Start of season, people said we had the deepest most versatile set of big men in the league. Remember how good Vonleh looked on opening night? What happened?
Stotts wouldn't play him anymore than a couple minutes at a time and then not at all. His good performance (11 points on 6-6 shooting in 16 minutes) was rewarded with 9 minutes in which he had 6 points on 4-6 shooting in the next game against the Clippers. By the 3rd game against the Nuggets it was down to 7 minutes in which he got 4 rebounds but didn't get a single shot. At this point he was shooting 83% but Stotts couldn't run one play for him. Not exactly building on a hot start. Against the Warriors he got 12 minutes mostly in garbage time of a blowout loss in which he had 6 points on 2-7 shooting in mop up time.....and that was it. He didn't get to play in the next game against the Suns.
Mind you,
he was shooting 63% at the time and was Portland's best big man perimeter defender where every pick was switched at the first sign of a screen. That started the sporadic few minutes here and there for a guy who was the best shooter and rebounder in pre-season and was off to a hot start from the field in the regular season.
Same thing happened with Layman. In what may be the best first quarter of basketball played in history for a rookie, Layman pumped in 17 points on 6-8 shooting in 8 minutes in mop up duty against the Warriors. His reward for such an offensive outburst? To sit on the bench for the next 4 games and not play again until the Blazers were blown out against the Clippers. There he had 9 points on 4-8 shooting in 15 minutes.
Layman finally got meaningful minutes in the next game against the Kings with 5 points on 2-3 shooting in 13 minutes. Until last nights game against Memphis, had only played 5 minutes twice in the 12 games since then. In his first 3 games where he was in long enough to break a sweat,
he was shooting 63% from the field. Sound familiar? It was the exact same percentage Vonleh was shooting before he was shown the scrap minutes door.
So it's not like those two players didn't prove themselves worthy of at least a chance at regular rotation minutes while they were there. It just seems Stotts chose not to play them for anything more than a couple minutes here and there which is next to impossible to get a rhythm.
Both cases are small sample sizes but they did well with the minutes given when it was more than 2-3 minutes at a time. It was all they could do and the reward was to sit on the bench and watch players who weren't playing defense, not shooting well and not playing with energy.
Not sure that is the message I'd want to send out to my team.
