ballocks

i think this is an excellent point, overlooked far too often. there are some critics who refer to the "good joey" and "bad joey" and i'm like, when he's on the floor he's pretty consistent. but he's not consistently on the floor. i mean, he could play 25 minutes tonight and 4 minutes tomorrow and we're complaining about how he scored 12 pts tonight and went scoreless tomorrow? it's sometimes a good point but not often enough for me: "joey justifies his own playing time." that sounds more like a cop-out excuse for the coach and decision-makers than it is valid imo. after all, we could always say that- it doesn't mean that it's necessarily true.

morris peterson and joey graham have both frustrated me of late- not because they're poor performers when on the floor, but more because i don't think the team recognizes their importance to the potential of the team. we need to find a way to make it work with them because, quite frankly, they're still among the few raptors who can turn the momentum of a game in a heartbeat. the rest of our team tends to be reliable, but reliable is inherently predictable. if you intend to take it to the 'next level', you often need players who have yet to plateau, whose ceilings might be ahead of them. i still see mop in the same light, but i certainly see joey there. his game is the team's wild card and we have to find a way to make it work for us.

i don't think anyone could suggest that sam has made particularly good use of graham, although he's obviously not a scrub. so a new approach may be needed. this 'tough love' effort has probably done all it can do. try something else, imo. it seems like we've got it all backwards these days: we're not treating joey this way for joey, we're treating joey this way for ourselves- he's become the resident 'whipping boy'. we need to be careful whenever our leadership reaches that stage.

peace