It’s entirely possible that Don Nelson, in his recent fit of scribbling random rosters on napkins, drawing them out of a hat, and trying them in games, has gone completely insane.
But it’s also possible that he’s more in touch with basketball than any coach we’ve ever seen.
This world consists of not just basketball players and coaches, but front office officials, scouts, dancers, die-hards, casual fans, forum-dwellers, bloggers, and anyone impressionable enough to be affected by a basketball game. To say that “the world of basketball” is limited simply to wins and losses or even something as trivial as points (You and your simple, primitive ways!) is largely missing the point. It’s not necessarily a thought process I’ve fully appreciated until now, but Nellie is, more than any coach in the NBA, tapped into basketball’s collective unconscious.
An easy way to think about it is to consider every ridiculous idea that’s ever entered your mind about the game. These fleeting notions of insanity that we all encounter before we cast them off and discount their credit.
What would happen if you fielded a lineup of entirely shooting guards?
What would happen if you had your center shoot threes all the time?
What would happen if you just stopped playing veterans all together to find minutes for the young’ns?
Nelson has tapped into the unconscious and utilized its most prized weaponry. Maybe that makes him both a visionary and completely bonkers. But don’t pretend that the thought hasn’t crossed your mind. When you see a team with Anthony Randolph, Anthony Morrow, Brandan Wright, and Marco Belinelli sitting around twiddling their thumbs, the natural instinct is to find a way to get them some playing time. One problem: Stephen Jackson, Jamal Crawford, and Corey Maggette are pretty well-paid and proven, veteran road blocks.
I wouldn’t say that Nelson’s plan is “crazy enough to work,” because what “works” in the conventional sense and what “works” in this type of framework aren’t exactly similar. Nellie is sitting at the control panel and pressing buttons just to see if one of them causes the planet to explode. Why would it matter if he accidentally turns the fan on?
I doubt very much that there is some grandiose, progressive goal in mind. Nelson’s just trying to appraise the assets he has in front of them. But the uproar over these arbitrary benchings tells me two things: one, that no other coach would do this, and two, that it was something that was on all of our minds anyway. In Randolph we trust.
