doclinkin wrote:Ruzious wrote:If John Wall is pulling strings of the Wiz management, Wiz management is even worse than I imagined. Just the idea is an insult to players who have actually accomplished something. I've got nothing against John Wall - I'm very glad he's on the Wiz, and of course, it wouldn't be his fault that management would be that inept.
I've heard this sentiment before and think it's pretty stupid. Can I soften that to 'reflexively narrow-minded'? Nah: stupid.
First of all, specifically in the case of John Wall, for the low opinion of a player that both Flip and Randy have said is the smartest player they have ever coached. Here is a player you have literally built the team around considering he's the longest tenured veteran on the team, and a player who you expect to likely be the best compensated player on the squad if you keep him long enough. Your 'franchise' player, so he goes, so go the Wizards. If any player deserves input it would be this one in particular.
But more broadly, for not taking into account the insights of your lead point guard, a position that often player amounts to a head coach on the floor. John Wall made good comments to this effect:ME: I keep hearing you talk about being a leader. Leadership is interesting because it’s not really something you can work on in the weight room or on the practice court by yourself.
WALL: See, how I grew up is lead by example. Lead by example is great, but sometimes you have to speak up. And you just have to learn which ways you can talk to certain players. That’s something I was capable of doing when I was at the University of Kentucky, and it’s what I’m doing with the Wizards. I’m learning ways to talk to certain players and certain teammates, and be able to take criticism when they something to me.
ME: So you’re learning which buttons to push with each guy?
WALL: Some people you have to bite your tongue. Some people you can yell at. Some people you just have to talk to on the side. And then you can’t control how some people take it. Especially when you need a person on his game, you don’t want to mess up their rhythm. So you have to know how to talk to them.
ME: And you have to do all that in the middle of an NBA game when everything is sort of frenzied and out of control.
WALL: That’s why point guard is not an easy job. I see why head coaches need their point guards, because you’re basically a second head coach on the court. Your coaches have to be able to trust you, just like your teammates have to be able to trust you to call the right plays and do the right things.
But with an even more widescreen look, basketball is a sport where you play 5 people on the court at a time, each of these players can have a far more significant impact on the outcome of a game than any single player in any other team sport with the exception of the goalie in hockey and the quarterback of an NFL squad. Chemistry is a delicate thing, any business would be shortsighted not to listen to players at all 15 roster spots, throughout the year and on their way out the door in exit interviews. And by all means you would weight more heavily the opinions of the players who carry the heaviest workload.
Recall too that coaches spend far less time with the players than they do with each other. Players hang out in the locker room, join each other for practice, spend leisure time at each others houses, get drunk with each other, steal each others' women, hang out in the offseason, etc etc. You couldn't hire a security agent to get as close access to each others mindset, opinions, attitudes, focus, habits, and so on. It would be a pretty piss poor organization that chose to build itself irrespective of the input of all of it's personnel, from the kid wiping sweat off the floor on up to the crumbs in Ernie's mustache.
Specifically in basketball where we laud the organization of a team like the Spurs, but read where a key reason why they succeed, and why their assistants and players go on to become good front office people and coaches throughout the league is because they open up their decision making processes to input from all people in the organization. This is a key reason why they tend to only hire smart players, they value their input and experience. And the truth is, while John Wall ought to have greater input than the keyboard pecking obsessives sitting in their sweaty underpants reading pixels all offseason, there are a few bloated egos here who are of the opinion that the organization would be run better if they'd also hear input of the legion of volunteer scouts that form a sort of sapient fungal brain colony congealed in the grout of damp little corners of the internet like this here message board. Yes they should listen to John Wall, yes his opinion should matter more than yours. Seems to me a smart organization ought to listen to the opinions of knowledgeable fans as well, if they assigned an employee to sift the wheat from the chaff and weed out the dumber opinions, like, say, yours right here.
I'm not sure what set that off, but feel free to put me on ignore.
