You know, with the bench having trouble holding the lead the other night against the Wizards, I was wondering if Doc should shake things up a bit. Red used to say that you should always keep one of your better players out of the starting lineup so that they could come in with fresh legs once the other teams starters get winded. I was thinking switching Jiri and Ricky, since Jiri has looked uncomfortble coming off the bench after starting most of last year or Raef and Al, since Al has been improving each game and with Raef's knees, trimming some minutes in November could look smart come April. Any thoughts?
I advocated starting Jiri over Ricky since pre-season. Although I do understand the benefit of having a more fundamental, IQ guy like jiri to help balance out the 2nd squad. We should be better than a 500 team, imo, so if this continues, I think Doc should give it a try and see what happens. Ricky should still get more minutes, but having him come off the bench may help us to actually keep the leads that the 1st unit builds. God, that would be nice to see. I don't think Al's ready to start yet. He should be getting more minutes than he is, but don't start him yet. We don't want to get is foul trouble and give up free throws to the opponent early in the game. I think though, that it's not the starting rotation that's the problem. I think it's the way in which Doc brings in the 2nd unit. We have 6 solid players in GP, PP RD, Jiri, Raef, and Blount (who has yet to impress me much this season). We should always have 2 or 3 of them on the court along with our 2nd unit to balance things out. He can still have a 10 man rotation, there is no need to play 2 completely separate teams, the 2nd team consisting of all young players with Jiri and Waltah.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting celtfan:</div><div class="quote_post">Blount (who has yet to impress me much this season). We should always have 2 or 3 of them on the court along with our 2nd unit to balance things out. He can still have a 10 man rotation, there is no need to play 2 completely separate teams, the 2nd team consisting of all young players with Jiri and Waltah.</div> Yeah, but the thing about Blount is that he doesn't do anything to draw attention to himself, but at the end of the night you look at the stats and quietly he's had a soild all around game. I completely agree that Doc should stop with the whole-sale substitutions. I understand why, since he's trying to do it around the quarters and give everyone a couple extra minutes of rest off the clock, but at this point in the season the young guys still aren't sure what they're doing and he should keep one of the starters in there (especially Payton) to direct everyone to where they are suppossed to go.
Good Call CeltsMan. Jiri started today and it seemed to work out for the best. I think Jiri needs to be on the floor with the starters in order to shine. Ricky is the perfect bench player because he's instant offense and intensity.
Yeah, Ricky definately provided a spark, but I don't think it hurt that Doc told him that if he was coming off the bench he could pretty much fire away.
