Shelden Williams: The Forgotten Man

[indeedproceed]

for some reason reading the thread title I thought of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUWgE0EVQ9c

[BballTim]

I definitely would have like to have seen Williams against Blair.  Blair was outworking Sheed and the other C's.  Blair is a beast and other than Perk, Williams is the closest thing we have to a physical presense.  Man, I really love those Blair/Maxiell types.  I was Danny Fortson's biggest fan when he was here.  Williams has at least a little bit of that in him.

Fortson?  A guy that was more worried about being in position to rebound instead of guarding his man?

  I kind of got a kick out of Fortson, partly because Pitino traded for him to improve our rebounding but then realized that he couldn't play Fortson much because Antoine could only play the 4.

[satch]

Scal spelled backwards is Lacs....I think that says it all!

[Jon]

It was one game.  Scal played because if they had Shelden out there with Sheed, they were liable to see the Spurs redhead put up 30 points from the wide open 3's (I think he put up something close to that the last time they played).  Wallace and Williams have both proven terrible so far this season of sticking with guys on the perimeter, and running them off 3's. 

Ultimately, I think the decision should not have been between Shelden and Scal, but Shelden and Sheed.  They needed Scal to stick with big Red (I am calling him that, because I am blanking on his name, and don't feel like looking it up...you know who I mean), So they had to choose between having Wallace getting destroyed by the much quicker (and harder working) Blair, while hoping he can make up for it by taking advantage of Blair's lack of size on the other end, or putting Shelden in to try to keep Blair a little more in check, but sacrificing even more on the C's offensive end.

Unfortunately, Doc went with Sheed, who kept forgetting that he had a midget covering him.

So what it really comes down to is...we missed Davis last night.  He would have kept Blair more in check on defense, while giving the team a much better option on offense, who could have thrived inside against San Antonio's short bench.

I agree.  This is getting blown out of proportion.  You would think that the C's benched KG in favor of Scal given some people's reaction in this thread. 

While Williams has played well, with the way he played the his first couple of years of his career, he should be happy he has an NBA job. 

[jdub1660]

Yea. Blair has a nice drive-in reverse layup. It's a move that you don't usually see bigs using unless they're standing underneath the basket. Sweet move that I hope BBD or Sheldon could incorporate.

[Spilling Green Dye]

If you are going exclusively off of +/- then Sheldon would easily win a spot over BBD as well.  Ultimately it comes down to matchup, etc.  I do agree that Sheldon's should still see some decent minutes though, since I think that is what is best for the 2nd unit.

[scoop]

Against a fair share of teams in the league Perkins+Wallace+Williams are redundant defensively.

That opens minutes for Scalabrine.

[snively]

It was one game.  Scal played because if they had Shelden out there with Sheed, they were liable to see the Spurs redhead put up 30 points from the wide open 3's (I think he put up something close to that the last time they played).  Wallace and Williams have both proven terrible so far this season of sticking with guys on the perimeter, and running them off 3's. 

Ultimately, I think the decision should not have been between Shelden and Scal, but Shelden and Sheed.  They needed Scal to stick with big Red (I am calling him that, because I am blanking on his name, and don't feel like looking it up...you know who I mean), So they had to choose between having Wallace getting destroyed by the much quicker (and harder working) Blair, while hoping he can make up for it by taking advantage of Blair's lack of size on the other end, or putting Shelden in to try to keep Blair a little more in check, but sacrificing even more on the C's offensive end.

Unfortunately, Doc went with Sheed, who kept forgetting that he had a midget covering him.

So what it really comes down to is...we missed Davis last night.  He would have kept Blair more in check on defense, while giving the team a much better option on offense, who could have thrived inside against San Antonio's short bench.

I agree about Shel's limitations, but are you saying Davis would have played over Sheed and covered Blair while Scal covered Bonner?

I strongly doubt a Davis/Scal combo would have helped at all versus the Spurs.  That's arguably the worst rebounding froncourt possible (although the Scal/Mikki duo from yesteryear could make a strong case).

I'm hoping Baby's svelte enough to run jump shooting 4s off the 3-pt line, because Scal is brutal as a rotation 4 this year.  He's only grabbed 4 rebounds all year.  Bonner had 9 in one game matched up against him. If Baby can't do it, we should probably make a trade, because Rashard Lewis, Josh Smith and Lamar Odom await us in the playoffs.