AbeVigodaLive wrote:Q12543 wrote:khans2k5 wrote:Q12543 wrote:khans2k5 wrote:I'm still 100% full pork chop in regards to Ricky. 2 games isn't going to change that. He's played great lately I'll give him that, but until he does it for more than a home stretch of a season I'd still rather move on. Ricky's the veteran of this team and it took him the longest to find his stride with Thibs and you just can't have that from a vet. He's the one who needed to play like this from day 1 while the young pups learned how to play under Thibs and we'd probably be in a much better spot to land the 8 seed if that was the case.
Two games?! Here are his last 10 games:
Points - 11.8
Assists - 11.1
Rebounds - 5.9
Stls - 2.1
TOs - 3.3
TS% - 52.1%
Net rating - +13.4 - best on team
Those aren't necessarily perennial all-star numbers, but they are pretty damn good. The fact he's sporting the best net rating over that time period says a lot.
Perhaps a) being injured, b) not being utilized correctly by Thibs, and c) having trade rumors hang over his head all affected his play earlier in the year! All that stuff is now behind him since the ASB.
Why is it so hard to believe that he just sucked at the start of this year and it's his fault for not coming in ready after an Olympic summer? Shifting blame to another injury and blaming his coach for not using him properly when he is the primary ball handler who runs the show on the floor and blaming trade rumors that have been over his head for multiple years now. Excuses, excuses, excuses. He's the veteran player on this team. Enough excuses for Ricky. It's not acceptable for a veteran to take 42 games to start playing well. How many more years need to be thrown away because of injury or poor play for too long? 2 games, 10 games. What's it matter? We're digging ourselves out of a huge hole because it took 42 games to get to this level. I'm fine with the excuses for the 21 year olds and 1-2-3rd year players. Not so much with the decade long professional basketball players who don't show up to play for half a season.
Wow, you really are 100% Pork still.
I'm sure we'd be far better off with Ty Lawson!
Khans makes some valid points.
Ricky struggled early and he certainly deserves
some of the blame for those struggles. But to say that external factors had nothing to do with it and simply being a veteran is enough to overcome those factors is basically ignoring human nature.
- We are aware of the wrist injury early that actually kept him out of a few games. How much that lingered and affected his stroke and confidence, we don't really know. But it wouldn't be the first time in NBA history a player was impacted by a lingering injury.
- Thibs used Rubio in the exact opposite way most of his past coaches used him. He basically was in a caretaker role, bringing the ball up the court, organizing the initial offense, then scurrying to the corner as either Wiggins or LaVine took on a lot of the play making responsibility. To think that wouldn't affect his game is naive.
- And finally, Ricky is human too. The trade rumors that have hung over his head since this past offseason had to have been wearing on him.
Thibs started using Ricky in a more traditional way 25 or 30 games into the season. That's when he started to improve. He's picked it up an additional notch since the cloud of uncertainty was lifted after the trade deadline.
Gee, who would have thought that being put in a position to succeed and stabilizing one's work situation would lead to improved play!?
