I thought he said he liked Carl as the starter?
In any case, yeah, if Jason can sustain, which has always been a problem for him, I would be up for that. When we went to the defensive lineup, I thoguht we might need Carl as that second weapon. But its hard to overstate how stagnant we get with that, and we lose so much in all other areas. i was suggesting we start Boogie next to Daly in that lineup to get the size, and keep a post scorer in the game t complement Reke. But now maybe its Jason. I don't want to be a Westphal hopping from one bandwagon to the next, but I asnolutely do want us to use and exploit our huge size advantage, and if the giant frontcourt can kcik butt and take names on the glass and defense, and if Jason can play within himself offensively, I'm game. Can't do much worse, and really when you get down to it, if you list the players who work best with Reke I would say its been Daly, Donte and Jason, and then Cisco and maybe Head on the guard line. The other guys, Beno, Landry, Cousins, OMri always feel like they are either taking turns with Reke or actively fighting him. With chemistry such an issue, why not put the guys oout there who like playing together and bring the probelm children in off the bench as a giant pile of no defense.
I may have misquoted him a bit, here is what he said:
“I thought that JT looked real comfortable in that starting role. I thought he gave us a lot of energy and played very well at both ends."
Westphal is extremely reactionary. If a guy is playing well, he will play them. Thats about the only consistent thing about Westphal.
He treats his favorites the same (Dalembert, Evans, Cisco, Landry) and then jerks around all the other players depending on how they are doing. The combination of Landry being late to shootaround + his back being semi injured + his poor play + JT's strong game = Jt starting. Maybe
I would personally like to see the Cousins/Dally combination start. It just seems foolish leaving both your scoring bigs on the bench. Even when JT is scoring 16 or so points like he did last game, he isnt forcing the defense to do anything. Its almost like he scores by accident. And Im not saying that to trash on JT, I love his hustle and energy, but his best offensive move ( much like Dalembert ) is putbacks. A big problem JT has always had is that he puts the ball on the floor when a teammate sets him up rather than going straight up. Now I dont remember that happening at all last game, but I also dont remember the Kings putting him in that position. Like it has already been said, If JT can be consistent he can be a really productive player ... I still dont love him starting next to Dalmbert though. That being said .. I rather have him in the starting lineup than Landry at this point.
If this team (Evans/Head/Greene/Thompson/Dalmbert) continues to struggle on offense, we should give Beno a look as a starter again. He hasnt been great off the bench AND lets not forget how well he and Evans worked off each other for parts of last season.
If Dalemberts starts to slump, a Cousins/Thompson lineup is an interesting one to look at.
----------------------------------------------
Kind of a seperate thing I wanted to bring up here.. I dont think it deserves its own thread, so I'll just tack it on this post.
I went back and looked at last years schedule, and the box scores for the first 30 or so games last season ( when we were around .500) One thing I was looking for was how we played with Greene starting as the '2' when we would just put out that huge lineup.
There was a 4 game stretch where we started Evans/Greene/Nocioni/Thompson/Hawes. We won 4 games in a row with that lineup. With how bad we are struggling right now, I dont know why we dont try and go big again. Like really, really big.
