RealSpurs with a glimmer of hope tonight. 6-6 with 9 boards in 21 minutes. Save bandwidth Lurkerkoast, i'm not *saying* he will do this every night.
While Popovich and Lurker-Lakers power and small forwards of choice FinleyBonner continue to be out, Cementovich gave Ian Mahinmi his first meaningful minutes in two years.
A great read here, written by a RealSpur from another board. His name, most fittingly
"objective".
Warning: needlessly long screed ahead declaring the unleashing of Ian Mahinmi!
Time for a fresh re-examination of Ian Mahinmi, and the case I?m presenting that he has been misused and why he should be getting minutes in a rotation right now. Of course he won?t get minutes and will only be a missed opportunity and regarded as a bust, but I still feel like getting this off my chest.
The vast majority of this was written in the second week of November but never posted. And I post this now fully realizing that the Spurs were close to beating to of the top teams in the league the past couple of games and no doubt by the end of the season will be much sharper. And though Bonner, McDyess and whoever else didn't perform all that well these past two games, that wasn't the sole reason they lost. But still I say, "Free IAN!"
This is on my mind because of the Lakers-Suns game early this NBA season, where the Lakers brutalized the Suns without Pau Gasol and with Bynum being such a big factor. Now before you over-react and start exclaiming ?Ian isn?t lightyears close to Bynum! He?s also too small and frail! He gets injured putting on his sportcoat! LOL @ you!? . . . Let?s look at how things have developed.
Andrew Bynum did not step onto the court a finished product. He was raw skillwise, physically unready, and untrustworthy on the court. And add to that later offcourt behavior that would make some question his dedication to the game. Later he would have two severe injuries to prematurely end entire seasons. In all these he?s not that far removed from Ian.
So how did Bynum overcome all these obstacles to become the starting center on a title team with the occasional games of sheer domination? He has the game already to be an all-star and so much more with years to come, despite serious injury concerns that linger going forward. It wasn?t an overnight process.
Two big things that we?ve not really seen with the Spurs and Ian happened with Bynum: One, he was given playing time, REAL PLAYING TIME. Even when he was hurting the team and looking clueless, he was given the time he needed to find his way. Two, the hands-on attention of a personal coach just for him to develop his skills.
After his rookie year where he saw sporadic minutes, Bynum heading into his second year was given the proper diet, the nutrition of playing in games. Make excuses if you want, like maybe Mihm and Kwame were hurt or the Lakers weren?t true contenders and had the luxury of playing him, but the fact is that Phil Jackson put him into the fire. And he wasn?t all that great. He made mistakes. Sometimes lots of them.
Bynum started 51 games his sophomore year. And he had plenty of bad games. He had 14 of those starts, nearly 25% of the total, where he had 6 & 6 or much less, often with a lot of fouls. Under 6 points and 6 boards for a guy so big? Dumb fouls? What madness had struck Phil Jackson? Didn?t he have some older bench scrub he could start over him? Obviously the kid wasn?t ready.
Just look at some of the starts with games like this in the 06-07 season:
11-08 : 2 & 5, 6 fouls
11-24 : 4 & 2
11-29 : 3 & 5
02-09 : 2 & 4
02-26 : 2 & 3 in 32.5 minutes!
03-09 : 2 & 5 and 5 fouls in 33 minutes.
04-06 : 0 & 2 and 4 fouls
And that?s just some of them. He had his ups, and he had his downs. Real bad downs. People wondered if he?d ever get it. And he was such a foul machine. But he developed because he was given the opportunity to develop.
And re: the coaching. For one season in Austin Ian Mahinmi was given as close to the Bynum treatment as possible, working with Toros AC Roy Rogers on his game. And improvement happened. He wasn?t some Stromile who never got better, his game progressed! If you watched the archive games from early in the season compared with late in the season, what a difference! Even just checking the boxscores will show what playing time + hands-on attention can do great things.
But Roy Rogers was gone after that year, and Ian was mostly too hurt to play anyway the next season. And he was hurt in an offseason Grgurich camp trying to improve, he wasn?t snowboarding or something stupid, he was hurt trying to get better as a player but Spurs fans seem to hold that against him. But in all my scouring of news items, I?ve never come across any other coach who was there just for Ian, or even to concentrate with him. After Roy Rogers, that was it. He didn't have 4 years of hands on training with an all time great like Bynum with Kareem.
Who is there for Ian to work with now, or last year? Well of course now they?ve written him off and won?t give him a shot anyway. Even with Duncan was inactive earlier in the year, Ian Mahinmi couldn'?t get activated over Haislip or Ratliff even though Ian has spent two years in the system. It?s a damn shame. I understand why they did that, I?d probably do it too. If he gets playing time and performs even marginally satisfactory he?s priced himself out of their range because even just promising young bigs get nice deals (like Amir Johnson, hell like Jackie Butler!). I wouldn?t give him the chance to make me look dumb after not picking up his option either.
Hell, look at Jermaine O?Neal?s career. Sure he?s washed up now and riddled with injuries, but go back to the young Jermaine. Who never really got his shot in Portland. Who was so raw and underdeveloped. That guy was in Portland for FOUR years and totaled 18 starts and averaged about 12 minutes a game in four seasons. In his fourth year, when you?d think he should have had it all down, he started an 8 game stretch in March and April of 2000 where he had monster statlines such as 2 & 0, 2 & 2, 4 & 3, 0 & 3, and 2 & 0 (against the Spurs).
Four years into the league, he gets some late season burn and he still is so raw that it doesn?t just happen all at once. Four years of practicing the not-so-common nba practice against Rasheed, Sabonis, and Brian Grant and he still wasn?t ready to deliver immediately.
THAT is now Ian Mahinmi.
This is my ?FREE MAHINMI? cry. So many Spurs fans want to lash out at him for being a bust. Well I say that if he?s a bust, he?s a bust because of the Spurs. If Andrew Bynum was given the Ian treatment the Lakers wouldn?t be the same team, maybe not even close. Nobody is an NBA-ready player until they?re made into an NBA ready player. And the Spurs aren?t making him, they?re burying him.
PLAY IAN NOW. Hell, START Ian NOW. Be forewarned. You play him now and he will have games with a lot of fouls. He will have games where you look at his statline and wonder what he was doing out there. There will be defensive foul-ups, bad shots, errant passes, costly turnovers, dumb fouls and assorted other problems. That is the learning curve, that is his burden. But if ANYTHING is to be gained from the investment in him, it has to be now.
Play him now. Even though the Spurs have wasted this valuable time early in the season when the schedule was so wide open with so many days off and practice time available. But now when he might still have some shred of conditioning left from camp. Play him now because he can?t go to the d-league. Now because if you play him and he is a total catastrophe after a respectable trial of 10-15 games you still have plenty of time to work in the Bonners and Ratliffs and whoever. Now because he?s not just a Stromile, he?s not just a Jackie Butler. He has talent. We?ve seen it. It?s there. Quit on him now and you?ll never get it, maybe no team in the future can get it out of him.
He can help this team. He can help in a big way if you play him enough and give him the opportunity, but it has to be a real opportunity. Because we all know a team with a healthy Duncan, Parker, Ginobili and can carry almost any big stiff to the playoffs. Even if Mahinmi is bad, it won?t hurt the Spurs to find out now.
He?s still barely 23 years old. He?s younger than George Hill. He?s younger than Hansborough. And still younger than Jason Thompson, Courtney Lee, Al Horford, Jeff Green, Rodney Stuckey, and Al Thornton (by 3 years!), just to name some but not all.
FREE IAN MAHINMI
