This will probably be the last thing I have to say on this subject. I think we've beat it to death, and our opinion isn't going to change anything anyway. As you probably know, I watch tons of college basketball. And my major rule is not to judge any player on just one game. Or two games. I prefer to have seen a player play at a minimun of 6 or 7 games, and in most instances, like Cousins and Wall last year, I've see all the top prospects over 20 times, and in the case of someone like Blake Griffin who played more than one year of college basketball, over 40 times.
The reason for that is there is no way to tell how good a player really is, or how consistent he is by just watching a few games. You might get lucky and happen to see his best games, or the opposite is possible. The only way to tell how consistent a player is, is to put him in a role. Whether its coming off the bench or starting, and leave him there. Let him play long enough in that position to make an honest judgement on that players abilities. When the same group of players play together for a long enough period of time, they stop thinking and just react to whatever the situation is, and they trust their teammates to have their backs.
Most of the bickering you see between the players on defense comes from one player rotating to help, and the player that was suspossed to rotate to pick up his man, not rotating, therefore making the first player look like the culprit. Its happens all the time to the Kings, and its to be expected, because you never have the same guys out there together for any period of time. Its one thing to change your mind on how you want to use a player. But you can't do it game by game and expect consistency. The reason there's been an improvement of late is because Westphal finally settled on a starting five and barring injuries, stuck with them.
Now I suspose you could say that it took him that long to figure it out. But I'm not buying that, because thats the starting five I would have had from day one, with the only flexable position being SF. I still would have had Greene there from day one, and see how he could grow into the role. Greene absolutely stinks on offense, but when he's on the floor with Beno, Tryeke, Cousins, and Thompson, there's enough offense to be gotten from the other positions. The only players he should have had questions about were Greene, and Cousins. Cousins because he was still an unknown factor at the point, and Greene because he's been one of the most inconsistent players on the team on the offensive side of the ball, and sometimes he has defensive letdowns. But Thompson, Beno, and Tyreke were known commodities. All three were starters the year before. All three were familiar with each others games. But instead Thompson went from starter to the bench to DNP, to back to the bench to back to starter to injuried to the bench to another DNP to back to starter. Add in that he has to play two positions on a regular basis. I'll ask again, since no one has answered it. How do you leave Thompson who had already scored 22 pt's and grabbed 8 boards and only had one foul, sit on the bench with Cousins with 4 fouls, and Dalembert with 5 fouls, while the other teams PF is having his way with Casspi, whose playing out of position at PF?
Did he forget that he had those three bigs just sitting there, or did he think that Casspi would just become superman and and stop a guy that out weighted him by about 40 or 50 pounds. It was hard to watch Villanueva out there laughing as he scored at will.
Now if all of you that support Westphal think this is just the normal way of things with a young rebuilding team, then enjoy. But I'd advise you to go back and see what happened when the Thunder suddenly turned the corner and took off. I'll give you a clue. New coach came in and created a set starting lineup and at the same time put players in their proper positions where they would have the best chance to succeed. Prior to that, they had been jerked around and too many times they were playing out of position. He knew that Durant wasn't a shooting guard and he moved him to SF and left him there. And once he established that starting lineup, barring injuries, he didn't change it. He let them grow together.
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