Top Listener Email: Ali aka Mr. M.I.T.

I want to comment on that you guys say that Rodney doesn’t play defense. As many faults I see with Stuckey, I actually disagree here to some extent - outside of that period where he just couldn’t get anything going.

Look at some games at the start of the year such as the first time they lost to Atlanta. He was their offensive and defensive spark plug in those games. He was rebounding, blocking dribble penetration, and forcing his way to the rim.

Perhaps you guys are correct that he became complacent after scoring 40 - I personally think its an issue between him and the vets, but that’s for another time. But regardless of why, we both agree that something just was not clicking in the middle of the season.

However you look at the second half of the season around the time that Rip went out again, he was actually doing a good job of staying in front of his defender.

The issue was that without athletic bigs to step into the lane, whenever people would run the pick and roll you’d see players run in between Stuckey and Sheed (which really isn’t Stuckey’s fault since he’s fighting through a screen). And the biggest thing to me is that he’s much bigger than Tayshaun - I can’t see why Curry was too stupid to notice this - but whenever they put Stuckey on LeBron, James’ numbers were much lower than his average.

Don’t believe me, look at game 3 third period, the only time they put Stuckey on LeBron for the entire quarter with Kwame in for Rasheed. The Cavs were held to a total of 9 points for the quarter, LeBron with only 4 points through the first 10 minutes. The way they were able to do this was by having Stuckey prevent LeBron from getting into the lane until there was under 5 in the shot clock, which forced a bad shot and allowed Kwame to get his 3 blocks in the quarter.

And of course, as soon as something works, Curry has to change it up, putting Bynum in for Stuckey. I like Bynum, but that was just a bad match up to put him in their, and the score reflected it.

Also don’t forget that Mo Williams couldn’t get going until the 3rd or 4th quarters of most of the games, and ended up shooting below his season averages (especially the from 3 and the free throw line, given that he was one of the best in the regular season, the only reason - since he was not injured - is because he could not get into rhythm).

I personally think that Stuckey does have a lot of qualities that are overlooked because he was struggling a lot in the middle of the season. Look back at some of the playoff games and you’ll notice that he also did a much better job of setting people up than his assist numbers reflected, people missed a good number of wide open shots.

Give him a guy like Chris Bosh and a good 3 point shooter and you’ll see 10 assists nightly in 2 to 3 years.

I’m only bringing this up because I feel that people often grade Stuckey a bit too hard, most likely because of his flashes of brilliance earlier in the season as you guys pointed out. That and you guys both understand that I take a third party view when I comment on players instead of just raving about them.

And as for his struggles, I still feel that a good part of them were because of leadership discrepancies between him and the vets, but once again I’ll bring that up another time when the occasion calls for it (you can only cause so much madness in one sitting :p) .

Peace,

Ali H.

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