nate33 wrote: completely reject this narrative that WUJ has Avdija in some sort of permanent dog house where he is not allowed to make mistakes and gets benched constantly.
Porzingis said last night Deni needs to get more freedom, so argue with Porzingis, not me.
Maybe a "doghouse" is too harsh since it implies Wes got something against Deni which I don't think is the case, exactly the opposite, but when the "big 3" are playing and more so when Hachimora was around the credit and room Deni had to make mistakes was very small, that's a fact, he got minutes, but he haven't got the ball, in the rare occasions when he got the ball he knew that if he won't do something good with it he's not going to get it again for a good number of minutes and that's not a good situation for a young player who thrive on ball movement to develop in.
I say it's a fact because look at his usage, until the Rui trade Deni was 4th in the team in minutes, BUT only 9th in usage with 15.3%, that means he was on the court a long time without getting the ball, I followed Omri Casspi just as I follow Deni, a similar player with a similar background and size, I checked and when Casspi was on GSW his usage was 15.7% in a championship team with Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, Andre Iguodala, David West and I can name a few more players...if in a team like that with "big 5", not "big 3" a much more older and limited player like Casspi got an higher usage rate than Deni who suppose to be the future of this team then it shows this team has a problem with how they incorporate young players in their system and definitely says a lot about the non existent ball movement style of offense they are playing.
There's a clear correlation between one or more of the big 3 not playing and Deni having good games, I'm surprised that's even still an argument, Deni didn't suddenly learned in a few days to go left, dunk or shoot 47% from 3pt, he already had that ability, he just didn't had the confidence, and the situation where he had no room to make mistakes because he knew his chances of getting the ball are limited had a big part of it, I'm not taking anything away from his responsibility, he's a professional and suppose to deal with any situation, but he's also young, and young players needs to get room to make mistakes, Deni simply didn't get it in-spite of his minutes.