THE CRUCIFIX: Cato: Wood isn't thrilled w/ his role...Will depart in the summer

[DanSchwartzgan]

I don’t understand what the end game is with Wood here. He’s seemingly been a good soldier— playing great ball in the role he’s been given, not complaining in the press.

Plenty of defensive breakdowns to go around on this team, it isn’t only Wood. In the meantime, I don’t see what purpose yanking Wood around serves.

He’s not leaving 5m per year on the table. I think he’ll get between 20-28m per year. Just play the guy.

Good question.  What some call ‘yanking’ others call coaching.  It is a big leap of faith to go from ‘traded for trash’ from Houston to $20mm plus.  We should probably recalibrate how Wood is seen around the league based on what we know (his trade value) rather than what we suppose. Could he grow into that guy?  I think that is what Dallas is trying to do with him.

Wood is not a starting center on a good team.  He just isn’t.  So the first bit of coaching is to break him of thinking he is.  One way of doing that is finding him some success as a scoring four.  It is working.  All of his per minute numbers are above his career averages.  His TS% at .683 is a career high…freaking .683!  His Reb% of 19.7 is a career high.  His On Court is a career high and his On Minus Off is really good.  Is it because he’s a stud or because he’s being used well.  It is one thing to get numbers on bad teams where role doesn’t matter.  It is totally something else to do it while also playing winning basketball.

Do we know that Wood can do this against starters?  No we don’t.  Do we know that he can do it for 32 minutes a night?  No we don’t.  Its OK.  We have 74 games to figure it out.  No need to panic.  Personally, I’d prefer letting Wood build some momentum and be given a bigger role over time versus throwing him into the deep end and having to take things back from him.  I get that the team D stats aren’t bad with Wood (especially with another big next to him…as predicted).  But, he’s really lost at times right now.  It probably won’t always be that way and he probably won’t always be a 24 minute backup either.