Nate wants Nic to develop his post game (and more updates on Batum's summer)

I've been pretty frustrated since he came back that Batum has been under-utilized. I thought Nate should've played him more minutes, and given him more opportunities in the offense.

That said, I might have been wrong. Maybe Nate knew more about Batum's shoulder than I did, and he was just trying to get the most he could out of him. Even to the extent of not exploiting him against Nash in the playoffs.

Yeah, we might have gotten some more points from Batum in that series. But he might've needed the rest on the offensive end to recover from running through picks on defense. He had a cakewalk on offense, but he was in a nightmare position of having a bad shoulder while having to guard a PG who loves to use screens (not to mention Amare and Artest doing little and not-so-little things to aggravate the injury).

I think Nate just realized there was only so much you can ask of a 21 year old, and so he kept Batum out of the offense. You had Aldridge, Miller, Roy and Fernandez. Lots of good offense there (at least in theory). But not much in the way of perimeter defenders. We just couldn't risk it.

That pretty much jibes with Batum's quote about doing more to post up guards next year.

 

Batum was reported as not being able to lift his arm above his shoulder, and at the end of the season it was said he needed two months for his shoulder to completely heal. Fuck, he was non-committal to even playing in game 3 until he finally just said yes at one point. He was hurting and I again don't fault Nate for not relying on a 21 year old that has shown no ability to be relied on to create offense at the NBA level.

 

[video=youtube;1UsGMbgz4DA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UsGMbgz4DA&feature=channel[/video]