DJ Getting Thrown Under the Bus...Ouch

[Battery]

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/12/05/1890300/key-ingredients-missing-for-bobcats.html

Leadership and experience

To hear Wallace and Jackson tell it, the departures of point guard Raymond Felton and centers Tyson Chandler and Theo Ratliff threw this team for a loop.

"No disrespect to anybody, but I think everyone was more focused on doing their jobs last year,'' said Jackson. "We had such professionals last year. We had Theo and Tyson, and when Tyrus (Thomas) first came here, he had a lot of energy. And Raymond led this team.''

Felton is a Knick, Ratliff a Laker and Chandler a Maverick. That means D.J. Augustin became the starter at point guard and power forward Thomas is growing into a larger role off the bench.

Wallace notes a key difference between Felton's intensity and Augustin's more deferential personality.

Wallace misses Felton's "aggression, his approach on defense. The point guard is the head of the team. He picks everybody up and brings us along.

"D.J. doesn't have the fight. Not to compare them as far as abilities, but D.J.'s personality is not as high as Ray's was as far as aggression and attitude on the court. D.J. is more laid-back.

Augustin acknowledges he's shy by nature and Brown calls Felton a "bulldog.'' But Brown said if there's a leadership void, it's Wallace's and Jackson's task to fix that as captains.

Discuss...

[fatlever]

wallace and jackson need to look in the mirror. they are the captains. it is now on them to lead this team. if those two vets expected dj in his first year as a starter to come in and lead the team then they were naive. dj has to play better, no doubt, but wallace and jackson are the captain and they also need to play better.

once again, i think the loss of tyson and theo are much much greater than anyone here ever discusses.

but are we really supposed to believe that larry brown, a hall of fame coach, that his team's chances at the playoffs this rested solely on whether or not raymond freaking felton was our pg?

[fatlever]

if dj isnt doing what the coach wants then the coach needs to make a change. start livingston.

not doing anything and expecting different results is ridiculous.

[fatlever]

all that being said...

If dj cant figure out a way to become more of a vocal leader of this team, he has no business as a point guard. there is no place in the NBA for shy point, laid back point guards.

[penquin11]

Wow D*ck move Wallace, that just sealed the deal in my mind on our need to get rid of Wallace and heres why:


1. Wallace just totally blamed DJ for his lack of work ethic this year, and made it seem as if the loss of several players who didnt play much or well (besides felton) caused the team to suck this year. Not only is this a way of escaping responsibility for losses caused by bad shooting on his part and on the teams part its also demoralizing.

2. Way to blame a first year starter for playing like a first year starter right? Furthermore, DJ has been the most consistent player on the team by far, on an average night he gets about 13 points and 6 assists, and generally plays well.

4. I don't see how you can criticize a guy who overall has been playing on such a higher level. DJ has been hitting his shots and making decent passes. Yes he needs to work on his defense, however at least he is not screwing the team over on a nightly basis like Wallace is.

5. The team is playing as good as it is, we lack a good C, a solid starting PF, a consistent SG, a cool headed consistent SG, or a experienced PG. Not to mention our bench sucks, and we have a stubborn old bird as a coach.... What do you expect....

[Fred Williamson]

Hey Captain, at least DJ is trying.

[thruthefire]

Hamilton suggested LB only picks on little people and cultured Africans, I'm starting to think G-Dub doesn't like light-skinned African Americans. He did throw TC under the bus last season, after all, and he never had a problem with Mek's laid-back attitude.

More seriously, Gerald and Ray were always tight, so it's not surprising to see Gerald speak highly of Ray. But like it's been mentioned, Wallace is the tenth-year All-Star, D.J. is the 23-year-old, first-time starter. If it's anyone's job to lead, it's Wallace's. Aside from that, suggesting one of your teammates -- a starter, no less -- doesn't "have the fight" is a sure way to break up a locker room. I know it would infuriate me if I was Augustin. Anyway ... yeah, it might be time for a change of scenery.

[daidalos]

Oh man, I am reliefed ... so we only sucked because of DJ. That's good to know.

[ohara]

This team is crumbling before our eyes. What a pity. It falls apart on the outside when it starts crumbling from within. There is a cancer in the interior of the team. Time to get rid of it.

[BigSlam]

Felts was a local guy through and through. This was the kid that phoned Bickerstaff the day before the draft and begged BB to draft him because he wanted to play for his home team so much.

He had a real self belief and (sometimes to a point of fault) confidence in himself. He was drafted to a crappy team where it was his role to take over. There were NO other alpha males when Felts arrived. The closest thing was Knight I guess, and Felts was mentored by him. Okafor was here but he was far from any sort of alpha male type!!

Of course there are differences between Felts and DJ!

DJ was playing with Felts, Jax, Crash and the ultimate alpha male in Larry Brown. I can see how his personality was lost in the mix at times.

Any ways, I'm blown away by Jax and especially Crash. In saying that, they are really only following the lead of the head coach who has been throwing this team and it's players under the bus since the summer. Larry has been setting a fine example of how to make excuses for his sh*tty performance for months and months now. I guess his two captains have jumped on board now too.

All that said, I agree with Fats. If DJ isn't cutting it then we should look to trade him asap. We wont move forward as a team other wise.

[moocow007]

^^ Related to Larry Brown...during his last years with the Knicks (and regardless of how awful a job Isiah Thomas had done) it was pretty clear to many Knick fans that Larry Brown was intentionally trying to lose games and create turmoil (either to get himself fired or get Thomas fired so he can take over all basketball moves). If the former obviously, regardless of how bad your team is, not doing your job is just inexcusable. If the later, and regardless of how right it may have seemed, it's also unconscionable fora head coah to try to destroy the GM that hired him. So yeah, Larry Brown was called the "snake" by many so I definitely can see what you guys are talking about here and lend credence to it. And as with what appears to be happening here, Brown was excellent with pointing the finger of blame elsewhere.

[ohara]

Cannot agree at all with it. Would rather get rid of the whole lot of them, includng Crash and Jax. I cannot cheer for a player would would follow the lead of a sad sack of $hit coach like LB and publicly throw your teamate under the bus when they are at least trying. Crash and Jax have both hit the point of being on my "piece of crap" list. Turncoats will get what they deserve. I wont shed a tear when Crash winds up on the injured list for the season with one too many Crash landings.

[Bassman]

Guys, let's consider this from another perspective:

I get it that Crash and Jax are barking out loud about the team being soft, and on DJ in particular. But look at it from their perspective. Anyone who's played ball at a high enough level understands how tight the team has to be to get things done. Some of this may be a gripe for the "old days" from last year, but I think there's a truth that just came out in the frustration of a bad loss. The star players are fed up with DJ. While DJ may be getting decent stats, he's not delivering with his leadership, command of the offense, or on defense. Nazr and Kwame aren't physical enough in the post, and don't block shots, which makes it that much harder on the guys to bring help defense on dribble penetration (which happens too much against everybody..Jax and Crash included).

I'm not taking sides here, certainly not the old man's. I'm just saying what I've been saying...this team is broken. We've needed a legit center, and still need one. We need a leader at PG. DJ would be a perfect reserve at that position...a guy who can keep the team going, hit shots and push the team out on the break. But he's likely not our long-term answer at the 1 anymore than Livingston is.

Still, I'm willing to can LB, go with a youth movement, and B L O W I T U P !

[BigSlam]

The star players are fed up with DJ. While DJ may be getting decent stats, he's not delivering with his leadership, command of the offense, or on defense.

If anything it should be guys like DJ and Kwame fed up with the "star players" who are earning a combined $20 million dollars this season for playing like crap and for not delivering with leadership, command of the offense, or on defense.

Jax and Crash have been maybe our worst two players so far.

[Rich4114]

Felts was a local guy through and through. This was the kid that phoned Bickerstaff the day before the draft and begged BB to draft him because he wanted to play for his home team so much.

I believe that was Sean May who did that, not Felton. Lakers were going to take Felton if he fell to them so BB knew he'd need to take him at #5 since he'd be gone at #13.

But on this topic - wow what a mess. I don't disagree with anything Wallace/Jax are saying but it's a really bad call to say that publicly.

Hey, this is what you get when you decide to pay the backup PF what your starting PG was asking for. BTW - Knicks are rolling and Felton is putting up border-line all star PG stats....

[Rich4114]

The star players are fed up with DJ. While DJ may be getting decent stats, he's not delivering with his leadership, command of the offense, or on defense.

If anything it should be guys like DJ and Kwame fed up with the "star players" who are earning a combined $20 million dollars this season for playing like crap and for not delivering with leadership, command of the offense, or on defense.

Jax and Crash have been maybe our worst two players so far.

I'll agree with this too. I'd also like to point out that you can't build a team with guys like Wallace/Jackson being your go to guys. They are both awesome 3rd, maybe 2nd options but not top options.

[DY_nasty]

I don't know what Jackson is going on about.... his defense is just as bad as DJ's at this point. Wallace too.

[captaincrunk]

The star players are fed up with DJ. While DJ may be getting decent stats, he's not delivering with his leadership, command of the offense, or on defense.

If anything it should be guys like DJ and Kwame fed up with the "star players" who are earning a combined $20 million dollars this season for playing like crap and for not delivering with leadership, command of the offense, or on defense.

Jax and Crash have been maybe our worst two players so far.

I'll agree with this too. I'd also like to point out that you can't build a team with guys like Wallace/Jackson being your go to guys. They are both awesome 3rd, maybe 2nd options but not top options.

Really? They're both right around 20 PPG. Less than 25 players broke 20 PPG last year. Maybe I'm wrong though.

[ajbry]

A few things:

- Disagree about Jack and Wallace being main options. Jack's Charlotte PPG last year put him right behind Joe Johnson for 14th in the league. Gerald is a good complementary scorer if his outside shot is falling, like it did last year. Now he's looking to drive far too often and teams are finally aware of what he likes to do - the downside of a breakout year.

- All three guys said different things; it's irresponsible to lump them all together. Larry has been taking shots at D.J. and praising Felton for weeks now. He's taking responsibility as a coach but he hasn't really done anything to shake things up. Jack clearly laments the interior defense situation. He, however, hasn't said anything explicitly about D.J. (and wasn't he the one who praised D.J.'s vocal leadership earlier in the season?), and took accountability for not getting back on D quick enough. Gerald draws the distinction between D.J. and Felton and not in a positive manner. I've been noticing a trend with him, too: he is reluctant to give credit to anyone, and if he does, it's a backhanded compliment. He's done a complete 180 from last year in basically every regard.

- I'm sick of LB trying to get Nazr and Gerald involved in the outset of games. I feel like the first few possessions of every game are a Gerald jumpshot or dumping the ball to Nazr. Jack's only averaging 15 shots a game, Boris is a player who should get touches early to establish a rhythm, and it wouldn't kill Larry to let D.J. run a few plays early in the game.

[Battery]

Heres my take...

I blame Michael Jordan for this mess. Yeah sorry Mike I'm blaming you because we all watched DJ choke last season so what made you think you could hand the reigns of a playoff team over to a choker? Chokers don't step up when the going gets tough, they fold. And they certainly aren't leaders.

So the way I see it, this isn't DJ's fault because he is what he is and with all of your basketball knowledge you should have seen this coming. You should know the NBA game is as much about team chemistry as it is about talent. Nobody denies DJ has the talent to play well, but what he lacks is the leadership abilities during the tough times to pull a team together. We see this time and time again during crunch time, DJ defers and lets S-Jax do his thing. We see this when the other team goes on a run, DJ tends to play on the perimeter. There is no attacking the basket at the right times. It's basically a mish-mash of a game with DJ running the point, sometimes he's aggressive most times he's not.

There is absolutely no chemistry between Gerald and DJ on the court. I've mentioned this a few times and everyone has just laughed it off. But you can see it in Geralds body language whenever he and DJ are facing each other on the court. Gerald is frustrated because he feels like he's the 4th or 5th option at times. Gerald needs to be more involved otherwise his brain shuts down. Also DJ tends to defer to S-Jax which probably pisses the entire team off. When Livingston is in the game, he tends to get others involved but Shaun doesn't play enough and when he does he's usually on the court with mostly scrubs. Not saying he's the answer because we don't know how is body will hold up playing starters minutes, but we need a point who isn't scared of S-Jax.

And all of a sudden there's this clamor to play TT more? Are you serious? What are you guys watching? The more he plays the worse he is. And when he's playing great he gets more minutes, but those games are few and far between. You all chirp after seeing TT do well in limited minutes, but you never say sh*t when he blows like 10 defensive assignments in a row. Play consistently well and you will get more minutes. It's that simple. LB isn't holding him back, TT is holding himself back because he doesn't BRING IT every game. Winning teams bring effort EVERY night, they might not win every game but they never lay down like dogs and give up on plays. They play to win, whereas we play not to lose. Huge difference.

Then we have a bunch of useless players eating up roster spots. How do we expect to win when we have Najera, Carroll, Diop, and Collins on the roster. That is 4 wasted roster spots. I blame this on Micheal Jordan. If you want to win you don't trade Tyson Chandler for Najera and Carroll. We would have been better off if you had kept TC, and not signed Livingston. You added a bunch of long term money which further killed our roster and salary cap flexibility with 2 useless players and one who is gimpy. I don't get your thinking here when you didn't really save all that much money when you factor in Carroll, Najera and Livingstons contract. And you also added Kwame, who despite his good game the other night, is really a waste of space. We should have just kept TC and signed a back up point guard for the league minimum.


Frustrated and it's time we just blew this sh*t up now so we can be in a much better position to have a chance at drafting Irving. About time we had a potential superstar here. Not saying Kyrie will be one, but we need a young player who has that potential. Right now we have nothing and not one solid keeper. Get rid of everyone including the front office and LB. Start over and stop delaying the inevitable.

Let's go MJ, WAKE UP!!