No, it was actually somewhat two-fold.
First, I was reading a blog post from a Kelly Dwyer Yahoo series called "Players we want back." Here's the start of the one on Miller:
Mike Miller, at age 32 heading into a season that will see him turn 33 midway through his team's year, is past his prime. We can hope for the finest of days and wonder if the worst is behind him, but all historical indications point out that the best isn't ahead of Mike Miller. At his age, even if he were to be coming off of a string of 82-game seasons (instead of 80 combined games in two years), that's just how this league works.
That doesn't mean Miller, who returned to the gym last week after two months of rehab in the wake of his turn on the champion Miami Heat, can't make this all work. And he can make this work, even hitting age 33 midseason, utilizing the same sort of mindset that he championed and we dismissed so easily during his prime years with Memphis, Minnesota, and Washington.
Forget the idea of Mike Miller, designated shooter. The guy can still stroke, but on a team that just added Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis, that sort of spacing isn't as paramount any more. Nah, forget the bombs. Please welcome, if his body is up to it, the idea of Mike Miller the point forward.
The designated passer. The skip guy. The extra dish after that up fake and drive that drove us so batty when Mike was passing up good looks from long range in Minnesota. The things that Allen and Lewis can't do. Returning from debilitating injuries to try and line up at pressurized 25-footer after sitting on the bench stiffening up for 30 minutes of real time is a tough gig for one of the greats — and Miller, that 40 percent career shooter from long range, is one of the greats. Doesn't matter. The new guys have one trick, you have two. Use the second trick to set up the other guy's one trick.
More:
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/players-want-back-mike-miller-131110174--nba.htmlIn that post, he links to an article from MM's Minny days, which has all the pertinent stats. Here's the way that one starts:
It is a simple sketch, really, a line drawing of a basketball with a shooter's creed angled across it the way sailors often went with "Mom'' back in tattoos' drunk and tawdry days. In this case, the words are "Let it Fly'' and the design is unobtrusively high on Mike Miller's back, between the shoulder blades, just south of his neck.
Which, come to think of it, might be the problem. Just as with real estate, the key to body art is location, location, location. Miller and his team, the Minnesota Timberwolves, might be better served if this particular one was smack dab in the middle of his forehead. Oh, and in reverse, the way ECNALUBMA gets painted on the front of an emergency vehicle. That way, the veteran swingman could read it every morning, a reminder each time he looked in the mirror: YLF TI TEL.
Maybe then, he would practice what the ink under his skin preaches.
This is the curious case of Mike Miller, a bona fide NBA sharpshooter who wants to do anything but shoot, as determinedly and as inexplicably as Brad Pitt's Benjamin Button aging from old to young. His play this season has been nothing short of confounding to Minnesota fans and league faithful, a one-man wrecking crew doing a 180 on an NBA cliché. Miller has been the antithesis of the claim that every player in the league would gladly jack up more shots if he could, that his life would be an endless loop of "Yes!'' if not for some coach constantly tell him "No.''
More:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/steve_aschburner/03/05/mike.miller/index.html#ixzz28H9wuck2As you can see, its been an issue for awhile. He's finally on the right team to play the game he wants, though, as Dwyer alludes to in his late-career Rick Barry comparison. I disagree with Dwyer calling Ray/Shard one-trick-ponies though. Neither is close to JJ. Both can create their own shot. Ray can pass, too.
