Wes: Seems to have a potential future as a defensive specialist. Solid D on Martin. Say what you will about relying on his athleticism to bail him out when he guesses wrong, but I have seen the kid play solid D on some very good scorers and the fact is that, while he doesn't have the handle or instincts offensively to take advantage of his athleticism, he is an elite athlete. He is quick and can elevate, and if he continues to concentrate on playing excellent defense and mistake free offense, he doesn't need to score 10+ per game to contribute. He has the physical ability and, I think, the desire to be a stopper. He needs to work on the mental and instinctive aspects to make that role his own. Big step forward, now if he can only break his past patterns of one step forward, two steps back. I continue to be Wes-optimistic, albeit very cautiously so.
Ridnour: solid shoint guard. Solid back up point guard. Like Beasley, when the tone of sharing the ball is set for the team by Rubio, Luke is a better player. Trolls who insist Luke is the purest of pure point guards notwithstanding, we all recognize that Luke is a knockdown shooter who likes to get his own shot a little too much and doesn't have an internal voice that tells him what good shots and what bad shots are. I like how his role has developed.
Barea: call me crazy, but there is room for Barea or Ridnour on this team. We play better when one or the other gets minutes next to Rubio, but not usually when both are splitting the majority of backcourt minutes (game before last they carried us, but that was an anomaly).
Beasley: carving himself an awesome niche as a 6th man. Getting less and less comfortable with the idea of failing to resign him, or trading him. He can be a more talented version of Lamar Odom.
Pekovic: guy has amazing touch near the basket for a dude who 600 years ago would have been hunted in the forests of the Balkans for being a bloodthirsty giant. One of my favorite guys. I'm sorry I doubted you, Pek.
Love: Good. Really good.
Rubio: pure basketball player. Shot not falling? Draw contact and get to the line. Find Pekovic under the basket. Disrupt the other team.
A final note for purported basketball pundits trolls who think that 6 TOs equals awful basketball:
One way to ensure you'll never turn the ball over is to never take risks. The easiest way to segregate the good turnovers from the bad is to look at where they are happening and where the ball is going.
If the ball goes out of bounds on an aggressive scoring pass (generally speaking, if it goes out of bounds on the baseline under the basket on a lob or bounce pass or so on) it's a GOOD turnover. While you don't want these in critical moments when the score is close, it's not a bad thing for a few of these to happen a game. It means you are pressing the attack against the defense. It's a mistake of COMMISSION.
If the ball gets stolen out front because your defender is pressuring you, or you throw the ball away to a wing defender, or, and this is a pet peeve, you throw a bounce pass on the perimeter and it gets picked off (the worst), this is a BAD turnover, because it is an error of OMISSION. You are allowing your opponent to take the ball from you rather than taking it to them.
I just want to make this clear because sometime people who don't know anything about hoops whine when someone misses a backdoor lob or drives to the basket and throws it away because their teammate isn't where he should be or doesn't have his hands ready. These are usually not bad plays unless it's the closing minutes of a close game. The pot odds are in your favor- if you make that play 10 times, 7-8 times you'll score. Given that players are human and make mistakes, you want these type of mistakes.
