Coming off a dud game against Oklahoma Sunday, Gordon Hayward rebounded with a solid and efficient 18 point game with half a dozen or so assists last night in a win against Cleveland. His up and down season continues but I am also detecting a bit of a trend. Kyrie Irving did not play last night and in general Gordon has had his best games with Irving
out of the line up.
I think the reason is Hayward's game is based on fluid team play. Irving, like so many black NBA two guards, is a ball hog. Irving of course is a prolific scorer and the media sees him as the key cog to the team but one has to imagine it is tough to stay focused when a teammate dribbles around looking fore his shot disrupting the flow of his own offense.
Irving gets away with it because he can really score but when Utah was
Gordon's team, the team relied more on team play rather than on the one on one exploits of a volume shooter. I guess what I am getting at is Hayward and Irving don't quite fit together as well as one would have hoped.
Have to wait and see how this comes out in the wash down the road but I for one won't be disappointed if Irving packs his bags.
Portland's Jake Layman had a big game last night albeit in a home loss. Layman had 25 points and 8 rebounds and played 33 minutes off the bench. Of course some of those points came on nice dunks.
Layman who has picked up his play of late has got me thinking and one player that comes to mind is Detlef Shrempf who was the exact same size-6'9" 215. A star college player out of Washington Detlef got off to a slow start his first few years in the league with Dallas. His first season was 1985-86 the last season Bird and Celtics won a title.
At the age of 26 Detlef got traded to the Pacers and his play picked up tremendously. Finally a starter he started putting up nice stats. Better yet a few years down the road he got traded again to Seattle and it was there he became a legitimate star as Seattle became a big contender.
Detlef, who was German of course, was very smooth and athletic like Layman. A better passer but I wonder if the NBA today would allow a player like Layman to grow into a star just like Detlef? I really enjoyed watching Shrempf play. He had a very long career.
But Portland just made a trade and there are already rumblings about Layman losing some time. Good grief. Layman is still just 24 but within the next three years we should be able to determine if Layman can become a star like Detlef. Perhaps like Detlef a trade would open up things for him. Or perhaps not. The NBA was much more white friendly back in the 80's and even the 90's.
Layman plays with two back court black
ball hogs so ball movement and opportunities are often limited. And despite the two backcourt volume shooters who get a lot of media love, Portland bounces out of the playoffs in routine fashion every year. Disjointed teams like Portland often fail at the end of the day.
Time will tell with Jake Layman but I fear unlike Detlef, there is less allowance now to have white bench players grow into stars over the course of several years. The NBA is focused on bringing in very young black "stars" and letting them garner the big minutes and receive all the patience necessary in building a long career.
Very irritating caste driven system that is in place in the NBA.
One of the things I used to like about basketball was watching a young player improve throughout college and the pros. Too often now it is give the job to the black youngsters and everyone else move aside.
See below Shrempf's NBA stats and you will see how he was allowed to blossom over time.
http://www.espn.com/nba/player/_/id/757/detlef-schrempf
