The 4th big catch 22

[Rerisen]

whereas rookies have proven nothing and don't deserve minutes.

It's not a matter of deserving or not, its a matter or earning.

Doug had another chance last night, and he showed the coach little reason to put him back in the next game.

[JeremyB0001]

It's not a matter of deserving or not, its a matter or earning.

How does that work for rookies then? It sounds like you think that Doug could not have "earned" minutes with the gaudy resume he built leading up to the night that the Bulls drafted him. So how does he earn minutes if he's forced to start with nothing? What should Doug have done so far that he has not done to earn minutes?

Doug had another chance last night, and he showed the coach little reason to put him back in the next game.

So I say that it's a joke to evaluate a player based on 211 minutes and your response is, "Well, let's judge him based on 15 minutes instead?"

[Rerisen]

So how many entitlement minutes, despite being a big zero through 200+, do you want McDermott to be given while the Bulls are in the midst of trying to hang on to a good seed? 7 minutes a game, 12 minutes a game, 15 minutes a game?

At a time when the Bulls are already shorthanded and going to struggle to win most games.

How many losses should we sacrifice to play Doug ahead of other players that have been better than him?

The Bulls aren't a rebuilding team, Thibs isn't in the business of prioritizing three years down the line vs this year. Besides which, when Doug is struggling as bad as he has been, good chance the minutes are doing more harm than good to his confidence.

Kid missed 4 layups last night, 3 of which he had clear lanes to the basket.

He needs to work on his game, and his body, in the summer time.

[JeremyB0001]

So

I see you answered none of my questions, which weren't hypothetical questions or questions designed to score some sort of points in an argument with you. I'm genuinely trying to understand your position here. You seem to want McDermott to "earn" minutes, but it's entirely unclear how he would ever do that in your book. It seems like you've sentenced McDermott to be a 12th man for his Bulls career based on a very, very small number of minutes and you don't think he deserves opportunities for a larger role. My questions were intended to allow you to show how that's not true, but it seems that you're just doubling down.

I will nonetheless answer your questions, even though they seem like they're arguments more than genuine questions.

how many entitlement minutes, despite being a big zero through 200+, do you want McDermott to be given while the Bulls are in the midst of trying to hang on to a good seed? 7 minutes a game, 12 minutes a game, 15 minutes a game?

"Entitlement minutes" is a loaded phrase that I don't use. I'm not asking for any sort of developmental minutes for McDermott. The Bulls didn't draft him to be a project, they drafted him to help the team win games this season.

I don't want players to have their roles defined based on extremely small sample sizes, such as 200 minutes. I've explained all those reasons before. They're the same as the reasons that I wouldn't want any player's role determine based on 100 minutes, or 20 minutes, or 2 minutes.

McDermott's minutes should depend on how many minutes are available. If Snell's breakout is for real and Dunleavy and Jimmy are healthy, Thibs could probably construct a reasonable three-man wing rotation with those players and there wouldn't necessarily be minutes for Doug. That hasn't been the reality of this season though. Snell was atrocious for 50 games. Butler and Dunleavy have missed a lot of games. Thibs has risked Jimmy's health and stamina by playing him excessive minutes. Hinrich has been crippling the team and yet he's been getting minutes at the wing. Thibs has played Niko out of position at small forward. There have been lots of available minutes, where it would have been sensible to play the rookie drafted to come in and contribute right away.

At a time when the Bulls are already shorthanded and going to struggle to win most games.

Yes, the Bulls are currently shorthanded. Kirk is logging his minutes at point guard. There are 40 extra minutes available in Jimmy's absence. Someone has to play those minutes. At some point, you are moving mountains to keep McDermott on the bench while the Bulls are running out of bodies to play at the wing.

How many losses should we sacrifice to play Doug ahead of other players that have been better than him?

I would like to sacrifice as many losses as possible. But I assume you mean wins. The Bulls shouldn't sacrifice any wins to play McDermott. But Thibs has probably cost us games by playing Hinrich over McDermott at the wing. That's inexcusable.

[Rerisen]

I see you answered none of my questions, which weren't hypothetical questions or questions designed to score some sort of points in an argument with you.

Sorry, I expected they were rhetorical questions since I already answered that.

What do you think I meant by 'earn' minutes? That means play well in the minutes you get, then you get more minutes.

You try to say 200 minutes isn't enough, and in most cases I would agree. But this wasn't most cases, McDermott was playing like an absolute lost scrub in the minutes he was getting.

When a player is that bad, and judging by last game, still there, then you move from earning time on the floor, to earning time via practice and when the coach thinks you are ready to be more than a huge net negative and nearly worst box score +/- rotation player in the league.

In the other thread you make the case for Niko pointing out his PER, RPM and team on floor eff ratings. Now do the same for Doug and what do they say about how much he should play?

Right now E'twaun Moore has been a lot better than Doug, and by playing him at 2, that would allow Dunleavy and Snell to handle all the minutes at the three.

I have also said other places that in the current circumstances, I don't see why we couldn't give another 5-7 minutes to Doug, till more guys get back. But I also understand why Thibs wouldn't want to do that, because he's played horrendously in such stints this year, and yet you certainly can't double those to 15 or 20 minutes at his current level, because then you really would be risking losses almost on his accord alone.

Unfortunate to Doug, this is rather the conundrum I and some others pointed out at the beginning of the year, why you don't draft rookies expecting them to be in the rotation on contending teams. There simply isn't time or the luxury to play through a bunch of bad play with them. They have to produce or wait till next year. If you are a team out of the playoffs, or even in the lower half, like Milwaukee, with no real hope of a title, then exact seeding means a bit less and you can run more of a dual purpose with development vs trying to win.

[JeremyB0001]

[What do you think I meant by 'earn' minutes? That means play well in the minutes you get, then you get more minutes.

But you can't play well in the minutes you get, if you don't get any minutes. It's also nearly impossible to play well in the minutes you get, if you only play a few minutes at a time. It's not possible to do what you're proposing.

You try to say 200 minutes isn't enough, and in most cases I would agree. But this wasn't most cases, McDermott was playing like an absolute lost scrub in the minutes he was getting.

I don't think that there's any data out there to support this being some sort of exception that makes it okay to use a tiny sample size. It's actually quite the opposite: The more extreme the results, the more likely there is to be regression to the mean. In other words, it's nearly impossible for any NBA player to be this bad, so using a small sample size here is more even more unreliable that it would normally be to use a tiny sample size.

When a player is that bad, and judging by last game, still there, then you move from earning time on the floor, to earning time via practice and when the coach thinks you are ready to be more than a huge net negative and nearly

If McDermott's playing time should be whatever Thibs thinks it should be, then there's really no point to this conversation, eh?

In the other thread you make the case for Niko pointing out his PER, RPM and team on floor eff ratings. Now do the same for Doug and what do they say about how much he should play?

You're missing the point. You're suggesting that I do exactly what it is that I'm saying we should not be doing. My argument is that McDermott needs to play as many minutes as Niko has - about five times more minutes - before it's worthwhile to engage in those sorts of exercises. If everyone judged McDermott the way that you're suggesting based on these 200 minutes he would be out of the NBA. There are really good reasons that lottery picks don't have their fate decided based on 200 minutes.

[Rerisen]

If everyone judged McDermott the way that you're suggesting based on these 200 minutes he would be out of the NBA

No, because I'm not discussing whether Doug is a bust or not, that is entirely immaterial to how many minutes he should get right now. I don't think he's a bust (well yet), but I also don't think he should be playing 15+ every night either. He can work on his game and body in the summer and hope to come back better next camp and to the start the year, and we'll begin anew.

If McDermott's playing time should be whatever Thibs thinks it should be, then there's really no point to this conversation, eh?

If Mcdermott's playing time should be X regardless of his performance, and likewise regardless what his coach thinks, he just plays X no matter the circumstances, then there's really no point to this conversation either.

My argument is that McDermott needs to play as many minutes as Niko has - about five times more minutes - before it's worthwhile to engage in those sorts of exercises.

We just disagree about the value of minutes on a winning team as well as how rookies develop. Doug has a 5.5 PER and for us being a contending team I cannot see any justification for giving him 1250 minutes at that level just to 'see what we have' before figuring out if he can contribute this year.

In summary, you have absolutely no bottom line for how badly a rookie can play before making any judgment on the play time they deserve or to actually meet the bar of pulling them, prior to I guess.... 1000 to 1500 minutes, which is 15-20 minutes a game for a whole season pretty much! I think that is complete bonkers for a contending team to do. What if Mirotic was still sucking as well, just play them both 17 minutes a game all year regardless of wins and losses, for a team trying to win a championship?

The Bulls traded Marquis Teague after just 650 minutes, apparently they had seen plenty to make a judgment. According to your theory of zero rookie expectations or consequences, I guess we should have just kept playing Teague all last year as our starting or backup PG, no matter how many losses it meant, till he reached some arbitrary vast minute limit, at which point the team could finally admit he was sucking and hurting the team, to move him out of the rotation.

If Mike James was on our roster playing as bad as Doug has, he would not get 15 or 20 minutes a game. Just because its a rookie, doesn't mean they should be entitled to any play level, any level of horribleness, without minute consequences.

I don't think many people really believe that though. What this whole McDermott debate really looks to be about to me, is a certain segment of people believe that Doug McDermott is already right now capable of X level of play at the NBA based on their preconceived bias formed from what he did in college. To such thinking, there is no conceivable way that Doug is actually as bad as he's shown so far, and once given enough minutes he will prove that out. But the coach of a contending team can't operate on such 'faith' or blind assumptions which could be entirely wrong.

[coldfish]

If everyone judged McDermott the way that you're suggesting based on these 200 minutes he would be out of the NBA

No, because I'm not discussing whether Doug is a bust or not, that is entirely immaterial to how many minutes he should get right now. I don't think he's a bust (well yet), but I also don't think he should be playing 15+ every night either. He can work on his game and body in the summer and hope to come back better next camp and to the start the year, and we'll begin anew.

If McDermott's playing time should be whatever Thibs thinks it should be, then there's really no point to this conversation, eh?

If Mcdermott's playing time should be X regardless of his performance, and likewise regardless what his coach thinks, he just plays X no matter the circumstances, then there's really no point to this conversation either.

My argument is that McDermott needs to play as many minutes as Niko has - about five times more minutes - before it's worthwhile to engage in those sorts of exercises.

We just disagree about the value of minutes on a winning team as well as how rookies develop. Doug has a 5.5 PER and for us being a contending team I cannot see any justification for giving him 1250 minutes at that level just to 'see what we have' before figuring out if he can contribute this year.

In summary, you have absolutely no bottom line for how badly a rookie can play before making any judgment on the play time they deserve or to actually meet the bar of pulling them, prior to I guess.... 1000 to 1500 minutes, which is 15-20 minutes a game for a whole season pretty much! I think that is complete bonkers for a contending team to do. What if Mirotic was still sucking as well, just play them both 17 minutes a game all year regardless of wins and losses, for a team trying to win a championship?

The Bulls traded Marquis Teague after just 650 minutes, apparently they had seen plenty to make a judgment. According to your theory of zero rookie expectations or consequences, I guess we should have just kept playing Teague all last year as our starting or backup PG, no matter how many losses it meant, till he reached some arbitrary vast minute limit, at which point the team could finally admit he was sucking and hurting the team, to move him out of the rotation.

If Mike James was on our roster playing as bad as Doug has, he would not get 15 or 20 minutes a game. Just because its a rookie, doesn't mean they should be entitled to any play level, any level of horribleness, without minute consequences.

I don't think many people really believe that though. What this whole McDermott debate really looks to be about to me, is a certain segment of people believe that Doug McDermott is already right now capable of X level of play at the NBA based on their preconceived bias formed from what he did in college. To such thinking, there is no conceivable way that Doug is actually as bad as he's shown so far, and once given enough minutes he will prove that out. But the coach of a contending team can't operate on such 'faith' or blind assumptions which could be entirely wrong.

Great post.

Before the season even began, Thibodeau warned the fanbase that its rare to see 2 rookies contributing on a title level team. He was factually correct but most of us took that to mean its rare to have two rookies good enough to contribute. IMO, that's a big part of it, but the other issue is the constant distraction that rookies are on court, in practice and in the media.

The Bulls right now are slated to pick around #21. I hope they use that pick because its always good to have a line of young players coming up. That said, I hope the organization effectively red shirts the guy. Just tell him and the fanbase he isn't going to play much in his first year.

In the long term, I don't know where Doug is going to end up. I think there are some encouraging signs but I got out of the player predictions business. For right now, he is bad. Beyond that, he is deeply buried in the rotation when everyone is healthy. On the wing, he has Dunleavey, Butler and Snell ahead of him. Also, Rose, Kirk and Mirotic can play some minutes at the 2/3 and likely will in the playoffs. There is no point to giving McDermott development minutes.

Hopefully he can do like Snell and spend the summer working on his body then come back ready to light up the world.

.......

One last note on Doug. His 3p shot is flat. Someone else pointed this out. That shot trajectory is an issue. He has a little Luol Deng in him in that he can probably be deadly from the college 3p line or just inside the arc, but that step or two back exposes a flaw in his mechanics. That's something else he needs to work on. The comparisons to Korver get worse by the day.

[McBulls]

I'm not going to back this up with stats, but my bet is that most NBA stars don't languish on the bench in their rookie years waiting for a mediocre player to get hurt before they get a chance to play quality minutes. And most play at least 1-2000 minutes in their rookie season. There are several reasons for this:

1. Even a blind man can see a player who has the skills to become an NBA star.
-- Only an idiot would keep MJ, Magic or BIrd on the bench. The latter two played on contenders in their rookie year. Do I really need to add 20 more examples? I could. The more challenging task is to find 20 future stars who rotted on the bench watching mediocre players get minutes -- even in garbage time.

-- yes, there are guys like Eddie Curry who have the skills to become stars who are not mentally ready to play as stars. But even those guys would get playing time on a contender.

2. Most often future stars are drafted by bad teams who have nothing to lose by playing them. You could argue that that is not a good thing. Shaq would probably been a better player sooner if he spent his rookie year in LA. Lots of great players who languish on bad teams for many years were worse off because of it. Rose would be a better player if he had played his rookie year beside Kobe Bryant.

3. Great NBA players usually make their teamates better players. So the team just plays much better when they are on the floor.

Mirotic has the skills to be an NBA star. Anyone who watches him play can see it. Keeping him on the bench doesn't help him or the team -- this year, next year or the year after that. Yes, two other current NBA stars are competing for minutes, but you find a way to play the guy, even if that means making a trade. My feeling is that no trades are necessary, but I can see why it might be considered.