To Heck With Seniority (Best Man Gets the Job)

Setting the Stage

After watching last night's game that we narrowly avoided dropping to the Grizzlies (and enjoying opening-threading with many of you for the first time in a while), it was painfully obvious that, in the second half, we lacked the offensive firepower to blow out the Grizzlies like we should have.

"What? Offensive firepower? We have that," one might argue.

The Problem

As blzrfan observed, the offense was "completely awful," with no movement and far too many jumpshots being taken.

Douglast astutely pointed out that,

"We play a predictable system that rarely generates easy looks, the result [being] that we are prone to cold stretches."

While it's true that we do go through cold stretches, I argued that, hey--we're the second best offense in the leage! Give 'em a break!

Douglast smacked me down by correctly stating that

"we have statistically the 2nd most efficient offense in the league, due largely to playing low risk, low turnover basketball and getting a lot of our own misses."

big difference

Clarification

 Now, let me clarify that my issue is not neccessarily with Nate or his offensive schemes. It's the personel he and the coaching staff choose to use.

In short, when jumpers aren't falling and the offense is stagnant, why would you continue to play a non-slashing guard like Sergio?

Solution 

Free Bayless.

The dude is custom-made to make us a more paint-oriented team. With his slashing and driving ways, he's able to get into the lane and either make layups or, if covered, drop of a pass to a relatively open Oden or Przybilla, or even hit LMA on the baseline.

What We Are Not

I feel that the coaching staff is trying to maintain some order of semblance in not constantly shaking the lineup up, just like you don't see championship teams like San Antonio and the Fakers shaking their lineups up. On those teams everyone knows their role and they do it. End of story.

The problem is we are not a championship team yet. We are a good team and a young team with a lot of promise, but roles are still being defined on this team. The growth process is still occurring everywhere. The Lakers are the Giant Redwoods of California--they've been there for a while and they're established as a championship contender. The leaves needles may change colors but the trunk remains. It's Kobe's team in a triangle offense. Pau is the sidekick, Lamar is the utility man, Jordan Farmar is the up-and-coming point guard, Fisher is the veteran point guard mentor, and Machine is there for comedy.

On our team however, no one quite knows what the roles will be. We're still the sapling that is growing and changing day-by-day. We don't know who our small forward is, who our point guard is.

Seniority FTL

To bottle up Bayless behind Sergio because we want to be like the Spurs or Lakers to maintain order and rank is silly. To heck with seniority! I have a friend who works on a concrete crew, and the owner said someone had to be laid off (call the owner Sarver if you will). My friend, 22, is hands-down the best worker on the crew. I talked to the crew-boss himself and he admitted that. And yet he was the youngest, so they dropped him, saying others in the crew had "more seniority."

More seniority? Come on! It's a business, just like basketball. Seniority? In business and basketball, if you want to succeed you have to do what's best for the organization. You utilize the best workers/players you have available.

To sit Bayless behind Sergio for seniority's sake is maybe the "safe thing" to do, but it's not helping this team, either in the short run or the long run. Ultimately, I would argue that Bayless is going to be a better player in the long run, and in the short run, there's already times where he's better suited than Sergio for a particular situation, like last night when we needed driving and slashing in the second half. I'm all for Sergio getting minutes, especially with the amazing things he can do on offense. I just don't want to see it at the expense of Jerryd's minutes in situations where he would be more effective.

In the Words of One Wiser than I

(of course, those kind of words aren't hard to find...)

I believe it was Coach Clair Bee who used to say, "Best man gets the job!", regardless of age, in an era of college basketball that was generally dominated by seniors.

I'm not advocating the trade of Sergio or that we Shavlik him to the bench. I just would like to see seniority put aside and make sure that the best man gets the job.