Bayless also has a very selfish attitude, despite all of his work ethic qualities, he is a little too pompous for his own good...
You cherry-picked the stat which helped you, and distorted to make your point. As I said, the praise is for his stat improvement, but to stats which are still less than satisfactory. You just stated the exception that had already been written in bold face. Easy find.
They misused him. He's an all-star waiting to happen. Well, not really. But he is a very good passer, legitimately 7 foot, and very smart. He looked solid playing for Argentina this Summer, although I doubt he produced any stats to speak of. But I will say this in all confidence: he's better than Steven Hill.
...my opinions come from his rookie year, seeing him in Vegas Summer League interact with his teammates during shoot-around was all I needed to see. He was getting mad and irritable if anyone shot at the same time as him, sending dirty scowl looks there way in disgust...again, this was at SHOOT-AROUND! To me, this little stuck-up pompous attitude is not good for any "TEAM".
I agree with Hack. That crazy mean look on his face says volumes, especially when I hear that he doesn't interact with teammates, doesn't partake in a social life with them, etc. This is the type of player that the prohibitionist Canzano loves. But, whether a player is likeable has nothing to do with whether we should keep him. So I'll stick to noting his lack of court vision while he makes those suicide drives to the basket.
It's well-known that Bayless and Oden are very tight. Probably the only guy Oden consistently talks to, if you believe media reports. Plus, Brandon like Bayless as well, as you can tell from their interactions after Roy's big moments late in games.
Roy and Oden. Does he interact with the non-stars? As the son of criminologist psychologists, Bayless looks up to authority.
...and I think I may have wrote about it in greater detail in ESPN, but where is nuraman to quote something when you need him?!
I think circumstances matter and in this particular circumstance I don't think it's very likely that Jerryd will ever be able to play to his strengths given the players that surround him and what is asked of the 1 guard in this particular iteration of the Blazers (Nate and Roy as top dogs). Not only does Nate require a pass-first on offense, defense above all-else player who looks to score last, his teammates are frankly better options to score ahead of him. If Jerryd were better at defense (aggressiveness without fouling and generating more steals/turnovers) or a knock down shooter I'd worry less about his pure point guard deficiencies, but as it stands he's not a very effective stopper and to date his jumper hasn't been very reliable. And really the more I think about it, I don't believe Jerryd enjoys being a distributor/defender and when you aren't particularly comfortable with an assigned role I don't believe that's a recipe for longterm success at anything -- sports or life in general. Regardless, hopefully if/when he's traded something decent comes back, because I think he does have talent.
