Sleepy51 wrote:First: I don't hate Bukie. I would have him on the floor in front of Pietrus because I think having intelligent offensive players who convert open shots is more important to this team than streaky occasionally impactful defense oriented offensive trainwrecks. My post was about Nellie's rationalization for playing idiot boy ahead of Bukie. That was me climging in Nellie's head, not my recommendation.
That said . . .
Barnes and Pete are definitely better defenders. Despite my complete disdain for Pete's game, he may be dumb but he is not as exploitable as Bukie in iso. Once he is locked in a one on one situation with no help or rotation stuff to figure out, he doesn't get beat like Bukie does.
Barnes? Barnes is a very good zone defender plays denial the right way and works well enough in our system. Who cares how his matchups look on paper. No one is running their offense at Barnes unless he's guarding Boozer. He isn't the guy out there wearing bullseye at all.
Monta and Barnes are definitely better passers. Monta was moving the ball well all night. He threw one bad pass that embarasssingly hit the rim, so I'm sure you'll cite that as evidence, despite the fact that he was our primary ballhandler and initiator despite not racking up the assist box score. Barnes? I have been seeing Barnes continuing to be a good passer and helping our ball movement. I don't know where the idea that Bukie passes better than either of them even comes from other than pure speculation, since he's never actually thrown a pass has he? Al might be the only guy on the team who's a worse passer than Bukie, and that's very close.
I'm not gonna rehash your whole arguement with 510 for multiple pages, so for me this is ultimately what it comes down to:
The only people who can change my mind on Bukie's defense are the oppsosing coaches who consistenly salivated when Bukie was on the floor more. No matter what any of us think or hypothesize or rationalize, opposing coaches decided that Bukie was our worst defender. Teams targeted him to exploit and it worked consistently enough to get him driven off the floor.
P.S. Monta is his own best option, because he has become OUR best option. He should get an assist in the scorebook every time he DOESN'T pass it to Jack for a chuck.
P.P.S. in reality, he was sharing the ball all night, but the guy he passed to didn't always take or have the shot. But he wasn't ballhogging at all. Not even close.
I think your wrong about what goes on in Nelly's head. Otherwise, why would Nelson put him in for defensive reasons at the end of games? He's done this on more than a few occasions. I just think he's in Nelly's doghouse right now for other reasons and probably because he's low man on the totem pole, it's his minutes that will suffer from trying to squeeze in playing time for Webber.
Buke is more often than not is able to stay with his man, get a hand in his face and generally make life difficult. Sure he gets beat by smaller quicker guys, but even Monta gets beat by those same guys (which is baffling). So this is a myth that teams go at him. If you have evidence to that effect, I'd like to see it. Now I'm not saying that he's a lock down defender, but he's at the very least average. When you consider how pathetic our team plays defense (I submit last night's game into evidence among many others), it's laughable to suggest that that's why he's not playing.
As far as passing goes, I would never say Buke is a good passer, again, he's average. Doesn't make many mistakes, but usually passes to get a better shot. He honestly doesn't handle or even touch the ball much because you've got Baron, Jackson and Ellis doing that. Buke in the half court plays a lot like Barnes and Pietrus in regards to passing. They don't much.
As far as Monta, I agree that he should call his own number more and at this point should be selfish. I wasn't saying that it was a problem, just pointing out he's got more of a scorers mentality. I'm fine with his passing when he actually does it.
