LOL! I won't accuse you of lying when you say you watched him play, but your your follow-up comment certainly makes me wonder. The best you can say is that he "didn't embarrass himself"? I'll word it a little more positively. He outplayed the competition when he was in the game. In the overtime exhibition game against Canada, he was all the buzz among the fans sitting in the stands.
I can be very critical . For me to say somebody was ok, is high praise. I didn't see any alley-oop dunks. I didn't see any in your face block shots, or outlet passes down the court. I didn't see any steals and runs down the court for a smash dunk. I didn't see any 15 rebound games. I didn't see him make any last second half court buzzer beaters, or for that matter any 20 second shot clock beaters either. I didn't see him dominating his opponent and taking him out of the game. I didn't see him scoring against double teams. I didn't see him above the rim grabbing rebounds and cleaning the glass. .
I'm not the type of guy who is going to heap praise on a guy for a mediocre performance as a back-up role player. Frankly, I'm tired of the participation trophy philosophy where we say everything a player does is great and awesome. Grady filled a role and did it well. He filled the gap. As I was watching the game, as a casual observer, to me, his play didn't really stand out. he was one of 5 players on the court doing his job.. Given a choice, I would have rather had Haas and V Edwards play 40 minutes. If possible, I believe everyone else would as well.
I'll say the same thing about Taylor, Sasha, Cline, Eastern and Wheeler. They also showed some nice flashes of play in limited minutes I won't complement Ewing as I never noticed him playing. the box score said he did. but he didn't do anything for me to notice he played.
Rather than giving every player high praise and lowering my standards, my standards will remain the same for all players. A triple double is an awesome game. Hitting 10 threes is an awesome game. Dishing out 10 assists or getting 10 steals is an awesome game. Collecting 20 rebounds or 10 blocks is a n awesome game. Scoring 20 points is outstanding or excellent. Scoring 8-12 points with 4 rebounds is a nice, ok game. I' m not going to say somebody was awesome or heap a bunch of praise to a bench player in a relief role for a 5-15 minute gig.
And I'll stand by my previous statement. in the regular season I expect Haas to play 25-30 minutes, and Edwards to play 30 mins. That will leave 25 minutes for the remainder of the front court. And I expect the majority of those minutes will go to a healthy Taylor, and devoted to developing Haarms and Wheeler. Ewing may see some minutes. As for Grady, despite all he did in the WUG, when the college games start, I expect Grady to be the last frontcourt player off the bench. he saw a lot of minutes in the WUG because of his experience and knowledge of our system. If Haarms was available for the WUG, and if Ewing had arrived earlier, we might not even be talking about Grady.
Andy, You like Grady - looking at our entire team, how many minutes do YOU see him playing? I see 3- 5 mpg at most in a mop-up role. and that's only if Haas, Taylor, Haarms, and V Edwards are in foul trouble or injured.
