Unlike Sir Charles Chuck Hayes had limited potential in this position . The Power Forward position is a vunerable weakness for our team. The starting Power Forward needs to have an all round game if the court is going to be spaced correctly and effectivly.Van Gundy needs to think again and stop dreaming!
In between the lines, its more of a key statement for Bowen not getting a spot this year. If you don't guard Hayes, he'll absolutely eat you alive on the boards AND slash/finish around the basket. If you guard Hayes, he'll just absolutely eat you alive on the boards. Proof in this statement is the fact he may start on opening night only after JVG preached all offseason along about adding BIGS with RANGE... WOW!!! With that said, I do believe that had Bonzi been healthy all preseason and came in in better shape, he would have started at the 2, with T-Mac at the 3, and Battier at the 4...
its a hard decision. You have yao, tracy, battier, and alston as starters and it depends on what you want coming from the 5th player. If you want a rebounder you go with hayes, scorer and backcourt D you go with Bonzi..and then in the off chance juwon is ever needed, also if novak keeps it up i can see it being very beneficial putting him out there with bonzi, tracy, or yao getting double teams, novak could make them pay I think its a great dilema
The good news is we haven't seen JVG put Juwan Howard and Ryan Bowen in action. The bad news is JVG could well be like Avery Johnson who doesn't bother to play his star players Dirk Novitsky and Jason Terry in these meanless preseason games.
So, he plays Tracy, Yao, Battier, Alston, Head, etc.. but specifically preserves his secret weapon Juwan for the regular season?
The good news is JVG may be less (or more) gundier than we thought. The bad news is Juwan is not a secret weapon.
I think Van Gundy knows exactly what he'll get out of Juwan. Howard is experienced enough, and his role isn't big enough, to where he needs a ton of preparation time in the preseason. I'd love for Hayes to jump ahead of Juwan in the rotation (though he hasn't yet shown the same spark in these preseason games as he routinely did last year), but I expect when all is said and done Juwan will get his 15-20 minutes a night. I also think it's becoming evident that Novak will be in the regular rotation come Nov 1. He's just too good a shooter, and JVG values the three pointer too much, for him to be riding the pine all game.
opening night - yao, battier, t-mac, snyder, alston i think wells is a perfect fit to provide offense off the bench.
I prefer start the Novik at PF. I really want to see the team play like the year before last season. When sura, JB, DW on the court, they shoot 3s, beat the Suns.
