He should be, if he didn't earn playing time from last game then he never will.
Catch 22.
Mahinmi doing well vs. Lakers would all but insure his spot on the roster as well as an answer to the team's need. Him not playing well all but assures him invaluable as trade material.
Here's hoping he has a great game as well as getting consistent minutes and productivity there after.
If the situation is right (blowouts either way, foul trouble, etc) I would like to see Ian play again tomorrow night.
No way... the Spurs not picking up his option is the real indication of what they thought of Ian.
Hopefully, he makes some contributions and proves them wrong... but then the Spurs would have to find a way of actually keeping him. Oh well, one season at a time.
At first when I saw the thread le, I thought this was speculation that Ian would sign with the Lakers.
Just think, since we didn't pick up his contract, if he did sign with the Lakers and turned into a solid NBA player it would make the Scola episode look like a women's social club tea party.
I like this theory. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think this is the most likely reason Mahinmi played, other than the other reasons that Pop made public.
I want Mahinmi to succeed as much as anyone, and I really do hope the Nets game was a sign of things to come. However, think about this: how much better are the Nets (perhaps the worst team in NBA history) than the D-League compe ion Mahinmi faced two years ago? Yes, they are better than most/all D-League teams; but are they significantly better? Ian averaged 17 and 8 in that league; as blasphemous as it may seem to the current love-fest, until Mahinmi shows that he can produce in a larger sample size of NBA games, I'm just going to consider the Nets game an encouraging but relatively minor extension of Mahinmi's D-League potential.
Are you his agent?
Who are the other 8-10 French centers in the NBA today, EXACTLY?
More like, it would ensure we lose him this summer. The Spurs not picking up his option meant they didn't want to pay him any longer...but if he plays well against the Lakers, we'd most likely have to cough up even more dough than before just to keep him. Remember, its gonna be a crazy free agency.
The Nets are incredibly better than any d-league squad. It's so much of a discrepancy that it leads me to believe you must not have watched too much Iowa Energy or Mad Ants basketball during Ian's time there.
Going up against Brook Lopez is a lot different than anyone he faced in D-League.
is he better than Petro or Ajinca?
Probably.
Noah and Turiaf.
I want to see him against the Lakers and I hope that's the case, there's no reason to not play the guy at least a couple of minutes after what he did against NJ.
Okay, let me clarify further, then. I've seen plenty of D-League games, and I attended the D-League Showcase last year. (I've also attended and seen Ian at the Rocky Mountain Revue, which is a similar talent level at times.) The D-League is a poor league with relatively few players who will ever get even a 10-day contract in the NBA; it's probably the equivalent of a low-level European league, or mid-level European league at very best. Ian faced some good defenders in that league, but a lot of the time he did not.
The Nets have a solid core of talented young players in Lopez, Yi, Lee, and CDR, and are better than their record indicates. If you threw them in the D-League, I have no doubt they'd win 80-90% of their games (perhaps more if they executed well every night). That said, they're currently a team that is seriously underachieving. For whatever reason, they haven't been able to put things together, and it shows in every game, including games where they play a good Spurs team within 12 points.
Ian looked good last night, and it's a step in the right direction. However, I'm simply saying that after a single 15 and 9 night against the lowly Nets, I really don't think we know that much more about him than when he had 32 and 17 against the Utah Flash. If he starts contributing consistently, then it will be a different story.
The problem with the big man rotation, is that Pop insist on playing small ball, with Jefferson at the 4. That's why Ian can't crack the rotation.
If Pop played a big line-up, there would be minutes for everyone, and it would relieve the pressure on the back court/wing rotations which doesn't have the same depth.
Pop needs to play to our strengths and make other teams match up with us, instead of trying to create mismatches for opponents by playing small ball and being abused by them.
I wouldn't expect him to get 15 and 9 again unless a lot of it comes in major blowout time (+20). I've already posted that if he ever got a string of starts I'd expect a bunch of games of high fouls and low numbers.
But to me what he did against NJ wasn't the same as his output in D-League. He got the ball a lot in Austin and was allowed to work against d-league level post defenders and score a lot. Against NJ he was surrounded by much better talent than in Austin and pretty much all of his scores were off being set up by other players. The only time I remember him getting the ball in the post was him immediately giving it back to RJ for a made jumper while he occupied RJ's man.
If Ian was getting the ball in the post and going to work against benchwarmers in a blowout then I wouldn't be as impressed. But it was a fairly compe ive game against a team that played their best guys nearly the entire game and Ian succeeded in ways that people have posited an athletic big could succeed with the Spurs for years.
So Ian was able to do the things in a regular season game that people hoped Elson would do, hoped Haislip could do, hoped Ely could do, etc. Contest shots, run the floor, finish around the basket, make athletic plays. I don't think that's a product of playing an underachieving NJ team. Maybe the stats were, but what Ian could bring to the table when surrounded by good players like Parker, Manu and RJ with solid roleplayers like Hill and Mason etc was apparent without a boxscore.
I can't believe that all these years that the Spurs spent developing and investing on him, the FO will just trade Mahinimi. The Nets are the worst team in the league, but they do have solid players the entire time when Mahinmi was playing. A freakishly athletic big guy is what we need to cover the stretch 4 of the leagues
It would've been a lot more interesting seeing Ian take a shot at guarding a player like Dirk, rather than seeing George Hill or Keith Bogans. The ONLY way this kid continues to get better is by playing against NBA-caliber compe ion. Times up for the sport jacket, strait jacket.
Ian still is really dumb and/or clumsy, as is DJB, about fouling. Can't depend on either one when they can't stay on the court.
Unless you let each run the table for their 6 fouls and hope they can hang around to the 4th qtr.
Raw big men are generally bad with fouls..that's something you have to deal with if you want your young big to play defense..so if you want a guy like Mahinmi or Blair to develop, that's just something that you have to live through..
Again, if a guy's getting decent points and rebounds, and an occasional block, why not let him get his fouls? Then again, we're tallking about a team that benched DeJuan Blair for basically the last three quarters against the Mavs because he got three fouls.
To be honest, I think what bothers Pop the most in Ian's case is that they're re ed fouls. Like moving screens, pushes on the back, etc. It gets the team in the penalty early and puts more pressure in defending without fouling. So he has a point there.
And you're really making the case for this based on one game? Look up "apologist", please. There's no way in the world you actually believe that Pop's been reluctant to play Ian all this time because of the quality of the fouls that he commits.
the problem for ian on the spurs is his health
he is worth the te if he never stays healthy
the problem for ian on the spurs is his health
he is worth the te if he never stays healthy
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