McLemore is in the wrong place. He'll never be a "mad dog, killer type" on the court, that much is true. But I do believe that you can coach most of his shortcomings out of him. Problem for him (and us, by extension) is that he plays for a coach that doesn't have time to develop McLemore at the rate that he needs to be taught. He was coming along at an acceptable pace with Malone, he'd probably do well under the tutelage of a coach like that, or a Billy Donovan, or a Brad Stevens. Certainly not a George Karl, especially not under the circumstances the Kings find themselves in.
Shame, too. We're probably going to get rid of the kid for pennies on the dollar, and he'll either bust out, or he'll end up on a team that's willing to bring him along. He'll never be a 20ppg scorer, or a "cut your heart out and eat it" type of defender but, honestly? The only thing between McLemore and reaching Khris Middleton-level productivity, IMO, is coaching.
I'm going to respectfully disagree. I understand you argument, but I think sometimes the makeup of a players personality enters into it. Derrick Coleman was a supremely gifted PF that in most people's opinion, never quite lived up to his press clippings. Don't get me wrong, he was a very good player, but he was gifted enough to be a HOF player, maybe a top 100 player. So what held him back? Himself! He was satisfied with his own results, and to achieve better results would have required more work, which in his case would have netted those results.
Ben falls into a different catagory. He puts in the work. He's dedicated to the game. But he's not achieving the results. Did he improve from year one to year two? Yep, a little. I thought at the time, because I like Ben, he's from my hometown for god's sake and he grew up two blocks from where I grew up, that he needed to play in a more free flowing system where his athleticism could be used to his advantage. Well, he'll never find a more free flowing system than the one Karl runs. And at times, it looks like he's figured it out, and then, gone again.
Ben is inconsistent and that's been the knock on him since highschool. That was the knock on Wiggins as well. But Wiggins seems to have figured it out, while Ben is still struggling with it. I think it has more to do with his personality than his skill level, which in some areas is limited. By nature, he's not an aggressive person, and when your gifted with the physical abilities that he has, aggression is an important trait to have. We can agree or disagree on whether he has gotten the right coaching in his career. But he frustrated Bill Self, his coach at Kansas, who is noted for developing players (forget Thomas Robinson). Ben averaged almost 27 minutes a game his rookie year, and averaged 32 and a half minutes his next year. Neither he, nor his supporters can make the argument that he hasn't had the opportunity. Curry would have given one of his kidneys for those minutes.
Perhaps the worse thing that happened to Ben was being thrown into the starting lineup his rookie year. He didn't really earn the job, he got it by attrition. With that came expectations that were probably unfair. It's not Karl"s job to develop young players, it's the organizations job. Karl's job is to win games, and use the players that he thinks can accomplish that. How well he's doing that is a separate argument. I doubt that Ben would have gotten as many minutes under Adelman that he has under Karl. I've supported and to some extent, defended Ben up to this point. But he's reached put up or shut up time. It's on him. He has shown from time to time that he knows how to play at a higher level. If he can't figure out how to do that all the time, he's going to be gone.
