On the one hand, it's nice to see Doc responding to the team's bad play. On the other hand, for Collins to go from being superglued to the bench at the beginning of the season to starting lineup, it indicates that Doc is just flailing right now. He doesn't really know what's wrong with the team. He doesn't have an idea how to fix it. He's just guessing.
Mike
I don't think he's guessing, I think he is sending a message. He doesn't WANT to play Collins, but he realized he needed to stop rewarding the other bigs for not playing defense.
Why did it take him 24 games to send that message? Before last night, Collins had played in only 5 games all year and 4 of those were double digit losses. Are we really supposed to think that Bass, Wilcox and Sully all play great defense in practice but then suck in games? What was Doc seeing all training camp and in practice up to last night that prevented him from playing Collins?
Mike
Doc is a patient coach (perhaps to a fault...although his patience has paid off in the past). He believes in letting veterans work things out and play through things, just like he believes in letting young guys get comfortable before throwing them into the fire.
To put it bluntly, Bass, Sully, and Wilcox are better players than Collins right now. They bring more to the table overall, and in a vaccuum, should be the ones seeing the playing time.
However, what this team needed was defense. And those guys continued coming up short. Their rotations have all been pretty terrible, they have not defended the rim, and rebounding has not been a strongsuit.
I think its pretty easy to assume that Doc has been hammering them all on that all season, to try to get them to improve in those areas, but it just wasn't happening...and it was affecting the rest of the team as well.
So, he decided that he had given them enough of a leash, and decided it was time to sacrifice the other parts of the game, in order to try to get the teams defense back on track, and hopefully get through those guys thick skulls that if they don't shape up defensively, they won't be playing.
Topic: Collins To Start At Center Moves KG Back To The 4. (Read 4991 times)