Hogwash.
players, particularly young ones, need to earn their court time not have it given to them. teams that forcefeed their young players court time do so because they have no other options. I do believe there was an issue when Doc was here about playing the younger guys but not so much under Brad.
Smart has earned more time as he's improved. He wasn't good enough for heavy minutes when he was drafted. Brown is getting more time as he improves. he's not good enough for heavy minutes right now. Many would argue that Rozier isn't ready for the time he's already getting never mind getting more minutes as you would suggest all young players should get. Whoever Danny takes next year will not be ready for heavy minutes starting the season but may improve to get more minutes as the season progresses.
There's a bunch of top picks that have never justified your philosophy of automatic minutes just because they were drafted high. we have enough depth in the backcourt and wing that if Danny drafts someone else that plays those positions they won't have to be pressed into heavy minutes. Not so sure the same luxury will exist for Zizic and Yabu if they join the team next year.
Marcus Smart played 27 mpg as a rookie. He played 27.3 mpg in his second year. He jumped up to a whopping 31.1 mpg this year. This notion that Smart wasn't playing just isn't borne in reality.
Players, especially young ones, get exponentionally better when they play more minutes. Sure playing those minutes on a better team is better than playing them on a poorer team, but young guys have to play to reach their full potential. Even super young raw ones perform better with more playing time. But here's the thing, look at every single all time great, you know the special room players, they all played a ton of minutes as a rookie. They almost all had terrible records and made a lot of mistakes, but they all played and all played a lot. The guys that reach true greatness, do so because they aren't brought along slowly and barely play as rookies. They do so because they are given as many minutes as they can reasonably play and are allowed to work through and learn from their mistakes. That is how you reach greatness in the NBA.
Exactly
Did the Spurs bench Duncan? Make him earn his min
There will be a logjam... There is already a logjam
Duncan went to school for 4 years and was awesome from the moment he was drafted. Brown was 19 years old and had a lot to learn when we drafted him. Not the same thing.
The true superstars are always going to turn into superstars regardless of how many minutes they play as a rookie. Hell, Blake Griffin skipped his first year entirely. Embiid skipped his first two years entirely and he's a superstar if he ever happens to get healthy. So no, I don't buy that being force fed minutes works. Didn't work out very well for Okafor, did it? Look at his horribly bad habits.
find a super raw 18/19/20 year old that barely played as a rookie and went on to greatness. The only one I can think of is Jermaine O'Neal and using greatness with him is a bit of a stretch (he was certainly very good for a long time, just not sure he was ever great).
If you can't find minutes for a guy, it probably means he isn't very good and won't ever be very good. But as we've seen from this super raw Jaylen Brown, the more minutes you get the faster you improve. He has shown that over the last few weeks with Bradley out and his minutes up. You just get better at a much faster rate when you play.
there's more players force fed minutes that didn't turn out to be superstars or very good. getting playing time doesn't automatically equate to a player becoming great or even good.
of course not, and I never said or implied otherwise. All I'm saying is the more minutes a player gets and the earlier he gets them, the faster that player will reach his peak, whatever that may be. You could forcefeed me 30 mpg and I'm never going to be great, but I would get a lot better a lot faster.
How many super raw 18/19/20 year olds with real superstar potential end up on a team trying to win now though as opposed to focusing on developing young talent?
Darko, Jaylen Brown, Otto Porter. I can't think of too many others. Usually when you're drafted in the top 5, you're going to a bad team.
For guys like Jermaine O'Neal (and I would add Zach Randolph, Andrew Bynum too with a very loose superstar definition), when you're drafted outside the top 10, you generally go to better teams and it's more of a challenge to get minutes. Even Kobe only played 15.5mpg as a rookie (though don't know if that's considered "barely played" or not).
I think the sample size is just too small to say how getting minutes impacts a players development during their 18-20 years in the NBA.
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