The one thing I can't understand about this year's team is Ben's obsession with playing Patterson for big minutes.
When you look at his stats beyond his atrocious shooting, I get that he appears to be a relatively steady-handed PG with a nearly 4-1 Assist/TO ratio.
But my goodness, what's not counted as a turnover is when he:
- Backs into the lane and forces a godawful shot
- Backs into the lane and passes back out to his teammate for a godawful shot as the shot clock expires
- Backs into the lane and kicks it out to a teammate, who takes the shot clock violation.
Not to mention holding the ball a second too long when swinging it, allowing the defense to get set again. Or passing up the actual wide-open shots (but still thinking about it), allowing the defense to recover again.
If his grenades were counted as turnovers, I'm convinced the A/TO ratio would be sub-1.
But you know what? Is it really his fault if the coach doesn't seem to mind? I've never seen Ben look upset about it, which is perplexing, as he was also Division 1 PG and should see how much his tendencies kill the flow of the offense.
Meanwhile, Asuma, our only offensive threat in the first half, sits the entire second half. He does a ton of good things without the ball in his hands. He plays unselfishly (perhaps to a fault) and can hit open shots.
I get we are lacking talent, and Patterson should absolutely be in the rotation. But there should have been some tough conversations at this point, and we should have seen his tendencies change and no more dribbling the air out of the ball in February and still getting 35 minutes.
This is so stupidly obvious; I must be missing something. Please criticize my take and tell me why I'm wrong.
