I keep thinking about Tony Parker's career. Here's a guy who was never lauded for his defense, for most of his career had no three point shot, and has been playing pro ball since he was 17 (2 years in Europe). Massively underrated in the draft--a 28 pick. A guy who repeatedly played for his European team--8 Eurobasket/Olympics summer tournaments. One NBA team his entire career--a team with easily the best record over that span. A lot of productivity over a lot of seasons. 32 mpg career average. And I think a lot about Derrick Rose. Utterly dominant in his first few years. League MVP. Then injuries. Now trying to "turn things around as a Knick!" (lol. Seems like I've heard that before?) So much potential, and now looking for a career resurrection at just 27 years old. 37mpg in his MPV season. Stotts seems pretty progressive in keeping up with the modern NBA. He's embracing small ball and the 3 point shot. But he's also playing Dame 36.5mpg over his first 4 seasons. Meanwhile Lillard has been a terrible defender. You look at MPG of some recent elite PG's and he's logging the most minutes. Maybe a lot of his defensive woes is just that he's being worked too hard. I think Pop figured that out about Parker many years ago--there's just a diminishing returns in point guard productivity when you go from 32 to 37 mpg over the grind of an NBA season when you factor in defensive effort and injury risk. Especially when you have a guy who needs to be both a scorer and passer on the offensive end. Hopefully with the addition of Turner and the evolution of CJ, we don't need him as that ball handler as we have in years past. I'd really like to see Dame's minutes cut down this year to 33-34, and see if it makes a difference on the defensive end.
Yes; I have also been thinking this a lot lately when people are estimating how many minutes every player should have. My big hope is that he could then put in more effort on defense.
I think it's pretty obvious that Olshey has bolstered the bench very well since the Sasha Pavlovic days....remember those? Damian will still play big minutes but with Turner you can hide CJ and Dame a bit and put Mo or ET on the shooters and let them hang back for transition buckets...our rebounding and shot blocking should be improved leading to fast breaks...it's not so much the minutes but the assignments that wear a guy down at that level. Turner, Crabbe, Harkless and Aminu are defense oriented players...now we have paint protection...again more transition opportunities. I'm stoked about the depth we have. In simple terms Dame's job just got a lot easier than it has been since his rookie season.
