Some thoughts from last night:
If you've ever questioned why teams sign older veterans who don't figure into a young team's plans, I introduce to you Rodney McGruder. Rodney is a limited basketball player, the essential "he is what he is" guy. But he literally hasn't had a bad game for the Pistons. There's something to be said for when absolutely nothing is working on the court, a coach can look down at the end of the bench and call a dude that hasn't played in a couple weeks and get some good minutes out of him.
Dude literally just got traded and then came right back, didn't trip or complain but just went out and did what the coach asked. I think you have to be in leadership to really understand signings like McGruder and such. It's really made me start to rethink my disdain for Joseph. If you really think about, you'd realize you don't really hate Joseph, you hate Casey overplaying him and playing him over young guys. The difference between the two is McGruder is appropriately played as the 5th/6th guard, last result when we need to buy some minutes, and Joseph is played like some big minute guy we have to lean on.
McGruder comes in in short minutes and plays consistently decent every time and never wets the bed, while Joseph is just as up and down as the young guys he's supposed to be steadying. So when McGruder has a solid 12 minutes and Joseph is having one of his down games and still gets 22 minutes, we're going to get the pitchforks out.
It's not going to happen but Joseph needs to be played like McGruder, very sparingly and only as needed. But since it won't happen we'll never be able to appreciate the need for these types of guys on the roster.
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