Thunder Good-Oil
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My read is that Barnes is trying to get him involved and thereby get him going. If he gets starts when JJJ is out and he doesn't perform, he might get buried on the bench for a while. But if he perfoms well, he could get back into the rotation and get significant minutes. Barnes is giving him a chance to figure it out and perform. So the pressure is on VJ. I think Barnes is smart to handle him this way during his early season funk.
Yes. Barnes Almighty is spot on and handling the roster like a genius.
Per rockytoptalk dot com:
After the Vols’ loss to Villanova, when Bailey played 23 minutes, hit just one two-point shot and added absolutely nothing else to his box score except for a single foul, Barnes played the veteran guard just six minutes against the Tar Heels. In last Wednesday’s media sessions, Barnes explained Bailey’s lack of minutes was more about how well the other guards (Santi, ZZ, Chandler) were playing together and indicated that he expects to leave the rotation up for tweaks depending on who’s playing well in the context of the given game.
“It was the fact that I think that’s going to be our team this year a lot,” Barnes said. “There are going to be nights when some guys have a little bit more than others. That’s what we’ll ride that night. VJ, again, he’s such a hard worker. He’ll come back and he did, like you would expect, he was a great teammate. Pulled for those guys and will continue to do that. But he came back to practice and does what he does every day. I’ve said before, no one is going to put any more work in than VJ does. But it really was the fact that those three guys had it going. And we just knew that’s what we needed to do that particular day. Every game is going to have its different personality. Every game does. So based on what that personality brings from that game, that’s who we’ll be playing.”