What makes you believe that Walker will be able to contribute in the play-offs? Because you liked him before the drafted and believed he'd be able to contribute right away? Well, perhaps he wasn't really as ready as you and many believed.
Walker has looked pretty good in very limited minutes. That doesn't mean much, but when you take that performance in conjunction with the fact that 1) he was a solid performer in college, 2) he was excellent in the D-League 3) he has tremendous, NBA-level athleticism and aggressiveness, and 4) he is our only option at SF other than Scal, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that he should at least be tried out for spot minutes on a nightly basis.
None of the other rookies playing for contenders looked tremendous right away, either. However, most of them are filling a role adequately now, though. There's no doubt in my mind that Walker could fill a role for five minutes a night, and Danny Ainge has recently expressed the exact same thought.
You yourself have expressed the need for a backup wing. It appears very likely that the team will commit its two open roster spots to a big man and to a point guard. That means we're still going to have a hole on the roster, that won't be filled externally. The options, then, are to ignore it, or to try to fill it from within. While the latter may not be the ideal option, it's the only one we really have. Either Walker or Giddens is going to need to step up, and to do that, they need to play.
All right, but I already knew you're in favour of force-feeding Walker with minutes, even if that costs the team wins and possibly HCA.
But that doesn't explain what makes you believe he's going to be a contributor in the playoffs. He's going to be ready by playing 5 minutes per game during 2 months? I mean, it's a possibility, but certainly very risky. And he certainly didn't look good in the last meaningful minutes he got .
Again, what's the other option? There should be a more experienced backup wing on this roster; there isn't. That being the case, the rookies need to get some run, or else Pierce is going to be dead.
What game are you referring to when you say that Walker didn't look good in meaningful minutes? Also, as mentioned, most rookies aren't going to look good immediately -- that's the reason he needs to get minutes, like other teams have done with their rookies. I can see why Doc limited Walker's minutes when TA was playing, although I disagreed with it. Now, though, there's no excuse.
Well, that's a different issue. One thing is limiting the minutes to Paul and Ray - and my problem with that is that I don't really see when Doc was able to do that, besides 1 minute (not more than that) in the last game. Hardly a big difference. He'll find ways of doing that, by giving more minutes to bench players, even if not Bill Walker.
But that has nothing to do with giving Walker minutes to get him ready to be the primary wing backup in the playoffs. I mean, he can suddenly blossom but to rely on a 2nd rounder with little NBA experience to suddenly become such a contributor is, at least, very risky.
p.s. by meaningful minutes I meant "non garbage time minutes" and I was refereeing to the New Orleans game.
Topic: Give Walker and/or Giddens some minutes (Read 29261 times)