Post#920 » by chefo » Mon Mar 1, 2021 4:34 pm
I still can't wrap my head around how inept the previous regime was in every aspect of developing our main talents:
* Zach has made more strides away from stupid ball under Donovan in 3 months than under Fred and Jimbo combined in 3 years. That has launched him into well-deserved stardom.
* Lauri is victim number 2. One quarter into his rookie year, they should have gone balls in to develop him and figure out what they have on their hands... instead, the second half of his rookie year, they benched big-man mentor Rolo and gave Lauri only 20 min game... because these two were playing so well that they were hurting the tank. When Lauri started scoring 20/game in 20 minutes in his last stretch as a rookie, and he made it look easy, is when I personally thought they have a potential superstar on their hands. They should have gone balls to the wall in terms of Lauri usage to end the year, to truly see if they found a diamond in the rough, or it was just a lucky stretch. Put four guys from the Y around him, if you wanted to lose that bad, but give the kid 35 minutes and every opportunity to grow. Nope. 10 min in the 1st, 10 in the 3rd, and sit his posterior down for the rest of the game. They Bogans-ed him, despite him just wrecking it when he was on the court. This was the last we saw of Lauri as an occasional ball-handler in the P&R, BTW.
* WCJ--Then, with the sheer brilliance of people still stuck fighting the last LeBron war, they asked Lauri and WCJ to bulk up by 15-20 pounds. Yep, I know I've been like a dog with a bone on that one, but WTF? Big guys, the rule of thumb has gone for 50 years of ball, need to be the absolute lightest they can be in a way that doesn't affect their ability to play their roles. Big guys have notoriously bad feet, knees, and backs, since the beginning of effin' time, and that's why guys like Kareem stayed as lean as possible their entire careers. As soon as Dream, Admiral, and even Shaq started putting on real weight, that signaled the end of their primes. If Dream and Admiral could play at 235-240, there's no reason for WCJ to be 270 or Lauri 245-250, because you're just putting more stress on their feet and joints. Make them have abs of steel--guns like that of Ivan Drago look great on film but don't help much in basketball. Not everybody can be LeBron and pack on weight without it affecting their functional athleticism. Both Lauri and WCJ have looked more sluggish than their rookie years.
Instead of telling them to pump iron, hire them effin' yoga instructors to keep them stretched and healthy. I remember both DWade and LeBron spoke about how much yoga helped them stay healthy in Miami (and that special performance "juice", I guess). Anyhow.
* Coby--super long leash and huge usage as a rookie, where the first 50 games were an unmitigated disaster. They tried using a rook in Zach's P&R role, but within the overall team limitations (layups and threes only) and Coby was putrid bad at it. In pre-season, his two redeeming qualities were that he could get good separation on his jumper, and he had a twerky-jerky hesitation dribble that could get him past most guys. Schematically, he was asked to do none of that--instead, he was asked to drive off P&Rs into help, which given that he's the least vertical guy on the team ended up with him being swatted away like a fly for 2/3s of his rookie season. Only when Boylen started unshackling the team a bit late in the year, did Coby and Thad actually look like they belonged in the NBA.
The overarching issue is that because Lauri is injured, we don't know how much better he could have gotten over this year. Zach did not start the year well, but halfway through, he's a legit superstar-like player in terms of his impact scoring efficiently.
Lauri, after 3 wasted years of development, was finally making strides in the places where I wanted him to make strides--his help D, and moving better off-ball. I think the old-man game, if it ever comes, will not come until much later in his career. But I wanted to see him not be a headless chicken on help D, and for the first time in his entire career, this year he started challenging shots going vertical, not just trying to block them. As coldfish has noted, he's gone to a 3 or 4 out 10 on help D... but from a starting point of 0, that's huge progress. He went from Bulls Bobby Portis bad to "I don't want to scratch my eyes out any longer watching the Bulls PF play D". What if he manages to get to a 6 (where WCJ is currently)? If he's as good as WCJ at playing help D, then why play WCJ at all, except as a backup? Lauri's a better man defender as-is, plays better D on the perimeter as-is (low bar to jump over), is much taller and a vastly superior offensive player. If he ever gets to a 6 or 7 playing help D, you've got your C of the future right there. You'll just to have to double Embiid, sorry, but you can't guard him with WCJ anyhow, so what?
Maybe Lauri never goes anywhere from here--but it utterly sucks that he has virtually played out his rookie contract under bozos who botched so badly the development of ALL of our young talent.
