Whenever the Blazers have had an injury to our Starters Stotts has always done really weird things. Its always playing a guy out of position, or starting a guy thats completely out of the normal rotation. I wish Stotts would sometimes just make the obvious call, instead of trying to get cute. I have enjoyed Jake a lot at times throughout the year but as a SG not really...
I even enjoyed him a lot tonight: in the 4th, playing PF with the bench mob. But he was very much not good with the starters in the 1st and 3rd. It seems impossible to miss.
I agree that Hood makes the most sense by far. But I could definitely see Stotts trying something goofy like giving Simons or Trent a couple Vonleh-style starts against Atlanta or Chicago, just to see how they respond.
Very logical explanation. He didn't want to disrupt the rotation and Hood has been playing mostly with the second unit and moved ahead of Layman in the rotation so it was easier to insert Layman as the starter to keep most everything else intact.
Normally I would agree with that strategy, except Jake had only played SG a few times before and that experiment did not look promising then either. Just start Hood at SG. He still has 5 other other guys he plays off the bench. (Curry, ET, Jake, Collins and Kanter)
understand both philosophies and both have merit. It's only a temporary thing for maybe 8-10 games and then we will be back to our regular starting unit. With Jake starting you really only have to make one change and that's inserting McCollum back into the starting lineup and Jake goes back to being 8-9th man. If you start Hood then you need to make two changes as you then have to slot Hood back off the bench as well as McCollum. Stotts did do a good job against Indiana as he started Hood in the 3rd so he's kind of employed both strategies. I think he'll see how each plays in the first half and then go with what was working best in the 2nd half.