Nate McMillan. There is no data available that could show that McMillan improperly used Bayless as a rookie and for the greater part of this season insofar. It's mere subjective opinion that Bayless was misused. But I tend to side with the people who were calling for Bayless to play, rather than the people who supported McMillan's decision not to play him. It seems one side of the fence knew the whole time what type of player we had on our hands. That McMillan took so long to trust in him should not say anything good about McMillan, yet we see such apologetic pandering from the crowd who doubted Bayless all along. Seems quite self-serving and disingenuous.
I do not agree, seeing as Bayless is really coming into his own as of late. We will never know if it was because McMillian took his time with Bayless and groomed him into an NBA ready player, or if it was the increase in playing time. The real question is what do we do when we have all guards healthy. What moves do we make? We have too many good guards to give them all extended minutes. Someone has to take the lesser role and I don't know if one of them is willing to do that.
It seems clear to me that Bayless is a better shooter and decision maker today than he was a year ago. What do you attribute that to? I would think the coaching staff (Nate, Bayno, Monty, Caleb, etc) had a hand in both of those improvements.
Yeah, no doubt.. The guy just splashed 31 and 7 with no TOs against a great defensive team, and he's looking great. I don't see any stunting of growth. We may have underutilized him a bit before, but he's developed quite nicely I think.
The decision-making is possible. He seems today to be the good shooter he was at Arizona. Do we attribute his one-season drop-off last year to McMillan and crew? It's always an interesting question what about player performances (good and bad) we attribute to the coaching. Generally, it's a bit of a Rorschach test about the person's opinion on the coach or on coaches in general rather than linked to anything substantial about the individual cases. As for my own opinion, I think head coaches in the NBA make very little difference (relative to each other, not relative to some random person off the street) except for a very few.
While personally I might agree with you, some may say that our 11th man (Bayless) should be more like our 7th or 8th, b/c Brandon Jennings is better than, say, Blake (or Webster, or Miller, or whoever).
Whatever dude, if that's your "position" then why does it matter we (or anyone) get the 1st pick in a draft? Fuck it, we might as well get all 2nd rounders right? I mean, shit, if it doesn't matter how good their rated, it's a fuckin crap shoot? Give it a rest. Smart people KNEW how good he was going to be. Look at A. Brooks, he gets playing time and he turns out to be an NBA PG. Playing time = sink or swim. Bayless finally gets meaningful minutes and voila, he swims.
Charles Barkley couldn't have put the obvious more bluntly. The other coaches around the league have been very thankful...probably sent Nate a Christmas Card. Nate's so stubborn and blind, that when Roy comes back, Blake will continue to get more minutes than Bayless. That's a guarantee. Even though Blake can't draw a double-team and makes everyone on the team shoot more difficult shots than Bayless does (because they don't leave their man to help on Blake, but they do to help on Bayless). Great for Bayless that he was patient and waited out McMillan until injuries forced him into his opportunities, opportunities that McMillan had no intention of giving him this season.
Anybody with two eyes knows. That's what the rift has been all about between Pritchard and McMillan. Pritchard's literally begging McMillan to buy into his philosophy and play the better players that work with that philosophy (the philosophy is winning an NBA Championship, which Nate doesn't understand how to do). This has to come to a head. Either Nate has to leave or Pritchard does. Moronic issues like this one, where Nate sabotages Bayless' career can't be put up with. There's so many issues with the club exactly like this one that's going to lead, hopefully, to Nate's dismissal at the end of this season. There have been flashes where Nate has "adjusted" (like the 17-1 mark when he "let go and let the players play", but he quickly went back to his old ways, and then he really made it worse in the playoffs against Houston, where Nate choked big time. He actually didn't "choke", he just did what he does, and that's micro-manage, and act like a control-freak reducing and limiting the immense talents that were on this team last Spring.) Thankfully, all of these injuries happened. Otherwise, we never would have seen Bayless this year. Bayless isn't any better this week than he would have been had he gotten these opportunities 30 days ago. It's just too bad it wasn't Blake that got injured instead of Batum. Had that happened, everything would have fallen into place for a 60-win season. Miller would have started with Roy, and Roy would have been forced to suck it up and make it work. However, it's also very possible and probable that even if Blake had been injured for the season, McMillan still wouldn't have played Bayless and instead would have tried to make Rudi, Roy, and Miller a 3-guard rotation. McMillan hates players who take the control away from him, and that includes Rudi, whom Nate was forced to play by Allen via Pritchard. Rudi is too helter-skelter for Nate, and it churns his stomach to no end. Nate can't see the positives a player brings who takes chances. He can't see that with some players (many players) the chances far outweigh the negatives. Nate has tunnel vision on the negatives, the 4 or 5 turnovers instead of the 10-12 free throw attempts, the higher FG percentage, and the total team involvement that players like Rudi and Bayless bring to the team versus Blake.
Again, Dude. Don't participate if you don't like it. Start your own thread, and you can wave your pom-poms all you want.
Yep. That's Charles Barkley's point. That's Kevin Pritchard's point. It's anyone's point who's seen him play anywhere other than the poor-quality and misused minutes that Nate gave him.
He didn't suck last year. Nate put him in position to fail all the time. He had him standing out at the 3 point line when he wasn't able to hit a 3, yet in his NBA career. Nate sabotaged everything Jarred did last season. Rookie's don't hit threes, no matter how great they were in College. Nate's a control freak and he didn't let Jarred make any mistakes, or he'd yank him and sit him on the bench for a week. Nodody can play under those circumstances, and you do that to a rookie's who initial assets are short jumpers, drives to the basket, and creating easy shots for teammates on those drives, while getting opponents in foul trouble and getting to the free throw line. Blake does none of those things.
