Let this body loose
Took a minute for this to register, but shit, we have some urgent, urgent off-season concerns to brace ourselves for. Adam Morrison is a 3, and it's been said to death that he'd be hopeless as a guard. Currently holding down that spot for the Cats is none other than this blog's signature player, the truly redoutable Gerald Wallace.
What a snake this Jordan cat is. A pox upon everything he's meant to the game, even.
Morrison was partly a box office pick, so you know he's getting his minutes. Multiplicity is frighteningly streaky and likely to crumble, meaning there's a pretty good chance he'll either not be useless or unavailable on any given night. And as fans of this singular man well know, his jumper has more than a little Marion to it, except without the finding the hoop part. Still, Wallace hardly seems like a guy a team should be hopping to replace: a one-dude holocaust on defense with finishing skills well beyond the comprehension of the average 'Zag, a two-way freak who makes up for his limitations with pockets of utter dominance. Would you supplant such a creature for a shaggy white scorer?
Technically, Wallace can play the 2, but putting him there sacrifices a lot of what makes off-guards an asset. It's also wholly impractical to ever have him set up shop around the perimeter, since killing, slashing, and exploding at close range are his bread and butter. My Rudy to the Cats fantasy would likely have posed some of the same problems, even if a Gay/Wallace wing duo might seem to make position-based roles hokey and irrelevant. Most importantly, though, they didn't have to take Morrison; he wasn't a consensus #1 or can't-miss brat. He was some goofy kid with high media visibility and mildly distinct image, and there were plenty of guards available who could've sewn up that roster for years on end.
I guess we'll just have to get used to thinking this: Gerald Wallace is no Adam Morrison. GW, Metallica's coming for that number three jersey and brief spot in the sun, get ready to be some contendor's FA steal in a couple of seasons. Oh and Cha-town, you are making a tremendous mistake from which your franchise will never recover.
P.S. Sorry these have been so relatively short. When something major breaks I'll be there with the heater, but as long as things stay trifling I'm conserving my strength.
(You try and type a sentence with any less slang when it's underneath that image.)
posted by Bethlehem Shoals @ 6/30/2006 10:08:00 PM
15 comments
15 Comments:
unrelated so it goes in the comments section: what kind of heartless cur googles "lamar odom hate" the day after it's announced his son has died?
What would be more freedarko though, than Morrison and Wallace both playing the role of a 2/3 at the same time? Both can get to the bucket, and Morrison has an outside jumper. Wallace can cover the quicker 2s on defense.
I just see this as the chance for the next weird hybrid offense.
i tried to say above that gay, who i really wanted them to take, would've allowed for that. this is just two people who should probbaly be at small forward on the floor at once.
or, wallace is versatile, but can't be the catalyst for a fluid arrangement. hence rudy would headline in that dept., while morrison forces gw to be the tone-setter in the everywhere at once dept.
the plan is absotely to play g. wallace and morrison at the same time. i don't understand the concern here. wallace is athletic enough to play either SG or SF, and the fact that he was primarily a SF this past season is more a reflection of the absence of anyone fit to play SG in charlotte last year and that the roster was so injury-depleted (even though rush isnt all that great he was their only true SG) that they were forced to play a 2-point guard backcourt w/ wallace as the lone swingman. i believe those two will be interchangeable depending on the matchup. trust, your boy isnt going to have any problems getting in the game.
this was actually one of the best picks in the draft as far as i'm concerned .. i was holding out hope several months ago that charlotte would find a way to get morrison out of the draft - the fit is just perfect. why the doubt?
Off-topic (and from a first-timer, no less), but I'll be interested to hear this forum's thoughts on TJ-for-Villa.
I expect exuberance--if not from real Torontonians, then at least from the media opinion-makers--over a team so suddenly Suns-like. It's interesting to imagine that kind of feeling arising from a style transplant from a team that hasn't won anything to a team that really hasn't won anything. It reads to me as a win for form over content, but I'm not sure how to feel about that.
i have to say i don't understand the angst here either. morrison is completely capable of playing the 2. in fact, the three players his game most reminds me of (rip hamilton, reggie miller, and manu ginobili) are all 2's.
morrison's a 2, multiplicity's a 3. and, even if it's not so cut and dry, they can definitely play together as multifaceted "wings" with complementary skills, i.e., morrison has all the natural scoring ability wallace lacks, and wallace has the athleticism and defense that morrison lacks.
it's cool.
all i heard in the build-up to the draft was that morrison couldn't possible stay with a guard. then again, it's not like reddick can.
i guess i'm simply pointing out that wallace is their best player, and if not a go-to guy, certainly a machine of sorts. i would like to believe that it's on morrison to make it happen at the 2, but unlike taking foye or roy, this has the effect of making wallace's position (pun intended) far more tenuous than it should have to be.
most important: wallace should be the franchise. now they bring in some jack-off with the same position, same number, different m.o. . . does not bode well for our hero. maybe that's why rudy would've been cool with me: the circle would remain unbroken.
tj is always hurt and is maddeningly inconsistent. the bucks now have nothing but weird big men, bobby simmons, and two point guards who may or may not be able to start. i can't say either team won, but neither one lost, either.
another post-suns revolution: you don't have to be able to guard anyone to start. the stopper gets the best scorer, and the rest is trickle down until you're just stuck with maybe having to stand around someone in an opposing jersey
oh yeah, i forgot about michael redd. his fault. stil too many weird big men. and bobby simmons isn't so small, either.
I don't think health or inconsistancy it TJ's problem. I think it's not being able to hit an open jumper to save his life that he'll have to fix if he wants to be nash. He's lightening fast, can penetrate behind the defense and throw it out to the 3 point line like nash and he can also play defense and rebound unlike nash. But i think the reason for his inconsistancies is the fact that because he can't shoot, he has to rely on his penetration all the time which varies depending on the defense they're playing against. If he can solve this and then find a 2 guard, the raptors will be in trouble. They won't be the suns, they'll be their own monster. I thought they were gonna keep villa and assemble a gigantic 18 ft. shooting frontline. I still like the raptors. Don't think of them as the suns. It's not fair to them. Just wait to see what kind of style they want to run with this season.
i understand that morrison is a classic scorer at the 3, and that's something charlotte desperately needs. not sure, though, how putting a guy whose does little more than score at the same position as your most versatile, valuable player is a rational pick. yes, wallace can get slid over, or neither of them can really play anywhere, but the bottom line is that both are, in their own way, best suited for the three (morrison according to the platonic model, wallace by default). hey, just look at that shared jersey number of theirs. THEY NEED IT!!!!
what i really meant to get into here, and what actually jibes well with the bucks current roster (shades of the hawks?) is whether there is still a right way to think about positional fludity. like no shit wallace could be at the 2, but wouldn't gay have better complemented him if they had chosen to tear down the walls of orthodoxy? and is this actually a favorable model now, or just kind of something you stumble into? like wouldn't it be better to get a more classic guard who can also score to team up with wallace?
this probably should've been what i said in the first place. oh well. this is a blog of feelings.
sorry homie, but you sound really confused on this one. a few points you're making just aren't all that significant:
-both morrison and wallace CAN play the 2. this isn't as much of a roadblock as you're making it out to be.
-rudy gay is FAR more of a pure small forward than morrison is, so the argument that morrison's presence puts wallace out of position would actually be much more of an issue if they had taken gay.
-obviously the concern about g. wallace being able to slide over to the 2 isn't that big, seeing as how the choice was between gay and morrison.
-and perhaps most importantly, do you see wallace as anything more than a complementary player? i certainly don't, and can't at this point in his career. he's a very good one, and trust me, i'm a huge fan of his - i drafted him in the 10th round of my keeper fantasy league last year and stepped up & kept him over the likes of joe johnson ... i believe in this kid every bit as much as you do - but seriously. face of the franchise? go-to guy? let's not be too romantic about what he can do. hell, he could be the shawn marion of shooting guards and he still wouldn't be considered the franchise guy. he doesn't have the all-around game or personality to fill that role.
ALSO ... too much is being made of the "morrison can't defend" angle. nba defense is played in a system, and it can be learned. it's one of the things that most players only learn once they're there, and it's more about position, smarts, etc., than it is athleticism. morrison is too obsessively competitive to just forget about the defensive end. that doesn't mean they won't still put wallace on the best perimeter guy every night, but i dont see morrison being all jalen rose'd out on D either.
everyone on the cats is going to benefit from this. in fact, contrary to the point of this entire post, i think it's actually going to do wonders for their team balance. last year you had guys trying to do things that weren't really in their repertoire (emerging stud raymond felton as a shooting guard? not good) so once felton, morrison, wallace, may, and okafor are all healthy and functioning - knock wood - that team is going to have a tremendous young core. as an estranged knicks fan looking for temporary solace, they're where i'm at, and have been since last season. the roster logjam that seems to be the concern here strikes me as a bit of a fabrication.
i am perfectly willing to admit that i overreacted to nothing and that everything you say is right.
see what i just posted, i think it clarifies what rational argument might've developed out of my otherwise loopy line of reasoning.
Shoals isn't completely off with morrison and wallace. People are kidding themselves if they think morrison is a top 3 pick in this draft. They're also kidding themselves if they think he's better than gay or roy(i'm not completely sold on foye). Morrison and wallace don't seem to work that well. Moving morrison to the 3 and wallace to the 2 is hard because wallace can't shoot worth a lick and morrison can't rebound with nba players. Not only that but morrison is the kind of player who demands the ball in order to score. I still don't know if they're gonna run morrison like rip hamilton or carmelo anthony. It's going to be interesting to see(i'm not even convinced he can be those people).
I think wallace will be ok regardless though because he's not a very skilled offensive player and doesn't need the ball and set plays to score like morrison will. Wallace will get his steals, blocks, rebounds, maybe more assists and his points will depend on how much garbage work he does. That's always how he scores though; fast break and garbage points. I know he makes some nice plays every once in awhile, but i don't think any one player can hamper his output or development. I think he's glad to have an already polished player to take pressure off of him. I still think that roy or gay would've been better for them and morrison was a attendence move. Gay is going to be the star of the draft and i think everyone knows it.
I've said it before, i think this draft could end up like the 99 draft. There might not be a bunch of kobes or garnetts but there might be a couple brands, stevies, hamiltons and andre millers.
this got fucked up the first time i typed it, but with morrison/wallace you're fielding two players with some glaring weaknesses. not that everyone has to be perfect, or that the nba has never had role players/specialists before, but you'd think that one (wallace) would be enough in the starting line-up at the wing. they could've gotten someone else in the draft that was better-rounded.
plus felton is the truth.
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