There's an old joke about the old bull and the young bull standing on a hill. The younger one says, "Hey, lets charge down the hill and catch one of those cows and screw her." To which the old bull replies, "No... let's walk down the hill and screw all of them."
Blair is a young bull. As a rookie on one of the best teams in the league, his rookie mistakes are magnified. He could do some of the same things playing for the T-Wolves, and blend right in. He would also get more minutes, and develop more bad habits.
His most glaring problem right now, in my opinion, is getting nailed for too many fouls on plays that are lost causes, or aren't that critical to the flow of the game. He's got to learn that those plays aren't worth being sent to the bench with foul trouble. As for learning the team defense played by the Spurs? Name me a player who hasn't struggled with that in his first season under Pop.
But damn he can do some damage when he is in the game. We all know he's uncanny at getting rebounds. But he also finishes well under the basket (especially for a rookie), and turns a lot of those awkward offensive boards into points. He's improved his passing a lot, and he's getting the better at drawing fouls.
Yeah, there are challenges for an undersized big. He's not going to dominate the low post like a 7-footer. But he'll produce in enough ways to earn solid minutes. Probably not in these playoffs, but that's no surprise for a rookie anyway. The one thing I wouldn't mind seeing is for Pop to use him in a few more situations as an "enforcer", to get an opposing big off his rhythm. If he's going to collect fouls anyway, make sure he gets their attention. We don't really have a guy in that role this year, and I think it's an important part of playoff basketball.
I agree with Harlem, Blair played much better than I expected this season and he'll only get better. But I think he won't play much minutes in the playoffs. Maybe 8-10. TD and Dice will play more and Bonner will get the rest of the minutes off the bench
Blair has had a great rookie season. I think he can easily be an excellent rotational big, maybe even a full time starter. He just needs more time in this league.
One thing I wish he would do more consistently is when he does get offensive rebounds go strong to the rim. Look for the contact, so the opposing bigs don't have the spacing to block the shot. Sometimes he seems to finesse his shots ala Malik Rose and ends up getting his shot blocked.
I agree. He needs more time to develop his defensive game. He's 20 years old. There is no doubt that DeJuan's post defense is poor compared to the rest of his game. He has also struggled in transition on cross-matching and he gets lost sometimes on rotational switches.
However, DeJuan brings a unique energy at both ends that is difficult to explain. He seems to have great instincts anticipating entry passes and on passes coming off ball screens. There have been many steals this year credited to Manu, George and others that were actually initiated by Blair's reach and ball-hawking.
Work over the summer to learn some of the tricks of the NBA trade could help develop DeJuan into something really special. As far as the playoffs go this year...Blair will find a way to serve a purpose and grow in the process.
As we've seen recently, I expect Pop to have Blair on a short leash. He'll likely get a 4-6 minute rotation in the 1st half while Duncan rests and if he looks out of place or overwhelmed by the moment, don't be surprised to see Pop go to a three big rotation in the second half.
Particularly if the Spurs draw the Mavs, we'll probably see Jefferson/Bogans taking turns on Nowitzki (in addition to McDyess/Bonner), which means if they're both playing some minutes at four, it means a fourth big won't be as necessary as it otherwise would be. Also, Blair doesn't have a logical match-up on the Mavs. He can't guard Nowitzki and they may not use a backup four in the rotation (Thomas is out; Najera will probably be used sparingly), so unless he can deal with Dampier and Haywood's length, he'll have trouble getting on the floor, even if he does play well in his initial rotation.
The real flaw in the rotation is NOT having another big, who can help Duncan protect the rim, rebound and defend the post. Too bad, Ratliff was traded. Ian will not see any playoff action.
Unless Blair grows another 3-4", he'll never be a full-time NBA starter, IMO. That said, I think he'll be a good player off the bench for years to come, barring injury, maybe like Malik Rose.
One thing about Blair is, while we love his offensive rebounding, he really isn't that great at boxing out, IMO, and lets the other teams get offensive boards because of this.
The guy is still just a rookie. He's a talent built like Wes Unseld, now he needs to learn to use his body like Wes Unseld. That's like Pop says, Hall of Fame type-stuff.
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