Catledge wrote:SOUL wrote:Just really tired of defending rookies, and then the last years when Vuc's numbers dipped, and I put up stats showing how Vuc NEEDED to get closer to the basket and shoot threes or get to the line and stop ONLY shooting mid range, that was shot down with "He's putting up numbers!" despite being inefficient and us being a lottery team yet again. Now you see how Clifford telling him to do exactly that actually helped the team. Can't be biased with numbers and only believe in them when they work in the player you like's favor.
But a lot of young players actually turn out to not be very good. Payton, Hezonja, and Harkless, for instance, turned out to just be pretty limited basketball players. Now, I'm not trying to put Bamba in that category. I am still pretty hopeful about him, but defending rookies just because they are rookies fails to account for the fact that most young players never become legit starters.
It's not defending rookies for the sake of thinking all of them are going to be stars, it's letting them actually develop without being crucified 2 years into the league before calling them busts. Trust me, being on the board this long, I have had pages of back and forth about almost every rookie-young guy with people declaring them busts, bad, needed to be traded. Mario, Payton, Oladipo, Gordon, Isaac, Bamba. All of them.