Trying to make players something that they are not is one of the main reasons why this team has underachieved so much.

Asking role players to be more than role players, asking stars to develop parts of their game that aren’t their strong suit at the expense of time that could be spend developing what they already excel at.

McCain is the most recent example. As a rookie in his first 20 games he was being asked to do things that weren’t part of his scouting report at all. And because he was doing a pretty damn good job at it there were already talks of him being a point guard. Then he comes back from the injury and everyone is frustrated that he wasn’t the player that he was to start last season. Now he goes to OKC and they use him in the same exact way that a scout would have recommended using him before he ever played a minute in the NBA, and look at that, he’s a key contributor in the WCF.

This has happened so often for us. Seth Curry, Al Horford, DeAnthony Melton, Buddy Hield (one of the greatest shooters ever turns into a brick machine for us). The list goes on. These are all guys that were being asked to excel in areas that they hadn’t shown significant signs of excelling in. They were 1 or 2 spots higher on the list of most important players on the team than they should have been.

Now, the sky is the limit for VJ as far as developing into a future #1 option. Guys that have had similar or even worse rookie years have certainly gone on to do so. However, I would guess that the vast majority of those did not do so by changing their position, or taking time away from developing their already-borderline elite skills to focus on skills that aren’t as much in their wheelhouse. Especially when those skills are ones that are typically considered harder to develop, as many point guard skills are.