With the amount of time he has missed, it will take him at-least 10 games to be back in game shape. Best of luck to him.
Well they don't have to rush him back... but you shouldn't be worries about dropping some regular season games while they figure things out. It's about peaking for the playoffs.
If he does play tonight i wouldnt expect him to get alot of minutes. No reason to rush him back after being out so long. I suspect he wont be in great shape either since he was basically not able to even walk for a while.
Im not sure why i got rep with people cussing me out saying im a negative nancy for my post above. Im not saying anything bad about Jones, just saying he might need to work his way back into game shape and there is no need to rush him.
Can't agree with this one. D-Mo has proven himself to indisputably be our number two scoring option behind Harden. His post game is legitimately elite and has been getting us good points. He should start. We'll see how Terrence does as he comes back, but it makes more sense to bring him back slowly than to thrust him into the starting lineup again immediately. Not when you need predictable offense, and only James and D-Mo are giving that to you. I'd be interested to see what D-Mo = 5, Terrence = 4 combo would play like. D-Mo's the best post player on the team, and a legit 7-footer. I'm not sure if Terrence has the range yet to be a stretch 4, but he's got impressive capability at driving to the basket. Those two methods of play should complement each other nicely.
The guy was saying if TJones comes back to where he was. Where he was, was as competent an offensive players as DMo and a better rebounder, but a worse defender. The real issue will be minute distribution and fit and balance.
It'd be an interesting combination, and for that reason I want to at least see it a couple of times. However, Smith and Jones are the same height, but Jones has 25-30 pounds on Smith. They're both kind of undersized for center, but Jones would be the better candidate in this combo just based on size. Smith can also drive and hit short shots, but he's best at passing. Not sure I want either of them shooting long. There are definitely a decent number of semi big men but just a couple genuine bigs on the team at the moment, so there will need to be some combo experiments: 1. Dwight/D-Mo (Dwight holding down rim, D-Mo posting) 2. Dwight/Jones (Dwight holding down rim, Terrence driving) 3. Dwight/Smith (Dwight holding down rim, Jones feeding Dwight for dunks) 4. D-Mo/Jones (D-Mo posting, Jones driving) 5. D-Mo/Smith (D-Mo posting, Smith feeding D-Mo at various places around the paint and maybe getting some cuts to the basket from D-Mo) Jones/Smith or Smith/Jones (very small 4+5 combo, not sure how this one works, yet) 6. Dorsey + lots more practice and coaching + Smith/D-Mo/Jones (Dorsey only scoring on emphatic dunks, everybody else doing whatever they do) I say the best combos for a whole game right now are 1, 4, and maybe 6 (Dorsey + Smith feeding him). Let's see if our coach is up for figuring this out.
Oops, I forgot to number Smith/Jones which was what the original post was about. Call it combo 5.5, and I'm still not sure how it would work.
Right. I understand. It's always been a contest between Terrence and D-Mo. While it's unfortunate that Terrence hasn't had his chance to shine because of injuries, it readily apparently that D-Mo's confidence than it's ever been, and I was thinking that it would good to keep D-Mo as the starter and see how far he can go with that role. Terrence should definitely be worked in as a backup to rest D-Mo and others, and you're entirely right about minute balance being the key. However, I don't to stop the D-Mo train if it's still building momentum, because with his improvement already, he could completely cement himself as an elite proper power forward, and that would be huge for this team. I'm interested to see if he can pushed to that level, so trade talks shift to point guards and away power forwards. Terrence, if his defense gets significantly better could probably float into the three spot as well at times. If he could hold his own as a defensive backup to Ariza, we'd have a better slasher at that spot. Lots of different strengths on this team. If maximized with proper lineups, it could really keep any team on its toes.
