Historically having watched Doc and his sloooooooow introduction of first and second year players into a rotation AND having watched the inconsistency of the second unit this year (admittedly more up than down) and Doc’s experimentation with these known entities, I am not yet ready to start whining about Pruitt and his playing time.

I suspect that when Doc starts feeling more comfortable with the 2nd unit – in particular the rotation in the backcourt – we will see Pruitt getting more opportunities in a more systematic way. Unless DA and Doc expect to be making another move, beyond that for a big man, it seems to me they have to get Pruitt in a position where he can contribute – if need be in an emergency – in the playoffs. This might be worth the cost of a game or two in the regular season. But as of now, a quarter of the way thru the season, I am not worried.

Doc has a habit of playing all of the 2nd unit together this year at times without a starter in the game for a period of time. So in your proposed lineup of Pruitt at the 1, House at the 2 and TA 3 would be very small if Doc continues to play Powe and Davis with this unit as well. That is the only thing I’m not crazy about is the lineup would be very small. If you have Perk or KG playing with Pruitt, House, and TA I would feel a little better. I would like Pruitt to get a chance but not sure exactly how the pieces of the puzzle are going to fit.

Why would you play an inexperienced Gabe Pruitt in the middle of a 12 game winning streak when you have an on fire Rondo starting and an Eddie House playing good basketball. Gabe does not have the basketball intelligence of Eddie or even Scal.

So Whats up, whats up

Eddie Money isn’t the worst best backup PG, but he’s getting the job done. He gets the team in its offense, and we all know how deadly his shooting is. The positive things he brings to the court are way too valuable to bury on the bench, regardless of how much potential Pruitt may have. I also tend to think that his defensive deficiancies are somewhat overstated; he’s no Rondo out there, but he’s pesky and aggressive. It also seems like his other weakness last year – bringing the ball up the court under pressure – has been much less of an issue this year.

He’s also the only VETERAN we have on the bench. Replace House with Pruitt, and our second unit is incredibly young – TOO young. If anything, we need another wiley old vet out with the second unit (“Are you there, PJ? It’s me, Danny.”), not one less.

In my mind, Pruitt is competing with Tony Allen for minutes, not Eddie. I could see Pruitt getting a little bit of burn on the second unit WITH Eddie, if Tony were to go down for any length of time. Right now, though, they’re still getting the second unit in order, establishing the group, getting everybody all working together. You can’t play EVERYBODY, especially when you’re already working a good number of younger players into bigger roles than they’ve had before.

As to the criticism of Doc not playing younger guys for a while… you can’t really make a judgement on that without being behind the scenes. All I know is that when some of these players finally DID start getting some PT, they fit in pretty quickly and pretty smoothly. Powe didn’t get playing time immediately (I was a little surprised he even made the team last year, proving that I’m an idiot of Simmons-esque proportions), but when he did he almost immediately was performing at a high level. But, it’s impossible to know whether he was ready for more PT, earlier, without having seen all the practices and workouts and all of that.

Well, in that scenario (Eddie and Gabe playing together), Gabe would be playing the 1 on offense and the 2 on D. He’s still undersized, but probably would be a little bit better.

Still, the second unit needs Tony Allen, both for his defense and for his abilty to drive to the rim. And yeah, the issues with the second unit, IMHO, remain that we remain one veteran big man short. I’d love Joe Smith, I’d love PJ Brown even more. The 2nd unit backcourt is fine.