Nope this team will ride and die with Taylor and Phelps. The idea Phelps should come off the bench for who?

Gotta think his fg% at the rim will improve. He's in such good position so often.

The problem with lowering his minutes is they have to go to someone else. I think he's very obviously better than Carter, Hefner, Manny and Wilcher.

I also think Wade plays a lot better with him on the court compared to the others and our defense is way better. Manny is a decent defender and Carter can be sometimes but I think he's better than both.

He just needs to shoot less and/or finish better around the basket. He got himself some good looks yesterday and couldn't finish. He also should basically never shoot threes unless the shot clock is under 5 seconds.

To be clear I'm not saying the guy's been brilliant or anything, but I think he's clearly our best option out there most of the time.

Was one of the more sought after portal gourds. Maybe missing the preseason didn't help.

bobinator said:

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The problem with lowering his minutes is they have to go to someone else. I think he's very obviously better than Carter, Hefner, Manny and Wilcher.

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I think this is a really fair point that I hadn't put enough thought into. If implemented I a few minutes to each of them could easily eat up 10 minutes. I'd lean towards Manny and Carter being the main recipients if cutting Phelps minutes becomes necessary.

bobinator said:

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I also think Wade plays a lot better with him on the court compared to the others and our defense is way better. Manny is a decent defender and Carter can be sometimes but I think he's better than both.

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I'm seeing Wade get less opportunities to take better shots with Phelps on the court. Their combined efficiency has to improve though. Might make sense to start looking at their combined stats as a pair for a clearer picture on how Phelps is improving.

bobinator said:

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He just needs to shoot less and/or finish better around the basket. He got himself some good looks yesterday and couldn't finish. He also should basically never shoot threes unless the shot clock is under 5 seconds.

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Can you call coach and let him know please!

bobinator said:

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To be clear I'm not saying the guy's been brilliant or anything, but I think he's clearly our best option out there most of the time.

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He might be - I'm kind of looking ahead at options for the team if he doesn't improve. He has to get us better minutes if this is going to be a special season. Sitting at home it seems so obvious what he needs to do it's frustrating to see him continue to play the same way game after game.

We've still beat two ranked teams in the last couple of weeks so he's got a lot of runway to find it. I don't think Buzz is some kind of basketball genius or anything but I trust him enough that there's a reason he's letting him play this way early in the season.

I also think there's good misses and bad misses, he had a lot of both yesterday but one thing Taylor is usually pretty good about is making sure we've got guys under the basket to rebound his misses. Phelps took some shots yesterday without anyone down there and those I really don't like.

Long way of saying I still really like Phelps. He's a tough watch at times so far but I still think he's gonna be good this season.

3-12 FGs, 0-2 3s, 2-4 FTs, 4 TOs. 0 assists

Maybe this is him.

I think Phelps has two fans. His mom and bobinator.

Phelps played pretty sound at the end. Those were two solid looks that just rolled out.

we'll need him to figure it out if we're going to make real noise in March, not enough dependable scoring creators on this roster to consistently contend with top level teams