Start Rudy..........period. He wants to win you can tell by watching him. Play your best men together. I officially open a start Rudy thread.
I do not think starting Rudy is the way to go. He doesn't need to start to get his minutes... and i think its actually better to bring him off the bench.
I'm all for starting Rudy. I would like Joel/LMA/Rudy/Roy/Blake and replace Blake with Bayless in the near future.
Ideal Lineup for the next month, IMO: Starters: G Jerryd Bayless G Brandon Roy F Nic Batum F LaMarcus Aldridge C Joel Pryzbilla Bench: 1st off the bench: Rudy Fernandez 2nd: Travis Outlaw 3rd: Channing Frye 4th: Steve Blake 5th: Sergio Rodriguez In January, when everyone is healthy: Starters G Jerryd Bayless G Brandon Roy F Martell Webster F LaMarcus Aldridge C Greg Oden Bench: Rudy Fernandez Steve Blake Travis Outlaw Joel Pryzbilla Channing Frye Sergio Rodriguez Blake is solid...... a solid backup that is. He'll be great off the bench in later years, but we need someone who's a scoring threat at point to take pressure off the double teams for greg and lamarcus. IMHO. B
I'll go for this- why not start Rudy- I think he looks more promising than Outlaw and would give more in offense than he loses in defense as a starter. I do miss Webster, though...
The "Roy/Rudy at the three" experiment was tried in the Clippers game and it wasn't very pretty. I'd be more of an advocate of Rudy or Roy at the point (or maybe they share those duties?) and then put Nicolas in with the starters to keep ball movement crisp and defense lively. That still leaves the unit with 3 viable scorers in Roy, Rudy and LMA. No matter what happens we're missing Martell and Greg badly at this point, and the losses are going to outnumber the wins for awhile.
I can't see McMillan starting Bayless over Blake let alone Sergio right now. While he is good offensively and one of our better defenders he isn't good at distributing the ball. We need a PG who can make a good entry pass, work the pick and roll, setup the offense and direct players if they get something wrong. At this point Bayless is unable to do any of that and this is why he is the 3rd string PG. Now if he improves in these catagories i have no problem with starting Bayless, what think may happen is Blake will start the games and get our big 3 going and run the offense and Bayless may begin to close out games where we need defense and more 1 on 1 scorers... I could see this happening after about a month or so.
I think he's best off the bench. He brings so much energy, he's the 9-5 equivalent of the 10:00 AM cup of joe. It's not about putting the best five players on the floor to start, it's about balancing the lineups. What's unique about Rudy is that he doesn't seem to need to start to be effective.
Without Oden and Webster, I'm inclined to agree with you that there just isn't enough scoring in our first unit. Blake really only takes wide-open threes and Przybilla is useless on anything but a put back. I'd definitely like to see how a back court of Roy and Fernandez handle the pressure of bringing up the ball. If they can handle this, there isn't much of a good argument for starting Blake. Blake's really not that much of a better defender against point guards than Fernandez is, and I can tell already that Fernandez is going to bring more to the equation in help defense. The Laker game was horrible, but one bright spot was that Rudy seemed quite crafty and effective in bringing a doubleteam at unexpected moments. I think you move Outlaw back to being our bench scorer at PF (Frye is needed at backup C anyway) and go with a starting unity of Roy, Fernandez, Batum, Aldridge and Przybilla.
I could go either way regarding Fernandez starting....but the more important part IMO is that he plays 30+ minutes a night. He needs to be out there on the floor as much as possible IMO....
I am for starting him. The reason why? Through last season, and now the start of this season, I am sick and tired of the team being down early and having to fight just to get back into the game. There are more than enough guys that can score off the bench, with Bayless and Outlaw there.
I'd rather him come off the bench and play heavy minutes. I still think our best starting five at this point has Blake/Roy at the guards. Blake didn't play well in the first game, but neither did Roy or Aldridge or Oden. I'd rather give it a few games at least, and Bayless has done nothing to deserve being a starter. We went out there and got kicked in the balls at the staples center. It wasn't pretty. But I think it was a necessary first step/reality check. I wouldn't do anything drastic just yet. It's a long season.
You know that part about "Blake not playing well in the first game"? Well I have been saying that about him his whole career.
This is what concerns me too, lack of scoring in the first unit. But which lineup do you go with? For me, aside from the Oden sprain, the most discouraging thing to come out of the Lakers game was the play of Roy and Aldridge. They both admitted to playing passively due to Oden's presence, and it showed. I thought Roy recovered a bit in the second half, and maybe it was due to Oden being out. In any case, I think making them comfortable and aggressive again is imperiative, and by making conditions familiar again, could be the trick. And a Blake, Roy, Outlaw, Aldridge, Pryz lineup is that. The guys know their roles and are used to playing together. It might be our most cohesive unit, which you want in a starting 5. However, when we won last year, it was because we played tight defense, our spacing was good, and we usually hit a lot of perimeter shots. I don't have a lot of confidence in the above lineup doing that consistently. I'd have more confidence in a Roy, Rudy, Batum, Aldridge, Pryz lineup. We risk unsettling Roy and Aldridge by bringing in two new guys, but that's not the same as bringing in Oden. Psychologically, at least, Roy and Aldridge should still maintain alpha mindsets and that should keep them from becoming passive. Our outside shooting may suffer a little with Batum instead of Outlaw, but I think he makes up for it by improving our D with more intelligent rotations and forcing turnovers. Plus, he seems to have good instincts as to when to attack the hoop for boards and when not to. Much better than Travis from what I can tell. And Rudy should more than replace Travis' ability to create his own shot. I don't know. I can see arguments for either lineup.
I completely agree. An argument could be made that we should keep Rudy on the bench with the hopes that Roy and Aldridge will be able to take care of business and THEN if there's a problem put in Rudy. My big problem there is, how long do we wait? If we pull the hook too quick then it's kind of pointless, just have Rudy in there to start. But if we wait too long then we're already in too deep of a hole for the high scoring backups to pull us out of. It's the kind of thing that has to be done just right. I love Nate's approach with team development and what not. But he doesn't always do the best job at deciding what we need in a game and making decisions based on that need.
As long as he is on the floor when the game is on the line, I'm happy! He doesn't need to start as long as he is getting his minutes.
