Don’t get too excited over ‘scrappy’ guard

On Sports

By dwight jaynes

The Portland Tribune, Oct 26, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (16 Reader comments)

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As the exhibition season winds down, there are still enough point guards running around in Trail Blazer uniforms to stock a small developmental league.

Coaches who were once point guards – and Nate McMillan spent a few minutes playing the position in Seattle – worry me a little, too. They always seem particularly hard on their point guards and find fault so easily. It’s become an NBA truism that it’s tough to play the point for a coach who once did the same thing.

These same coaches also seem particularly vulnerable to Scrappy Syndrome. And you know what I’m talking about – they fall in love with players who seem not as physically gifted, not as smooth, but who are hard-nosed, who play with grit and determination.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. Baseball managers have been doing it for years – falling in love with the David Ecksteins of the world.

Eckstein is the everlasting all-sports symbol of a player who seems to play so hard that you don’t notice how singularly untalented and overmatched he is. You root for him so passionately that your heart drowns out the constant screaming from your brain that on any Triple-A roster, you could find someone more talented to fill his position.

This is Scrappy Syndrome. And I believe Nate McMillan, a pretty scrappy player in his day, may be stricken with it.

Particularly when it comes to rookie point guard Taurean Green. McMillan’s already anointed the kid as someone who will be on the floor late in games and may win a few games for the team when he’s out there. And the coach, when talking about his point guards in training camp, was quoted recently in the daily as saying, “If you had to say who has had a pretty good camp, you could say Green.”

As near as I can tell, “camp” means practices. If you look at game statistics – and often, coaches don’t like to look at stats because anyone can do that, and coaches want you to think they can see things statistics lie about – Green really hasn’t had an awful lot of success.

Yes, he’s made half of his 3-point shots. That’s great. Good luck finding those open 3-pointers in the regular season, when the rest of the league realizes they’re the only shots you can make.

The reality of Green through six exhibition games: He’s made seven of 14 from 3-point range but only six of 28 of his 2-pointers, making his overall shooting percentage 31 percent. He’s made only two-thirds of his free throws. He’s managed to come up with just 12 assists in 91 minutes, and he has eight turnovers.

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