I swear sometimes when I read these forums, I start to realize how impatient some people are...
I remember how much people used to castrate Avery Bradley on these forums, before I ever joined and would consistently lurk. And its refreshing to see that mentality hasn't changed at all...
Stevens has constantly said how much potential he sees in Young, and I agree with him. Young missed summer league, and missed a lot of off-season conditioning from his car accident injury. People forget how badly Bradley was offensively, and how hes still terrible offensively to this day.
If there is any player on the Celtics, I wouldn't be sad to see go; would be Bradley.
I'm still down with the firm belief that Young has a lot of potential and just needs the right mindset and confidence in himself. Yes, he seems awkward when finishing, but I still see him as a 16-18 type of scoring SG/SF who has high potential to be a two wing player. And I'm going to hold out until he turns at least 21.
Also for those saying he won't be able to change... Ummm... Are you kidding me? There are plenty of examples of players who were late bloomers... Its up to Young like Wallace once said, whether or not he wants to change his own destiny and really put forth the effort and work to become a great player.
I know I'm alone in thinking this, but I always felt like once we drafted Smart and Young, that Young had the higher potential of the two.
Bradley to me is the odd man out, and I swear if I see him take some more tough contested mid range jump shots, I will start pulling out all my hair. But I still would love Bradley on our team, because hes a hard worker, and its hard to hate someone who's so passionate about the game of basketball.
We're in a situation where we're either re-buiiding or re-tooling. We can afford to be patient especially with the assets and flexibility Ainge has afforded us. I'm willing to give Young 1-2 more years, before I'm ready to give up on. Its sad that a lot of the bloggers here are so pessimistic, and willing to shoot down a player. I wish I could say some users should eat crow, but we'll see in due time.
By the way, Klay Thompson was also one of the worst finishing shooting guards, but look at him now..
If there is any organization that can steer Young towards the right path, its the Celtics. And I hope Young really does realize how much better he could be. Sometimes in order for us to succeed, we have to really hit rock bottom. Young has always surpassed expectations without ever working hard or putting forth the time, so hopefully in a year, we'll see his fruits of labor, (that is if he has any, or done any,) come to fruition.
Well said - TP. In Bradley's case, iirc, wasn't he injured for most of his rookie year, because he didn't really play until the last game of the season against the Knicks, which was really his coming out party, offensively.
What I don't understand is why Stevens didn't throw him out there for 30 mpg or so over the final month of the season. I mean, he'd already wasted most of Young's first year of his career, anyway, and as we've seen, d-league minutes do not equal NBA minutes. The only way he's going to get better is by giving him consistent playing time, not yanking him after one 5 minute stint and then sending him back to the d-league for a month because he missed an assignment or something. He's not Brad's golden boy (Hunter), but come on - coach him. Develop him. That's your job. Will there be growing pains? Absolutely, as he's still very raw at the minute, but keep throwing him out there, even if he can't throw it in the ocean. Showing confidence and faith in him this way, instead of just verbally doing so for the papers, etc., would probable help Young's confidence, and show him that the organization is actually behind him. I know that most people want instant results, but, just for
Edited. Profanity and masked profanity are against forum rules and may result in discipline.s and giggles, I had a look at the splits for Zach LaVine and Andrew Wiggins a few days ago, and have a look at these numbers, per basketballreference.com -
Through the first 28 of 30 games of his career (not counting the two games in October), Wiggins shot a combined 138 for 341, or about 40.5%, overall, while LaVine also struggled, only showing tremendous improvement by the end of the year, statistically (21.1 ppg, 5.8 rpg, and 6.6 apg in 39.6 mpg over the final 8 contests), but Flip kept sending them out there, and January saw the eventual rookie of the year improve his fg% to 47.1% for the month, and he shot .457, .429, and .444 in each of the final three months of the season, respectively. My point being keep sending them out there. How else are you to determine if a kid can actually play? Don't give me the, "do it on your own time," approach by sending him to the d-league. Coach him, and not just to the point of turning him into an 'asset'
that will be moved as a part of a trade - do so in order to give us an actual player, which is what I thought Stevens was brought in for in the first place, or is asking him to allow Smart and Young to play to their strengths instead of spending the whole year molding the former into a 3-point shooter
simply too much of an expectation on my part? We don't even have a star right now, and we won't find one through the draft unless they're allowed to play. Only after we have one or two can we start moving forward as a team, but we're not even there right now. Ugh.
Plus, if we'd given Young actual minutes, we probably would have lost more games, which would have been the best of both worlds, imo, in that we would begin to develop our young guys while also getting the 8th-10th pick in the lottery for our trouble, which would have drastically improved our talent pool by getting someone like Winslow, Stanley Johnson, or Myles Turner, etc., at one of said spots in the draft, instead of getting swept in the first round.
Topic: Ideas to help Young finish near the rim. (Read 5157 times)