Suns expect Clark to be a rotation player next season

[hunterxaz]

and I agree with it all. I'm just stating objective facts now. I'm not condemning him to be a bust. I think he'll be a decent player some day, and could be a defensive option for the Suns.

All of my points were echoed by that poster. Just said in a "nicer" way.

[eastsidecrossover]

Hunter, do you know how lame you sound with this argument? Most are saying that he has "potential" which is a big thing in the nba. Most players who have somewhat of an impact play on.........teams that suck and therefore look better. Its a transition for some players, such never make the transitions, some step in and make an impact if they get consistent time. Yes, lets play captain obvious and he has not made an impact as the 11th guy off the bench. Most 11th guys don't do anything but sit there. But honestly did anyone think he was going to play over some of our hustle guys right out of the gate? I did not think he could his first year unless an injury happened.

Lets take Nash for instance. He was the 15th pick and sat behind KJ and J-Kidd. Now was he going to beat out these two guys his first year? nope, not a chance. I remember people were not too happy with the pick since we had both these great PG's on our team anyways. He got a chance elsewhere and were were lucky to get him back. Im not saying Clark will be anything close to nash as a productive player, but he has a lot of the fundamentals that makes a solid player in this league. Now all he needs is PT to see if that transitions into something solid or special on this team.

[tsherkin]

and I agree with it all. I'm just stating objective facts now. I'm not condemning him to be a bust. I think he'll be a decent player some day, and could be a defensive option for the Suns.

All of my points were echoed by that poster. Just said in a "nicer" way.

I dunno, it just seems that you emphasize how bad he is as if it's a useful observation. Yeah, we all know he isn't Shawn Marion part two right now, but does that gain us anything? Yeah, he blows rotations. He's a rookie. I can't think of the last defensive-impact rookie I saw aside from Tim Duncan. Even Dwight Howard wasn't hot sauce on defense as a rookie except as a defensive rebounder. It wasn't until two years ago that he really started to exert himself as a defensive force of any real consequence. Perimeter guys take even longer.

Anyway, I'm just saying, it seems unproductive to be constantly calling out a low-minutes rookie for not being an impact player when everyone and his mom knew that Clark was drafted as a project player based on upside from physical talent.

[lilfishi22]

tsherkin speaks the truth once again.

I don't think hunter really understand this thing they call the NBA that I hear people talk about. He thinks that a lottery pick means a certified star. The only one hearing the hype and judging him based on that hype was you, hunter. The rest of us took things into perspective and listened to our FO's plans to take EC's development slow and to not judge him this season.

I also find it funny how you talk about the importance of empirical data yet you make up your opinions based nothing but your apparent dislike of Clark because he doesn't live up to *your* expectations. 4 games, 8mpg, 2ppg, 1rpg, 1topg is not solid empirical evidence because of his role so don't go around throwing out "empirical data" trying to justify your position with deliberately misleading statistics.

Expecting him to be good now is silly, irrational. Nobody is expecting him to be good now, I'm just stating that so far he's been a poor player on every level, not on a level that meets any expectations.

Expecting him to be good now is silly and irrational, as you put it. But it's irrational to say he's a bad player based on expectations, when there were no expectations for him the perform this season.

[hunterxaz]

@eastsidecrossover

There's plenty of rookies that are having an impact this year.

Now, Earl Clark was never promised to have the prospect level of a top 10 draft pick, but he's #14 and was hyped up by a lot of you guys and the media/scouts. Even still, I am not measuring him by that -- just merely by what I see.

I think he's not NBA ready right now, and needs to work harder to improve his body and skill-set. He's playing with some of the best players in the league on his own team. I still think he need(ed)s more time in the D-League, a full-season would have helped him, T-Griff too. Very rarely do we use him.

@tsherkin

I don't "constantly" talk about it. I just say it whenever he's in a game, I haven't talked about EC since he went to the D-League last week or whenever it was.

@lilfishi22

're absolutely right -- I said that there are no expectations so there is no metric by which he's been measured. He's just an all-around bad basketball player so far.