I dont care if its at PG or SG.. but he needs time on the court.. Blake and Sergio are fine.. but we need to find out if Bayless is the real deal.. I don't want to waste this year of development. Where can we find Bayless 6-10 minutes a night? Gotta be Blake.. no reason he should be playing 30 minutes a night while Bayless is getting DNP-CD's.
I hope Bayless doesn't become a Jermaine O'Neal. Ride the pine for 3 years then become an All-Star. I agree with you. He needs to play. Sad as it sounds, I was almost hoping Roy would have missed a couple games with his back injury.
I think it's a temporary thing. Bayless is the future but until the trade deadline I don't expect him to get much PT. I expect either Blake, Sergio or Bayless to be part of the Raef trade package. As long as we are winning I don't care who gets the playing time.
Then just mark a bunch of big L's in the column in those games, because the team goes as Roy goes. I don't know why, but he is our leader and has that intangible "it" factor that just gives our team that extra ounce of boost we need in close games. Hopefully, we get a few blowouts at home against OKC, Memphis, LAC, Sacramento, Washington, etc so he can rest and Bayless can get some run.
Why mess with a 4-game win streak to get a 19-year-old rookie some PT? We're already struggling to find guys in the rotation enough PT. We don't need an 11-man rotation. Bayless' time will come. He's just stuck in a crowded situation.
Players develop just fine without playing a lot of minutes. Bonzi Wells sat his whole rookie year and turned out just fine (attitude notwithstanding) and Jermaine O'Neal was a problem because he exploded for another team... after getting years of development without playing much as a Blazer. There's no reason to rush Bayless. Let him work hard and earn minutes. Ed o.
We expected a 19 year old to sit during game time and develop in practice. It will just be Bayless, not Batum. This is the "problem" with consistently adding more young talent. Pritchard's next proving ground is finding a good "consolidation" trade, where he moves some of the talented parts for a talent that the team can leverage more effectively. Redundancy is nice for injuries and rare times when nothing else is working and your third-string small forward scores 12 points in a quater but, in the end, the top-end talent is what wins championships.
What he needs to do is get better, then he'll get playing time. Having playing time handed to him wouldn't be very helpful to the team, or even to his long term development.
Did Sergio earn his minutes this year? I find it hard to believe that Sergio has "outworked" Bayless.. its simply an age and experience thing with Nate... The way I see it is that clearly Bayless is the better project PG than Sergio.. and you can only develop 1 of those guys at a time... I'd pick Bayless over Sergio.... just the way I see it.
IF we could only develop one at a time? I'd choose Bayless, too. I don't think that's at all true, however. Playing Sergio in games while letting the teenager work hard in practice, mature physically, and get experience traveling with the team and just being in the NBA seems to be a justifiable path, given the success the team is having, in particular. Ed O.
Who knows who has "outworked" who? We're not in practices, so we can't see. The question is, who is the better point guard right now, and I don't find it at all hard to believe that Rodriguez is. He's clearly improved and actually looks good distributing the ball. Bayless is a combo guard and still quite raw, just a year removed from high school. I'd be amazed if Bayless were a better point guard at this point in time and I seriously doubt he is. I don't know if Bayless is clearly a better point guard project. He might be. Regardless, I don't think it is at all true that you can only develop one player, per position, at a time. Bayless will develop by practicing and scrimmaging against his teammates, who are NBA players. As Ed noted in a previous post, Bonzi Wells and Jermaine O'Neal developed just fine while riding the pine in games. So did Tayshaun Prince, who barely played in his rookie season. I want to develop both, to give the team multiple chances to find a great player.
I guess we simply disagree on the what it means to develop a player.... I don't think sitting and watching from the bench counts.. when Bayless starts to play in the NBA, there will be a learning curve.. that curve starts the day he gets regular minutes and not a second before that.
Depending on the night, I agree. If Blake's playing decently well, I don't see a reason to take him out. Definitely if Blake is struggling though.
The mantra of this squad under Nate was always to "earn your minutes". If a rookie was ready (Roy, Rudy) - he played significant minutes, if he was not (LaMarcus, Bayless) he did not. The cream will rise to the top - when Bayless is ready and is better than the other options Nate has - he will see the court.
We have a bunch of people that need to play/need more PT... hopefully we can take care of this problem sometime soon. I still think this is the year we see who exactly fits and then make a move this off-season and set our rotation down to 9-10 men. But what a great freakin' problem to have... complaining about all the people that need to play/more PT riding a 4 game winning streak. Damn, 3 years ago it was sooooooooo different. Thanks KP. But I think there are some other players in front of Bayless right now that need to play/more play.
I like the idea of Bayless playing with a chip on his shoulders. That just makes him an even more dangerous scorer.
