FanPost

Terry Stotts, league leader in rookie development


There seems to be an implication every once in a while in posts and comments that Stotts is sacrificing player development for a win now attitude. The evidence people continually bring up is the heavy load our starters have. And we do have 4 of the top MPG players in the league.

But, the statistics don't suggest that Stotts is forsaking our young players at all. Portland leads the league in minutes played by rookies. So Stotts is definitely giving our rookies some run. Below are listed the top ten teams in terms of Rookie Minutes played so far.

TEAM Total Rookie Minutes MPG
POR 1347 70.89
NOH 1073 63.12
GSW 1023 56.83
DET 1005 50.25
CLE 878 46.21
CHA 875 51.47
TOR 728 38.32
ORL 645 33.95
DAL 529 29.39

As you can see Portland leads the league in Total Rookie Minutes and Rookie Minutes per game and it's not particularly close. So I don't see how you can argue that Stott's is hindering rookie development with his win now attitude. Even if argue that Lillards minutes don't count as Rookie development(he certainly doesn't play much like a rookie) , factoring out Damians 39 MPG, Portland would still be 10th in the league in terms of rookie minutes at 628 total, 33 MPG. So Terry is definitely giving players chances.

I won't disagree about the need to reduce our starters' minutes. But I don't think you can say that Stott's is not developing young players.