And I agree with all of that but I do see situations where he seems to not want to establish strong position and elevate in traffic. I see it 2 fold, I don't see Bacot crashing the boards as we all know he does on either end, that isn't Bacot. Taking a new role, which I agree he has, but that new role does not mean he sacrifice boards for others. Second, he just is not making himself a target, now defer to others sure, I get that but you make yourself a target to allow others to have some freedom and that isn't happening like we know Bacot does. Now Bacot has always missed a lot of bunnies but it does seem to me that he is missing way more of them now than he has in the past, is that a elevation problem thru contact?
He seems to be running well straight line, moving his feet defensively but he seems hesitant to rise up, maybe to reduce the landing on someone's foot problem. Taking a step back, like Hansbourgh did with Ty Lawson is one thing but Hansbourgh did not take himself out of the offense as a scorer, he just reduced his attempts to spread the wealth as they say. Bacot is nearly completely taking himself out as a scorer. Bacot did share recently in a post game that he had a very difficult off season with his ankle and another nagging injury from last season that just didn't seem to heal as expected. He didn't come out and say it was still a problem but he didn't say it was 100% either. Those high ankle sprains can sometimes take multiple months to recover from and even then require a lot of rest and it is pretty well known that Bacot put in a lot of work this off season to have a better season this time than last. Did he allow enough rest time for that ankle to fully heal, maybe not? He seemed to early season but here we are half way thru a grinding season and we see a very different player.
Another thing, we have all watched Bacot play for a long time, we have seen spots in games where Bacot had enough of a opposing players nonsense, we have seen him get pissed off. What happens, pretty much every time Bacot gets pissed, he abuses the other team for the next several minutes, he shows them you don't mess with a grizzly bear! LOL Yesterday with that Green kid running his mouth as he did Bacot we all know would send the message, it would get a bit more physical than that opponent would like, not dirty but Bacot would typically show off some of that really good strength he has.
That is not in any way to say what he is doing is not for the betterment of this team, a lot of what he is doing right now IMO may help his NBA ability, he is showing he can be really effective and not need to score, that he can allow big time scorers to feature by setting screens so their looks are cleaner, ect. I do think making Bacot the primary scoring option every time down needed to be modified but not nearly eliminated. We have gone from a focus every trip down court to make sure Bacot at least touches the ball to Bacot not touching the ball on a regular basis and that I don't think is completely coaching decision for a healthy Bacot.
This is me hearing some whispers and maybe my looking harder to see if I see those whispers as having merit, not sure I would look so hard at this if I were not hearing a couple whispers.
