raferfenix wrote:I'd be more worried about Dame if it weren't for how catastrophic Grief has been.
The divorce, taking the summer off, and history of slow starts also adds context.
Giannis and Dame can be a historically good tandem and both are locked up for years to come.
If we had traded for Dame earlier in the summer it wouldn't be this way, but that was the only way to get him. It's incomparably easier to find a reasonable coach and pick up some guys to play D.
So yeah Horst has work to do.
Yea I agree. At this point I wouldn't be worried about Dame's ability to play basketball. He just showed out all of December that he's basically the same as he's been and just last year he was as good as he's every been. He's never had attitude or chemistry problems before in spite of tons of turnover around him in Por. Acting like this is a disaster trade or that he's all of a sudden a bum is an overreaction to a few games.
That said, he is clearly unhappy right now so there is mental stuff to get over. There is the personal stuff but nba players go through that stuff quite a bit, they're always traveling, they and their wives are always cheating on each other, and presumably fighting about it, etc. Who knows what the story is there and I'm sure this is all new for him going to a new team away from the fam so much while also splitting up drama. But my guess is a player at his level would compartmentalize it pretty quick if he was happy with the basketball team, so to me I put this mostly on the coaching as to why he looks grumpy. Doubt he's gonna publicly make a fuss after all the stuff last summer but wouldn't surprise me if he's voiced his desire for a new coach to management and as all of us who've been i bad workplaces know, that kind of negativity festers out to everyone. I think they're best route of this is a new coach, now. Play out the year crappilly and with Dame being disgruntled and demanding another trade, his trade value gets killed next year. Basically don't fall to sunk cost fallacy on the coach, if you know he's in over his head just get out now and salvage it best you can with a vet coach of some kind.
