Could the love come back?

My love for Sergio, once a blazing ball of fall of fire, is now just an ember . . . of course, an ember can still start a fire. I’ve just been disappointed with his lack of developement. I’m the kind of person that wants it all right now, so I appreciate your message of patience. I think it’s an important one. I want Sergio to succeed and turn into an everyday player. I really, really do. If Sergio can play defense and hit an outside shot, he has a chance to get that playing time on a regular basis. If he continues to struggle with defense and outside shooting I see him has a change pace player used sparingly in times when, for whatever reason, our primary unit’s aren’t clicking and Nate decides there’s nothing worse that could happen by putting him in. After last season, the very impatient part of me fears that this is his fate :( It was encouraging to read your post though, and it reminded me that there is still a part of me that is very excited about Sergio but it’s been hidden away for months now and will mostly continue to be hidden away until Sergio gives me reason(s) to get excited again. Here’s wishing Sergio the best this year.

Let me start out by saying I think there still is some love for Sergio (or more precisely his big development potential). Only his stock is probably at an all-time low right now because he didn’t impress last season, leading to a lack of playing time, leading to being left off his national team (while everyone understands Calderon and Rubio are ahead of him, the guy that mainly cost him this roster spot is NBA drop-out Raul Lopez who never impressed here).

He seems to have worked on his game in the off-season and wasn’t just sitting frustrated at home, which is good. And there were reports that the Blazer’s shooting coach managed to get his way too high number of weak shooting spots down considerably, which again is highly important to get time on the court. Yet here is the problem. With the current situation he will be again the #3 on the PG depth chart, with Blake and a better version of Jack in front of him, and likely Roy will also see more time there. So he likely won’t get the additional minutes he would desperately need to improve his basketball and team-leadership skills. He isn’t eligible to play in the D-League anymore (where he also didn’t play in his first two years when he could, for reasons I don’t know about). All of this can easily lead to more frustration, since Sergio feels he should be running a team at his age – at least as the first backup seeing significant minutes. He also knows he would be a much bigger star back home in Spain (see Raul Lopez).

Let’s get to his contract situation (of which I assume management, coaching staff and Sergio are fully aware): He is under contract until June 2009, and then the team has an option on his next year (almost doubling his salary to $1.5 million). If the team isn’t convinced of him by then, it might not pick up this option, then be becomes an unrestricted free agent and could go to another NBA team or more likely back to Europe. Since we wouldn’t get anything in return for him then, probably KP would not go this way. So I could well imagine Sergio being traded (even requesting one) by the deadline if he hasn’t seen an increase of playing time by then. If both sides are somewhat happy and the Blazers pick up the option, the same scenario could happen in February 2010.

In order to come out of this situation as a perennial third-string backup (a role for which he is much too young to settle into), Sergio would either need to have developed ahead of Blake by the time their (extended) contracts run out in the summer of 2010 – which I currently have a pretty hard time to imagine for the given lack of playing time – or Bayless would need to be a failure at the PG spot. If this doesn’t happen, he would need and should want to play on a different team.

I want Sergio to be good, only because he is a Blazer, but I no longer have faith in him. Having no shot, and playing no D, is not a good combination. And unless he made some major improvements over the summer then he’s just a liability when he’s on the court. Yeah he can pass, but so could Telfair, and does anybody miss him? Bayless having not played a single NBA game is already better than Sergio simply because he can score.

And why the lack of faith in Blake?
 “While Blake is a good fit right now, I’m not sure he is gonna be the guy who takes us to the promise land.”
Since when has a veteran point guard that doesn’t make mistakes been a bad thing? And no, Blake won’t take us to the promised land… Roy will. But Blake is exactly the kind of pg we need on the floor to help him do it.

You present your argument well. But at least for me, it fell on deaf ears — my mind’s made up about Sergio. Heady talk about potential and what-ifs is all well and good, but let’s look at the tangible results.

He’s a PG with a mediocre A-T ratio, who is an abysmal shooter, and who is the worst defender on the Blazers. He started off hot for much of his rookie year, opposing scouts figured out his game (sag off of him on the perimeter, stay at home on your man when he drives), and he took a big step backwards last year on the court.

In marked contrast to the rest of our team, Sergio has demonstrated limited work ethic. Everybody knows about B-Roy, LMA, Blake, Joel, Jack (I know, I know, but he’s germane to the discussion because he worked his ass off to get that starting PG spot last year, whereas Sergio…well, didn’t) and even Trout and Martell are starting to get it. Where was Sergio for the first month and a half of the off-season? Not in Portland training with teammates. Not in the United States, working on his English. Heck, with all the resources in the world at his fingertips, not even working with a Blazers or personal trainer in Spain. He was bummed out in the Canaries, trying to “make basketball fun again” by clowning around with his buddies, and cursing that darn coach who just won’t let him play his game.

That’s what irks me most about Sergio. He doesn’t seem to want to adapt to play the coach’s and the team’s style — garnered from both interviews and his play on the court. I feel like Sergio considers himself this misunderstood artist, one having his creativity quashed by an authoritarian ex-PG who can’t stand never having had Sergio’s superior court vision.

And what I feel like Sergio doesn’t realize is that Nate can and will give him room to make mistakes while playing his unique style — but ONLY if he establishes that he can do the things that Nate wants him to do first: take care of the basketball, make open jumpers, and be focused at both ends of the floor. A certain amount of reciprocity has to exist between coach and player, but you gotta give the coach a good faith effort first. I don’t think Sergio’s done that, and I don’t think he’s accepted personal responsibility for his failures to date either. It’s why I wasn’t sorry to see Jack go, and it’s why I won’t be sorry to see Sergio’s back when he heads back to Europe after this season.

Sergio is only 21! He is a young buck in the best league where he doesn’t speak the language that well. Our main man Roy didn’t even enter the league until he was 22 so why can’t we give Sergio time for adjustment. I agree he hasn’t had the work ethic of Roy, Aldridge etc. but that could easily be because he was already a star in Spain which can really affect the mindset of a young man. Sergio has the best court vision in the league next to Steve Nash, he also has some huge holes in his game. Lets see if he can fill up those holes before we toss him under the ship. Last year everybody improved, Travis, Martell, L.A even Blake! The fact that Sergio took a step back is likely incorrect, I think he did improve, he learned that he is going to have to put hard work in, which he is doing this summer. He will come back strong and earn a spot in this rotation. I think he has two more years of development before we see his true ability, lets hope we see that progress more easily this year.

Thanks to you your comments, I really have a different perception. I agree the way that the way that Roy plays and having Oden there will minimize the necessity for a dominant point. In fact, in terms of offense, Bayless could be the perfect fit, if he takes more of a shooting guard/tweener role. Defense, well, they just go back to their mainstay positions.

As far as where Sergio could really contribute, the white unit would be a better goal to shoot for. It wouldn’t require him to hit a level that seems to most people to be out of his reach and not a good fit anyway. He would have to beat out Blake for that role, which for the second team, I think ole Serge would be more ideally suited. I consider the role of the second unit to really provide the spark after the first barrages them with a gasoline assault, which is why I said that. Also, it seems worth pointing out how nicely Rudy moves without the ball, which could certainly help out El Mag. This conclusion was an accumulation several of the comments here, and I thank you for that. Then there’s the one guy who’s just trashing Sergio only presenting one part of one side of the story as his basis in my post where I stated I was clearly a fan of his. I get it. You don’t like him. You can stop.

Anyway, overall, good stuff. I appreciate you taking the time to read my ramblings and your comments. Bedtime in J-land.

who’s best friends with the smoking hot girl who’s also really nice but who, for some reason, keeps dating one craphead guy after another. And then, late in the movie, the girl discovers that maybe what she’s been searching for has been right under her nose all along.

He’s not flashy. He doesn’t average 15 ppg or 10 apg. But the fact is, he played a HUGE role in the Blazers unexpected success last year. The Blazers were 6.1 points per 100 possessions better with him on the court. The only other player on the team with a comparable impact was Roy. Also, Blake was in the top three on the team in “win score,” which is an individual stat that tracks very closely with team wins.

Where is Sergio in this analogy? Unfortunately, I think he’s one of the craphead guys. Lot of flash, not a lot of substance. (I’m not sure who Bayless is. He may be the guy who’s also nice, but who is better looking and smoother than the first guy. That’s the guy who the hot girl meets at college. They don’t put him in the movie, so it’s hard to say what happens next.)