IT'S HARDY TIME: Jaden Hardy looking like a decent prospect

[KillerLeft]

This has been an argument around here for years. It's always amazed me looking around the league at how every other team, including playoff teams, seemed to be able to give their young players minutes and develop them without hurting their win-loss significantly. If you have young players who have a reasonable number of professional and competent vets around them, and give them trust in that context, they develop without hurting the win-loss. We're seeing this at work with Green and Hardy. I deplore Kidd as an X's and O's and rotations coach, but he absolutely destroys Carlisle as a developer of young players. At least with the Mavs. Carlisle seems to be doing better with this in Indiana.

It's actually really simple.

1) Yes, there's a layer of experience that can only be gained during real game play.

2) Yes, it's in the organization's best interest to reach that point (and then get on with it) as early in a player's development as possible.

3) No, if the young player is not living up to the expectations laid out for him during in-house practices, THOSE issues aren't going to magically improve by forcing him into real game situations. In fact, the opposite is true, and it's possible to damage the player's confidence (in addition to the obvious: hurting the team's chances to be effective) which is counterproductive, of course.

4) No, we can't assume that because a young player isn't in games, it's somehow the coach's fault, philosophically. The individual player (this isn't a video game, people are different) might just not be ready. 

5) In the event of #4, the coach might be justified for not playing the young player yet, but might still be at fault for a lack of developmental focus during practice intended to get the young player ready. But, it could also just be the young player not rising to the challenge, and there are a hundred factors other than size, athletic ability or talent that could derail someone in their first couple of seasons. 

6) At the end of the day, there's no systemic approach that will work in every situation, because individuals and the circumstances they find themselves in are singular. Different. Statements like "10 minutes in every game as a rookie, and they need to be in the rotation by year 2" are just not indicative of how real life works. 

7) Since we don't KNOW what's going on behind the scenes, and the coaches do, and also because even the worst NBA coach of all time knows more about basketball than anyone on this board would, even if they quit their job and focused only on that for a decade, working yourself into a frenzy over this argument is one of the more pointless things that goes on here on a regular basis. 

I think ANY coach would be playing Green and Hardy this much, but that's because of their unique states of readiness (heck, this year 3 or 4 for Green, and Hardy isn't even a rookie - he played pro ball last year instead of going to college) and because of the roster circumstances (injuries and such) that have surrounded them. 

I could also make an argument, based on how terrible Green looked early on in his career, that having the opportunity to be behind guys like DFS and Bullock on a successful team WITHOUT the pressure of producing right away might have HELPED him become the player he is today.