Whitmore looks like a beast in the few glimpses we've seen of him so far. If Udoka is unwilling to give him bench minutes with Amen out, I wonder if there's some behind the scenes behavior issues going on.
It could be the fact he's not exactly pass-happy. Or maybe he couldn't shoot the ball worth crap in the pre-season. If you can't do either, you're probably going to have to develop something like ferocious defense or something. I can't remember, but I thought his defense looked "ok" in the pre-season. I'm a bit selfish and want him to play just to see a highlight here and there, but apparently Ime wants people out there that play more team ball, I guess. Ime probably feels more secure putting a guy like Holiday out there who's a vet that kind of knows what's going on and can spell FVV if needed. He's also given more minutes to a vet like Tate.
I mean he's been like a robot the games he played, whenever he gets the ball it gets launched no matter what situation
You can see Sengun/Jabari/Green/Amen/Tari have a lot of growing up to do still. When you're also trying to aim for the playoffs, it's really tough to have too many young players in the rotation. I'm actually so glad we have the luxury to play Amen limited minutes off the bench so that we can develop him properly. You can see clearly in our young guys that we haven't taught them the fundamentals of winning basketball. Amen is going to have an ideal development environment with a good coach and plenty of important minutes off the bench. In practice alone Whitmore must be learning more basketball than he's ever learned in his life. He's also going to have an almost ideal situation when it comes to development. I think with the more experienced players we can throw them out there and expect them to grasp concepts slowly until in becomes instinctual running the offense/defense. With Whitmore I think more likely we have to ensure in practice that he has our offense/defense memorized, understands when to pass/shoot and develops a little euro step to avoid direct contact on drives. We can give him some run in the G League to get repetition on the concepts, then slowly give him minutes on the Rockets very gradually till he has a chance to compete for minutes in the second half of the season. The way we were throwing players to the fire was flat out wrong. Jalen should have played was fewer minutes and taken way fewer shots (should have been more like a highschooler like Kobe started their career). He was not ready to be treated as the primary scorer at all - he would have benefitted tremendously from being in Amen/Whitmore's situation where you take your time to teach them winning fundamentals. This is a good thing and I don't think we need to be impatient with one of the youngest players in the entire NBA. For sure you don't have to be in a rush for one of the youngest players in the entire NBA.
Cam Whitmore needs to win minutes over JaeSean Tate and Jeff Green. Ime Udoka is starting to act like Dusty Baker playing Quarterback Martin Maldonado over Catcher Yainer Diaz who shouldve made the All Star Team and Rookie of the Year, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove.
Cam needs to do everything right as a pro: learn the game plans, practice hard, work out, be ready, and avoid stupid decisions. The playing time will come. Just get in the gym and keep making jumpers. Nothing fancy, just hard work. But one untrustworthy decision as a rookie on a more veteran team and your back a square zero.
CW looked so good in preseason and SL, it really is bizarre that only equates to garbage time. There must be some other factor involved behind the scenes we are unaware of. Via gameplay he clearly earned regular season minutes.
REMEMBER:- Cam was the MVP of the Summer league The coach need to give him playing time ( as well as Williams)
