Good. If that's what it takes to keep Nelson from trading him for another garbage veteran, the injury was a blessing in disguise. Maybe he should stay injured until Nelson leaves.
It doesn't sound like the Warriors "yanked" him out, it sounds like his value is just iffy around the league right now due to injury. If they were dangling him before, they sure would be dangling him now. But with Riley at the helm, who the hell knows. This dude could be begging the Lakers to do a Steph Curry for Derek Fisher swap just so he can get some more veteran leadership alongside Mikki Moore...
That's just stupid to trade Randolph. We all know he left college way too early and his instincts aren't getting him by most nights as an nba player. Nevertheless, he's productive. Unless he's a pure pinhead, there's no reason to trade him, because he will get better and less prone to injury once he gets it. If he gets it and we had traded him away and he becomes something of a Chris Webber type player, we'd be killing ourselves again. It's not every draft we find a high flying, ballhandling, passing, rebounding, shotblocking big with a little bit of inside and outside game! Big guys usually have no offense or they focus on inside skills and maybe a mid-range jumpshot to keep defenses honest. I predict that if Randolph is given the chance, he'll be more efficient in other areas like passing and running plays from the high post. He'll focus better on his defense which wasn't quite there this season. He'll develop a go-to move such as a post-up turn around jumper that's hard to defend. I think the problem is Nelson doesn't know how to use this guy and expects him to be a Dirk Nowitzki by now. The other problem is Randolph was a project and he's too young and physically weak to use his size to his advantage. Scouts knew that he needed a lot more work in the gym and to work more on polishing his array of skills. We should be fortunate that a lot of the fundamentals are at least there. The rest is brushing up his technical skill and slowing things down for him. He's a bit out of control and court unaware which is what likely got him injured in the first place. Some more experience and getting stronger should only make him better (in theory). I mean we've seen his talent. I don't think he is fool's gold like Pietrus was to some. Pietrus was poorly coached before he got to being a pro and he wasn't the type to change bad habits at that point in his career. Plus, he wasn't a good quick thinker.
I keep thinking AR is one year younger than Stephen Curry (similar to Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum). That said, I would include AR if it would land us Chris Bosh and we keep Curry, Monta and AB. Oh, I dunno . I rather keep Curry, Monta and AR .
Yeah, it's a tough call because AR's issues are mostly mental. And he has such flashes of greatness, you wonder why he makes some really silly mistakes. I am always for the wait-and-see approach, but sometimes a player simply doesn't flourish in a system and a change of scenery (or coach) could help motivate him. So you just can't win and just have to hope for a miracle.
