I remember a game a few years ago in, New Jersey, I think, early in the season. I think the Jazz were 6-0 and Boozer was having a great offensive game-- 16 pts on 7-10 shooting, or sumthin. Apparently Sloan wasn't satifisfied with his defensive effort and benched his *** in the 4th quarter. The Jazz ended up losing a very close game, and the board went nutz screaming about Sloan not playing "their best player."
Since then, many have suggested that Sloan should bench Boozer for his lack of defensive effort if for no other reason than to "send a message" that half-assed effort is unacceptable. Which is it, I wonder?
At the time, I argued that Sloan had probably done the best thing, long-term, all things considered. It is a poor message to send to the team as a whole to accept lackadaisical effort just because there is some compensation elsewhere.
The problem with your post here is that it supports my argument. You cite a singular example in which Sloan benched Boozer
based on in-game performance, but the Jazz lost. Kudos to Sloan for actually enforce
his own philosophy. Once.
Under the theory that I have posted multiple times, however, Boozer would have been benched for one or two plays—maybe 5 minutes, possibly 10 minutes, depending on matchups and game situation—and then put back in the game. What probably happened in the scenario that you cite is that Boozer was benched for more than just a few minutes; i.e., maybe much of the fourth quarter or more. This is accounted for in what I have been proposing all along. IMHO, the bigger liability has been Okur most of the time, and he hasn’t been as prolific a scorer to compensate. And against some teams—maybe many teams—playing Boozer and Millsap together has been too short a frontcourt, even if they were both putting forth effort. And the best opportunity to slice 3 to 5 minutes per game last season was probably from Millsap, not Boozer, so I thought that Booze would be the last of the big 3 to lose minutes to Fes (unless he was dogging it more than the others, of course).
Sloan should have known this from years ago, since it’s been multiple seasons that he’s tried Boozer and Millsap (and Boozer and Okur, for that matter) unsuccessfully against Gasol and Bynum/Odom. That’s why it’s been so baffling (and damaging to the team) for Sloan to not go out of his way put Fes (and the young backup bigs before him) on the court to get the crucial development minutes, especially when Fes hasn’t been disastrous out there most of the time.
It was so obvious that interior defense was the #1 one problem that, in the summer of 2009, Kevin O’Connor—who isn’t one to say much—acknowledged that interior defense was one of their biggest problems. Yet Sloan sticks with the triumvirate of Boozer, Millsap, and Okur for most of the season (for two seasons, really), and, lo and behold! The Twin Towers of Tinseltown are there to beat the Jazz in the playoffs (and in a crucial game toward the end of the season). Experience might mean that you recognize a mistake when you do it
Given what Fes has done just from the 2010 playoffs to now, imagine how much better he would’ve been if he’d gotten another 5 MPG (which, not coincidentally, is about as much time required to bench Boozer or Okur when they are dogging) during the past three years, or even one year. It would’ve been hard to beat the Lakers without Kirilenko, but Fesenko did pretty damn decent for not having more than scraps of minutes during the past three seasons, even when he had done well, as go4jazz pointed out. And bear in mind that given that Fes lost less than 10 pounds during the off-season, weight wasn’t a big factor. He’s probably in better shape, but he rarely had gotten enough minutes to test his conditioning much anyway, and as I have written ad infinitum, he’s more agile (or less slow) than Okur and Ostertag and Tree and Eaton anyway.
As soon as you tell a guy like Fess that a nonchalant, inconsistent approach to the game is quite satisfactory because he's still the best you have (assuming even that he is), you've lost the war, even if you win a battle.
Again, you’re going back to rating players on practice, not performance. I didn’t think that Fes has been particularly nonchalant in games; at times, he has been too “chalant,” fouling people too quickly, which has sometimes been a good thing, but he has committed and continues to commit unnecessary fouls (probably because he’s inexperienced). Inconsistent overall he has been, but as I pointed out exhaustively, most young players at all talent levels are.
If there is a battle lost here, it’s that Sloan has given players like Fes some hope when they have gone out and have done well, only to be “rewarded” with a DNP for the next several games. It happened to Koufos, too, and while I think that Kouf has less talent (starting with build, also defensively) than Fes, KK2 did OK in his rookie year when Boozer was out, and then was banished to the bench for no particular reason.
Talking about inconsistency, I don’t regard a coach putting a player in multiple games because of injury, seeing that the player does OK (for a young player) and then not letting him see the floor AT ALL for nearly the rest of the season as consistent coaching or development. Even in that point, Fes was the higher priority in my book, and sure enough, the Lakers pwned the Jazz that year in no small part because Utah had no answer to the interior D. If Fes had had 2000 minutes or more under his belt by now, just as 10 MPG would supply, he’d be far farther along, independent of his effort in practice. Of course if he had worked harder of the court, he probably would be farther along too. But on-court time is a necessary condition to good performance. No player, from Kobe to Koufos, is immune from such a principle.
