Amazing AL!!

[Kim Malo]

At 08:12 AM 12/12/2006, Berry, Mark  S wrote:
>Come on, Kim. Al has always produced in short minutes.

Nope, not always. He's usually gotten points so long as they've 
gotten him the ball and when he was healthy (cutting him some slack 
for the trainwreck of last year when he couldn't even do that), if 
that's what you mean. But he was an active liability in some other 
ways and hasn't produced in all ways like now. And the point I was 
disagreeing with was that supposedly all it took was giving him 
minutes for him to magically become a more productive player. Yup why 
practice, try to learn more about the game, work on your faults, 
accept coaching, when the real answer to everything is just giving 
you more minutes.

First off, that's one of the really stupid cliches that you hear 
constantly - **all** he needs is some minutes. Yup, nothing to do 
with the player and how they use the minutes they get and everything 
to do with those nasty coaches depriving him because they like 
holding him back. It's an argument that gets made about everyone from 
Greg Minor years ago to Marcus Banks to Tony Allen to... And it's 
true for about 5% of the times it gets said, if that.

You make good use of the minutes you get and force the coach to give 
you more minutes, or at least don't give him new reasons to leave you 
on the bench. I'll grant that those expectations are iffy with Doc, 
but the concept is sound. And Al's minutes went way down precisely 
because he became less productive. Again, he started getting 
significant minutes his rookie year, even with the crappy defense, 
the slapping at rebounds rather than grabbing them, the black hole 
effect, etc of the past two years because he gave you so much on 
offense, but when even the points became less reliable....

So the original poster had the cause and effect completely backwards 
and that was my point, not criticizing Al. I've generally been a 
supporter of Al, including reminding people of the effect of the 
injuries when calling him a failure because he was so bad last year 
(even though IMO even before the injuries I had issues because he 
looked like essentially the same player he bagan his rookie season 
from, not having learned much or worked on his game much). And 
weren't you among the ones questioning his work ethic etc too? But Al 
is the absolute worst case for the idea that all it takes is minutes, 
since he's been getting them here because of those magic offensive 
skills since he got here. More limited minutes earlier this year were 
because of how bad he looked last year and the beginning of this year 
looking like an extension of it, but he's always gotten some minutes.

>  You can say he
>fouled too much or didn't defend well enough, but it was never a
>question of production.

Defense isn't part of production? News to me. So why do you keep 
harping on Telfair's defense? I suppose rebounds aren't, turnovers 
are....  where do missed FT count (something he definitely deserves 
credit for working on BTW)
Kim