I love these tautology arguments. "If he could play, Doc would be playing him." As if Doc has never made a bad decision or a mistake.
Answer this question, why did JJJ play only 5 minutes in the blowout loss to Sacramento? He's your first round pick, he's had several games this year when he's been productive when he was on the floor and though the number's likely skewed because his playing time is so inconsistent, JJJ has a PER of 13.4 at the power forward spot while the opposing player has a PER of 7.8. Brandon Bass has a PER at the 4 spot of 14.6 while giving up a PER of 11.9.
Yet, even though Boston's starters had played poorly and were down 91-74 entering the 4th quarter against the Kings and with a back-to-back coming up the next night...JJJ played 5 whole minutes. Anybody remember that game where we beat Chicago and JJJ played 33 minutes, got 12 points and 4 rebounds? Did he look like a guy who sucks so bad he should never see the court in anything except blowout garbage time?
At the start of this year, Avery Bradley played worse than anything we've seen from JJJ. He still played, though, and after getting a chance to start he suddenly became a decent player. Now, I don't know if more playing time would have any similar effect on JJJ, but I am sick of people talking about how JJJ can't do this and can't do that and shouldn't be on the court WHEN HE'S NEVER GOTTEN A CHANCE. If you play a guy and he stinks, that's one thing. It doesn't seem to matter with Keyon Dooling, however. But it is simply not the case that Doc has tried to play JJJ and he's sucked when given those opportunities.
Mike