All I know about Crabbe is that he is a lights out shooter, and his stroke in the one game he appeared in seem to back that up. My guess is that the rest of his game is raw and he would probably be a defensive liability, and potentially an offensive one also (outside of 3pters). So Ill leave it up to Stotts to bring Crabbe along as he see's fit. I would like to see more of Crabbe though, and he looks like an NBA player for what that is worth.
Wright currently has no rhythm to speak of. I'd like to see what the kid can do. Reports out of practice say that he can stroke it. You aren't the least bit curious? We are only playing 9 guys right now. I don't see any reason why we can't find a few minutes for Allen Crabbe.
I thought people were saying that Crabbe was a good 3-and-D guy when we drafted him? Can anybody speak to this? Yes, given the fact that he's a rookie, there's a very good chance that his D isn't as good as Wright's. But we don't really know whether we'd be better, worse, or the same with Crabbe playing more minutes.
Like I said in another thread, its the lack of offensive threat of our bench bigmen that hurts us more than anything. If you want to address something, address that. Change the offensive scheme. Changing Wright to Crabbe will basically have no net positive effect whatsoever even in the best case scenario. He's not a focal point of the offense in the 2nd unit. What are we going to look for exactly? higher 3% shooting? In the worst case it could cause internal strife with vets versus rookies.
I'd really like Crabbe to get some more burn. I think he is a legit deep threat and could become one of the best shooters on the team. I like Wright but maybe sitting him for a couple games would light a fire under him and get him to step up a bit
Trust and confidence in the coach, but the first two are enough for me not to fuck with things, anyhow.
The team loses a few games after Stotts demotes a veteran, and the fireworks begin. Again, it's easy to say on the internet, but not as easy in real life.
Really? You say this based on what? And what other teams focus their bench scoring around a PF (or C)? Seems to me off-the-bench scorers are nearly always guards/wings.
Okay, these are all good points, but how do you change our lack of offensive scoring from our bigmen? I like Robinson, but he's not a guy that you run the offense through. We really only have one guy that we can throw the ball into, and that's Aldridge. Lopez has proven to be effective too, but there's nobody on the bench that can do that. How do you get that scoring bigman without going outside the team?
Defense is the biggest one I see. Wright is a savy vet that knows exactly what to do even against the stars of this league. We need HCA and now is no time to experiment IMO.
Seriously, its as people think this is NBA 2k14. Some of the dumbest ideas I've seen floated around that will never really happen just so Nate can do his own "i told you so" when the blazers blow a big lead and lose a game.
You play them more. That's really all you can do. Like I said, this team is still a work in progress. There's very little need to make any changes until we lose 2 out of 3 games at some point. I'm not against getting Crabbe some minutes, but Stotts is really tight with his rotation right now. Its all based on minutes in the game, not on the flow right now. Any changes are likely to throw his whole substitution patterns off for the entire game, especially crunch time where the blazers have played well.
Wright has been getting about 14 mpg. What would it hurt to have crabbe take 4-5 of those for a few games, get him in in the second with some of the starters and see what he can do in meaningful minutes. We have nothing to lose by doing that. I don't think that's going to destroy the chemistry of the team or start a mutiny against Stotts
If you take 4-5 minutes out of Wright's game you might as well bench him. There is no "take away some minutes" with Wright. He plays so few minutes that its not even worth it to do anything less than completely bench him. And then that defeats the purpose of getting solid veteran guys off the bench. last year was "experiment with fringe bench guys to see what they can do". This year its win and play guys who have played in the playoffs. These minutes Wright is playing now is going to play dividends in a 7 game series. There has to be consistency, right now the focus of the 2nd unit is to get T-rob and Freeland more comfortable playing. Having them blow leads right now early in the season is a good thing because later on in the year they probably won't, or will be at least less likely to do so. Putting them out with another rookie is going to hurt them tremendously. Changing the lineup considerably will hurt them as well.
Of all the people doing "I told you so" posts, I am not one of them. There are people bumping threads from years ago and you throw that at me?
Nope. But there is absolutely no logic behind the statement that "changing Wright to Crabbe will...have no net positive effect...in the best case scenario". We have VERY limited data points on Crabbe, yet somehow it's already been determined that there is NO possibility for him to have a positive effect - and that would actually be the BEST CASE scenario that we could hope for.
