That would be great if he does become better or even as good, but as of right now it's not really that close. Kobe Bryant's first year he only played around 17 minutes per game and I would really consider this Simons first year.
The way to get Simmons more burn is to start blowing some teams out in the 3rd qtr.....Simmons has a smooth shot but his defense is really horrible at the NBA level....Gary Trent Jr.. is much better at defense than Simmons is and it's not close....they are giving Simmons plenty of rope because of his stroke but at this point, Trent is more of a two way player but we won't know if we don't have a huge lead at some pt and let the 3rd string loose for a qtr...same with Nas...he hasn't broken a sweat against NBA competition yet. For Dame to not play 38 minutes a game we need to put teams away earlier..
He has a bright future but I'd like to see more from him other than just going one-on-one and chucking up shots. These possessions with zero passes in which the three main guards just go one-on-one and try to create their own shots is exceedingly annoying. Do we have any plays?
There's plenty of time to hone all that in, but his shot making ability alone right now warrants more PT.
Agree that Trent is a better two player at this point. He's just caught up in to many guards to gain minutes. That shot/motion of Simon's sure is different.
Make him earn more minutes? Five games and were worrying about his PT when every game has been down to the wire? Simons is oozing with talent. As the team starts to gel and starts getting separation on opponents, he’s going to get more minutes. From there, he can earn Stotts’ trust for the nail-biters.
Who's worrying? I'm just saying he should get more to build on his skills so that he's ready to contribute in a major way during the playoffs.
No argument there, but it’s a long season and right now the emphasis has to be on getting the team playing better. Ant is going to get more minutes as the team plays better and doesn’t have to rely as consistently on Dame saving the game.
another solution would be to do like it was in the PIL my freshman year where the game had a 5th quarter to get some players playing time.
well this was in 1969 and back then many schools were pretty big then in the PIL as Grant had about 2700 students when I was a freshman and then the next year Adams opened up to decrease it somewhat. We had 30 players just on the freshman team and that was after cuts of about that many.
I'm also not a big CJ fan, but your stats show he is going to the FT line at four times the rate of Anf and also getting assists at four times the rate of Anf.
I was a sophomore at Sunset in 73-74. We didn't have freshman as that was for the junior highs. We had a lot of students and a lot of players, but no 5th quarters. My guess is that freshman got more opportunities to play since we had 2 or 3 junior highs feeding Sunset.
Yeah, different systems as back then pretty much all schools in Portland were k-8 (although I went to an elementary school k-4th) and then high school was 9-12. In Portland we played Goldenball from 5th to 8th grade. The landscape has changed immensely with Community Centers, Boys and Girls club, AAU basketball etc. with their own programs available to kids. My freshman year at Grant, my freshman team was undefeated, the JV only lost one game and varsity, I think only lost 2 games, won the state championship against another PIL team (Madison)
