What three players do you think Doc will leave inactive every night so Hudson can stay off of the inactive list/out of the D-league? He'll be like Gabe Pruitt was 2 years ago.
Easy; TA/Walker/Giddens/Williams right now.
When healthy, TA makes the active list. When Walker gets healthy, he has a chance to take Hudson's spot.
I expect Hudson to go down to the D-league at some point during the season to work on his PG skills. Right now, with 13 healthy bodies, I expect Hudson to be firmly in the top 12.
3. Why would I take that comment to the Sweetney thread? Hudson is the 15th man, not Sweetney. There is not even a roster spot for the whale.
Right now, Hudson is the 15th man on this team. He has the opportunity to move up the depth chart as the season progresses, but he has not done it yet.
I hadn't heard that, Chris. If we include injuries, Hudson's no worse than 13th man right now.
As for the battle between Scal/Williams/Giddens/Hudson, I think Scal has the most confidence of the coaching staff, meaning he has the inside track on 10th man (with House/Daniels/'Sheed/Baby rounding out players 6-9).
With Scal in the top 10, I think that makes Williams one of the inactives on most nights. Scal is really a four, and with KG/Perk/Sheed/Baby, we don't have a need for a 6th big man.
That puts Giddens and Hudson as 11/12th men to open the season.
Giddens has shown (finally) that he can play in the confines of a team--what he hasn't shown is that he can score. For all Doc's talk about knowing his role and playing defense to get on the court, Giddens won't play until he can be a consistent offensive performer. Giddens should be getting a look at small forward, which is a position of need and a position which fits Giddens' skill set.
Hudson also plays a position of need; as the only reserve on the team who can guard the PG position. On some nights, that ability to defend the PG position will be a nice luxury to have for a few minutes in the 2nd and 4th quarters, unless you want to see E-House out there fake-hustling on defense against the Augustins or Robinsons or Lowrys of the world. We're a defensive team and Hudson gives us a defensive presence behind Rondo at point guard.
Of course, when TA and Walker get healthy, I think Hudson and Giddens will go to the D-League (which doesn't start play until December anyway). Both players need it--Giddens to continue to work on his offense, and Hudson to work on playing point guard. But for now both players have emergency type roles on this team--my one and only qualm is that one of those emergency type situations arose last night and Doc inserted the wrong player. In the first month of the season, there will be situations where Hudson/Giddens could be useful, when, for instance, our 2nd team is having trouble guarding some quick point guard or small forward, and I hope Doc has the ability to recognize those situations instead of running E-House and Scal out to slaughter. And, frankly, given Doc's history of poor in-game adjustment, I
don't think he has the requisite powers of recognition, which makes last night's head-scratching substitution of Giddens over Hudson so significant, even though admittedly nothing in the preseason holds much overall significance.
The 11/12 guys are relatively unimportant--yet to blissfully ignore situations where their limited skills might help the team (and further each player's development at the same time) boarders on coaching malpractice.
Doc
does have a good record of developing rookies. If you look at all the rookies that have come through the Cs, Doc has usually played the right ones and not played the wrong ones. However, while Doc usually gets it right in the end, he also has an established history of taking too long to recognize who has it and who doesn't. Guys like Gomes or Al Jefferson or Leon Powe all were under-played far beyond the point when it was clear to most that they should be getting time. So, while Doc can identify good rookies, I don't think he does enough early in the season to get those good rookies playing time in situations which fit their skill sets...
