| Nice Work if You Can Get It: Doc's Rotation Dilemma Authored by Elrod Enchilada - September 15, 2005 - 7:50 pm
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But figuring out who will make the 15 man roster is small potatoes compared to the major dilemma Doc Rivers faces in the 05-06 season: determining a viable rotation that puts the best team on the floor and also gets the necessary minutes to young players that deserve and need playing time to develop. Doc can hardly allot rotation minutes to the entire active roster of 14, but who gets cut out of the action? ESPN’s Chad Ford, someone I rarely find making scintillating analysis, did make one acute observation about the Cs: the team is now a prisoner of drafting so well that past two years. There are a wealth of talented young players who need playing time. Because of this, as Ford points out, the Cs have the ironic situation of being seen as being in a worse situation than if they had fewer talented players and the coaches could zero in on a rotation from the get-go.
The traditional solution for a team in the Cs position would be to keep the rookies on the bench, and maybe the sophomores, too. But players like Big Al and Gomes and West and Perk and Reed may earn their minutes, and Doc is committed to playing the guys who earn their minutes. Another solution would be to trade away veterans to open up playing time for the kids, but that is not an option either. Some veterans, like Ricky Davis and Paul Pierce, are still young and necessary if this team is going to be competitive this year. Others, like Mark Blount and Raef LaFrentz, are very difficult to trade because of their contracts. And LaFrentz can still contribute as an effective player. Take him off the roster and the team takes a serious step backwards for at least the 05-06 season. In the end, Doc’s dilemma could be lessened if there were several major injuries on the roster to open playing time, but who wants to wish for something as absurd as that? And, except for Raef, this is a roster of studs not known for injury problems.
So Doc is in a difficult position, and whatever decisions he makes he is going to be subject to serious second-guessing. It is unavoidable, unless, by happenstance, the Cs win 50 plus games. Because it is unlikely a team as young as the Cs can win more than 45 games at best – and may well do worse – the second-guessing may well get torrid. With the exception of the power forward position, Doc has too many legitimate claimants to minutes for the time he has available. We have to hope that Doc makes the right decisions because how the young players and team develop in the coming season will give us a pretty good idea if the Ainge regime has the Cs on a the trajectory toward contention and a prospective title, or is yet another failed chapter in the Cs tragic chronic rebuilding saga since the death of Len Bias nearly 20 years ago.
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CENTER (5): Tentative Starter: Raef LaFrentz. Vying for Back-Up Minutes: Kendrick Perkins, Mark Blount, Curtis Borchardt
Analysis: LaFrentz is a 26-30 mpg guy and a solid player. If he remains healthy, and it looks good so far, he gets a majority of the 5 minutes and will be a legitimate NBA starter, though no all-star. It gets dicey with the remaining 18-20 minutes. Ideally, for the sake of continuity, one of the remaining guys gets the main rotation minutes. Kendrick Perkins showed promising signs of being a rebounding/defensive machine in limited minutes last year, and I, for one, would love to see him get all the minutes backing up LaFrentz. Perkins may never be more than a back-up, but he is only 20 and there is still reason to think he might become a quality starting center within a few years. If so, he needs playing time now. But what if Mark Blount hires a team of proctologists from Harvard and they help him locate his head? What if Mark Blount plays like he did in the 2nd half of the 2003-04 season, when he played every bit as well as LaFrentz plays? It would be in the strong interest of the Cs to get Blount playing time then, not only to help the team, but to showcase him for an eventual trade. Because unless he shows something on the court, trading him will be difficult, unless Blount is part of a larger deal where the Cs sweeten the deal considerably so someone will take Blount off their hands. And finally, don’t write off Borchardt entirely. Danny really liked him coming out of Stanford. He is a 7 footer with good athletic ability and skills. His problem is brittle bones that have severely retarded his development. If he can stay healthy for an extended period, he can play in the NBA as a rotation player. But to break into the Cs rotation in the 2005-06 season, Borchardt will have to play like Hakeem Olajuwon in training camp. More likely that he gets cut.
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POWER FORWARD (4): Tentative Starter: Big Al Jefferson. Vying for Back-Up Minutes: Brian Scalabrine, and possibly some of the centers or Ryan Gomes.
Analysis: Big Al will get all the minutes he can handle, and let’s hope it is north of 30 by the second half of the season. He is the cornerstone. This is the one position where the pecking order and priorities are crystal clear. Scalabrine is slated to get back-up minutes. He is ideal for that job, because, unlike Antoine Walker, he will not chafe at a limited role. It is possible Blount or Perk could move over here for some minutes, or that Gomes could get time here too. It is unclear if Gomes can play the 4 defensively. If he can, he might be able to get time behind Big Al, because it is going to be a war for playing time at the wings.
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SMALL FORWARD (3): Tentative Starter: Paul Pierce. Vying for Back-Up Minutes: Justin Reed, Ryan Gomes
Analysis: The wing positions are where it really gets ugly in terms of playing time. Paul is a true swing player who is equally at home at the 2 or 3, while Gomes and Reed are pure 3s. Paul must play 36 mpg. He is an all-star in his prime. He is as strong as a horse. It is very hard to see him taking some minutes away from Allen and Davis at the 2 spot, so if he plays his 36, that leaves crumbs at best for Reed and Gomes to fight over. There certainly are not enough back-up minutes for both of them to be in the rotation. Now if Danny hadn’t drafted so well, that would not be a problem. But Reed looked impressive in limited time last year, and played extremely well in the summer league. He is a defensive stopper and looks like someone who deserves to get on the floor for a solid 10-20 mpg. Gomes has simply been blowing people’s minds ever since the draft. He is making it very hard to justify keeping him stashed away at the end of the bench. It will be interesting to see how Doc plays this one.
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SHOOTING GUARD (2): Tentative Starter: Tony Allen. Vying for Back-Up Minutes: Ricky Davis, Gerald Green
Analysis: This starting job is probably the most up for grabs in a fight between Allen and Davis, but both will play. Both are pure 2s. Davis is 26 and entering his prime. He seems to have matured and is a solid player who deserves a minimum of 28-30 mpg. Sure Tony Allen has had a rough summer, and he may not be an Eagle Scout. Sure he may drive like a lunatic and be a crappy tipper. But he is a talented basketball player who has earned serious minutes in the rotation. He was a man among boys in the summer league. It is hard to see him playing less than 24 minutes per game. In short, there are not enough minutes at the 2 for Davis and Allen. In most years we would probably have a wing rotation where Pierce, Allen and Davis would split the 96 minutes between them. Some sense of just how far the Cs talent level has come under Danny Ainge is that it is almost impossible to see any way that Gerald Green can get into the rotation this year, barring trades and injuries to at least two other wings. That is how deep the wing positions are on the Cs. Based on his body and summer league play, Green looks to me like a pure 2. If he develops over the next two or three years, Allen or Davis or both of them will have to be moved. It is already hard to juggle Allen and Davis; add Green to the mix and it is simply not tenable. Good luck, Doc.
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POINT GUARD (1): Tentative Starter: I have no idea. Vying for Minutes: Dan Dickau, Delonte West, Marcus Banks, Orien Greene, Will Bynum
Analysis: This is another crazy position for the Cs. Unlike the wing position, the talent is not necessarily overflowing, but there are more guys competing than can be put in the rotation. Someone who was a rotation player last year is going to become a benchwarmer this year. After the playoffs I was very comfortable with a rotation of West and Banks. West looks like a keeper, and he needs experience. Banks gets a lot of criticism for his failure to grow into the point guard role, and he may be a turd off the court, but he has tremendous talent and is certainly a legitimate 15 mpg guy. Unless there are issues only people behind the scenes can see, for the life of me I cannot see why Marcus Banks does not have a solid 10 year career in front of him. Drafting Orien Greene seems like a classic Danny move of taking a flyer on a talent and now he can play in the developmental league. Then Danny went and picked up Dan Dickau in the off-season. Dickau will certainly introduce competition to the position, and he probably can play as well or better than West or Banks, at least in the short term. Dickau, too, is only 27 and still improving as a player. He might prove to be a Scalabrine type back-up or he could become a decent starter. He had moments last year in New Orleans that were quite impressive in his first year with serious minutes. At any rate, my initial instinct was that Danny would deal Banks to address the logjam and try to get a future no. 1 for him. This is a position that is very much up in the air right now. It is the most unsettled on the team. Unless Doc gets it organized and soon, it could set the team back. Point guard is ideally a place for stability on a team, much like a quarterback on a football team. It is a cause for concern.
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CONCLUSION: In my view the battle for rotation minutes is more complicated and more important on this year’s Cs team than any other team I can remember. Keep your eyes peeled. |
