Say you are a baseball manager who has a player who was one of your best guys last year, but he is going through a hitting slump. You have this new guy who is hitting well and may just be a better fielder at his position. You are in the AL and you decide, "why don't I move him to DH and let the new guy play until we can get him back into hitting form." Are you discounting that player forever? Are you saying that he is inferior to the other player? Or are you just acknowledging that until he gets out of his slump, you are going to let him play a smaller role for a while?
I am not saying Rasheed will not be a better player than Matt. The scouts believe he will, but I am saying, IMO, you start fresh every year and, on a deep team, you may end up coming off the bench when you are in a slump. I know that statement is somehow villainous and insulting.
I am not trying to do anything other than stop having it said that I hate a player that I do really like.
Pretty terrible analogy.
If my player is going through a HITTING slump but is still fielding well, why would I move him to DH, where a) he still may hit poorly but hitting is all he'll be doing and b) I lose his already established defensive prowess?
Another reason why this is a bad analogy: baseball is 162 games. College basketball is 30ish games. It doesn't hurt you as badly to sit a guy in MLB as it does to sit him in a college game, particularly if the production difference isn't THAT far off.
And another reason - there's no "DH" equivalent in college basketball. When you're on the floor, you're a two way player. At Duke, if you're not a two way player, you're probably not on the floor.
You're basing your theories on a sample size of ONE exhibition game against a pretty bad opponent and a scrimmage.
I've seen Rasheed for a full year and Jones barely at all. I've seen Rasheed have some big games and always give effort. What message does it send to the team if you sit a guy who always goes all out for a guy who goes all out but just got here and hasn't really shown that he's that much better?
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
A mosaic theory that I would rather not get into too deeply (negatively deviated shooting numbers that haven't reverted back to the mean YET and all of the praise from multiple sources regarding Matt's D). I know Rasheed will be back to lighting teams up soon, I just hate hearing someone is automatically a starter within the fan base without considering anyone else based on a season they spent with an entirely different team. I can accept whatever result, but hearing that he will automatically have the starting job (when K doesn't say it that way) makes me cringe. Call it a knee-jerk reaction.
This is said every year. And every year, the end of the season shows that K generally plays 7 or 8 guys any significant minutes.
What I don't get is why Sulaimon is even in the discussion when there is another obvious player going through a prolonged shooting slump and never having been known for playing great defense.
i don't think you are hearing "automatically." i think you are hearing "very, very likely and near certain" based on his terrific play as a freshman, overall talent, and year of experience in the program.
like others, i cannot fathom where any negative sentiment for rasheed is coming from. might he be in some kind of slump? i guess it's possible, but i have no evidence for it. why don't we wait til the season starts before we start criticizing our players?
This analogy is very much like something else.
Truth is, all of our players will push each other to get better. That comes in spurts and stretches. Each one has a chance, each and every practice, to improve and to show what they could do on the floor in a game.
I think anyone who gets knotted up about who starts, who finishes, or obsesses over minutes played this year is missing the bigger picture. We have a lot of really, really good players with different skill sets. Who is on the floor depends on what K's plan is and the match-ups presented. As long as all of the players are focused on the collective goal of winning and teamwork, it's all good. Only the fans on the outside who want to quibble are left to do so.