fishercob wrote:nate33 wrote:Whoever we do add, I hope we don't play him much. I'd like to see the 96 available minutes at PF and C to be handled by 36 minutes of Gortat, 25 minutes each for Seraphin and Booker, and 10 minutes of Ariza. Giving Ariza 10 minutes at PF would also free up 10 minutes for either Porter, Rice or Miller.
Unfortunately, I think we're going to see more Al Harrington at the 4. Randy has in his mind that Ariza is a "small forward" and Harrington is a "power forward"
The irony of course is that Ariza is the better defender and rebounder.
Agreed which is why the loss of Nene will likely hurt a lot more than some would expect. I certainly think we could survive going small, sliding Ariza to the 4 against 2nd unit defenses and hopefully mixing in some developmental minutes for Porter & Rice at the 2/3 but Wittman doesn't appear to be the type of coach that's willing to go that route.
So instead we've got Big Al and playing Big Al is like playing Eric Maynor at PG. Someone said it correctly, Al is a tank commander at this stage. He may make some 3s but everything else is going to be terrible. Booker also makes life a lot harder for Gortat as evidenced by Nene's earlier absence this year. Gortat isn't really good enough to hold the fort down by himself. Teams with legit size are going to eat us alive now especially if Witt refuses to go small to create match up problems.
My question is, now were dependent on Booker more than ever. Will he be able to handle it? For all those that thought Booker was a possible starter or even fringe starter in the league, now is his moment. So what happens in two weeks or so when he inevitably goes down with some new injury/ailment?
