Should playing time be earned?

i didnt realize budinger, landry, and wafer had microfracture surgery. thanks for letting us know.

 

and this poll is leading posters and yet will get misleading results. Of course an overwhelming majority will pick it has to be earned, but that means nothing in the tmac situation when your poll question is really about the average healthy player, should they earn their time? A better question would be, should a player coming off a serious injury be given more time to give the team an opportunity to evaluate him, if the player was a significant part of last year's rotation?

 

You are forgetting a major factor T-mac has a set amount of minutes that he will play those players didn't. If they were playing well they would play more that game and into the second half. Tracy played like Kobe Bryant in the game against the clippers, but that didn't warrant anymore time???

 

playing time should be earned for the most part, yes. but when you have players who were once superstars and could potentially come close to regaining what they once had, they should be given playing time if only to see what they can do. both ways, i think mcgrady still needs more playing time. he played hard in his 7 minutes and at least deserves a few more, but the real reason we need to play him is so we can see what he can do. we need to know sooner rather than later if he has any chance of being a legitimate go-to guy in this league, and the only way of learning that is by playing him.

 

But this thing called meritocracy is where it gets hazy DD.

Not to get all socio-political on things, but there's no one single definition of meritocracy even if every team is trying to implement just that. To some organizations, meritocracy is more akin to seniority - i.e. he/she who earns merit through their "years of dedicated service" so to speak. In this vein, perhaps the player who has sacrificed the most, and contributed the most cumulatively through the years is the most "merit-worthy." To others, there's meritocracy, as you've alluded to, of the most deserving, by virtue of performance, in the here and the now.

No pun intended, but I think there's merit to both definitions.

If one were to take a poll of who the "best players" on the roster are, how would each player vote? Would T-Mac make the list of the top 5? And how much is in deference of him as the player of old vs. the player of now?

imho, Adelman is looking at the here and the now. The odometer resets with each season, and factually, T-Mac is neither the T-Mac of 2 years ago as Adelman put it, nor has he been available in the here and now until recently. But does that make him an inferior player by virtue of merit to a CBud? I'm not so sure. Again, it's that "talent" thing that T-Mac has in such abundance that can make you do a double take on whether he should/shoudn't be played more.

anyways, gotta run now but more to follow...

theSAGE

 

It's VERY relevant. A coach doesn't look at the average guy, who's got no setbacks, no injuries, the same way as someone coming off major surgery. They won't be brought along the same way. It's ridiculous to think they would be. In another month or month and half, then it's a better time to compare tmac with other guys. At that time a coach doesn't have to take into consideration whether the rhab process is hindering that player's improvement/play. They're not as worried about NOW and this season as you are, yes you worry about it, but not like it's the end of the world and we have to go all out with our best guys every single battle or else we'll die...that's your way of looking at it. The team realizes they're chances of a title are slim, so they have some room for error, yes they want to finish the best they can this year, but it's a season for development and evaluation more than anything. That doesn't mean just throwing out the young guys and letting them play, you also have to evaluate the old guys, really everyone. Yao is probably the only player who has nothing to worry about, everyone else can be traded if the team thinks they dont fit or can get someone who fits better. Tmac's situation is different in that you HAVE to make some kind of move with him this year, whether it's a trade, letting him walk, or re-signing him is not set in stone, which is why they need to consisitently evaluate him instead of benching him, unfortunately they can't do it in terms of now but instead they need to look at how he's progressing and try to predict how that progression will continue, at least for the next month or two.

 

I love how you talk all about the present, but whenever i hear anything about T-mac it all goes back to last year. Furthermore T-mac has been more then classy about not getting play time I would love to see how other 7 time all stars handle getting a minute per all star appearance.

 

Budinger isn't "explosive", but that's not the point, the point is businger will never have the skills that does possess and neither will brooks, ariza, battier, landry, scola, and so on. Tmac is the only guy who we have that has the skills to cut through the defense, draw defenders, and either finish or pass to an open man. That's why it's important to keep him in the loop, being him along carefully, evaluate him thouroughly under EVERY situations possible, and hope that at the end he's regained the ability to use those skills consistently again.

And where does practice fit into all this? Youre sayinghe hasnt earned PT based on what you've seen in games, yet the team doesnt just use game play to evaluate guys, practice is also taken into consideration and that's something we rarely get to see.

 

DD, why don't you reply to my posts

What has made him show that he could keep up more than T-Mac? Again I'll ask you, he hasn't defended Melo, or Dirk, and let alone do it effectively. He hasn't had a game near the Clippers game in which McGrady had. Both have taken the same amount of FG attempts, and McGrady has made more. So your FG% argument doesn't fly. Neither does, "its too less FG attempts to measure true shooting percentage," since it's the exact same argument you use against McGrady.

They've played around the same minutes, and Jermaine Taylor has less assists, and already more turnovers.

You can't prove McGrady has played with any less effort than Taylor has either. Point to McGrady's inability to fight through the screens, the argument against it could be it's Vince Carter, an all-star player, and even Battier got beat a couple times. Another could point out that mistake by Taylor, the inability to secure a rebound because he was already thinking about getting up the floor. Had McGrady made that mistake, it have already been on youtube, and being crucified as the next "Moon play," in which he quit on the season.

There's nothing that supports your claim that Taylor is more a position to contribute than McGrady.

As for earning minutes in the regular season, you also keep bringing up how Budinger also earned it. He may have earned it in the pre-season, but in the regular season, Budinger has never got less than 13 minutes in a game this season, only twice, that's nearly double the minutes McGrady has gotten in a single game.

But yes, effectively guarding Melo, and Dirk, having that game against the Clippers, getting assists, while not turning it over, all of this being six games after microfracture, in which needs more time to legitmately see what he's capable of producing. Then considering the crap Ariza has put up this entire season, Budinger being injured, Taylor sucking, and Mike Harris being a no name wasn't on an NBA team a week ago.

I'd definitely say McGrady, has either earned, or warrented for more than seven minutes per game. I'm not saying 30-35 minutes, but an increase in minutes was something I'd have expected, and an increase also helps us more in deciding how far along McGrady has come and what he can do consistently on the court when he's out there.

 

This is the weird thing to me. I don't really get the impression that DD hates T-Mac, or is that adamant that T-Mac needs to benched/traded. It just seems like he loves to take credit for being right about things. Doesn't matter how insignificant those things are, or how obvious, or how much they contradict his previously stated opinions. He just loves the idea of being able to say "See, I told you so."

I remember one game where either Battier or Ariza didn't play much (or maybe it was the game when Ariza was suspended) and Brooks spent more time playing alongside Landry and Budinger. AB ended up having a great game, and DD went on and on with posts along the lines of "See, I told you Brooks would be more efficient if he played alongside better offensive players." I was like "Really? Do you think that's some groundbreaking observation? You want a sticker for that or something?"

60,000+ posts, and yet how many of them have made any of y'all say "Hmm, that's a profound insightful observation that I've never heard before"...

(Btw, I still got love for the guy, you've gotta respect the effort he puts in to being a Rockets fan)

 

The man is healthy and wants to play even RA said there is nothing wrong with that. He is the highest paid name some other top paid players that would be fine with playing 7 min a game its a slap in the face.