Right now we're getting 1 + 1 = -1 because of the impact Knight's demotion is having on him personally and the the second unit as a whole. The guy averaged 20 and 5 last season on reasonable fg% (.415%) which are starter numbers on most teams, so he's obviously feeling stiffed...Watson's pre-season words about Knight accepting his 6th man role are clearly not true as the evidence is staring at us right in the face.
It's childish and egocentric and certainly we can blame Knight in part for it, but I can also understand it, rightly or wrongly, on the basis of his own perceived role on the team when looking at his stats last year; 20 and 5 are solid numbers.
Which means Watson is also to blame because he didn't recognise this egocentricity / vulnerability in Knight; while a tough one to spot, he missed the obvious signs that we all picked up on when Knight assumed he would maintain his starting spot through various interviews in the pre-season. There was clearly some strong reluctance there.
So IMO it's another player psychology / team psychology / 'chemistry' fail; I've raised my concerns about McD's inability to understand this essential part of team success vis a vis his total mishandling of Dragic, and this looks to be a continuation of the trend, albeit not as large nor obvious a mistake as the Dragic situation was. Perhaps the following statement is made too easily with the benefit of hindsight but I'm almost certain a better coach would have spotted these signs and kept Booker on the bench.
By doing this, he would have deflated his ego a bit - nothing wrong with doing that to a young (very), hungry, talented player - and it would almost certainly have brought out a better Knight that what we're seeing. Like I said, there is something seriously wrong in front of us.
The worry for me (actually it's more like an expectation than a worry) is that our incompetent management team will scapegoat Knight and freeze him out rather than look for a solution, which I think his promotion to the starting team is the only one. By doing this (as mentioned in the previous post) Knight get's an ego reflate, hopefully his stats pad up and we can then trade him for reasonable value. And who knows, maybe we decide we want to keep him because 20 and 5 at $14m per is pretty good value in the current climate.
And it's hardly going to ruffle Booker too much - he's a stronger character than Knight, he's not going anywhere and must know he's the future starting 2 guard of this organisation for the next decade, he's only 18 so his ego hasn't run wild yet meaning he'll more readily take orders and understand that a) it's a decision for the better of the team and b) he is unquestionably the floor leader of the second unit meaning he can do what he likes, and maybe even learn the point guard role better and c) it may only be a short term 'demotion' if Knight improves enough that we can find a taker for him in the trading window.
Nice ideas of course but we've got McD and Watson running the show so look for this to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
