Well back to the vision thing I think Sam is fullfilling the general vision that Flip had but executing it a little differently than Flip would have or at least what most of us assumed Flip would do. Nobody was guessing that Prince would be starting or getting the meaningful minutes he is. We expected Miller to be the backup PG at least to start and maybe Prince helping out the young kids some minutes on the bench. Martin AND Lavine are coming off the bench. Very interesting. Flip talked all offseason about how they wanted to improve defensively but Sam has pretty much sold out on that end. At this point it's a defensive team. Who would have ever guessed that?
Ok now to Dieng. He is just like all the other young players that aren't starting. He looks good one minute and sometimes follows up that with a head scratcher. I thought be fore last night's game he actually looked to be making some progress defensively. He was doing better getting in a lower stance and not biting on everything that moved. The reality of Dieng is he has some tools to be a useful defender and offensively he has wonky upside. Who else can you think of this played that has as much of a dream shake that actually works as good as Dieng besides the original? I am not suggesting Dieng is a 20ppg scorer or anything close but he might end up being a bench guy that comes in and gives you some points and gets some steals and fun blocks. He is older but I still think there is upside.
It's easy to assume these guys will want out of they aren't starting or have a massive role off the bench. That may be true and quite frankly that's the more likely scenario. I'll saybthisbthough if they are actually worthwhile players and this team has a chance to win I think Glen would pony up the money to keep them. I'm tired of talking about trading away guys because we might not be able to keep them or to maximize their value. If a guy like Dieng is worthwhile keep him even if you have to overpay some. I would like to think about building something special like the top teams in the league have. Maybe that won't happen and I know it's unlikely but I dare to dream.