Would never want him because you simply cannot depend on him to be a consistent performer.

He looked like he was going to be a fixture with the Pacers... not he's a nomad. Crazy.

"The kind of player who would sit on the TV and watch the couch"

In the end, the Colts made the right decision. As the rumors go, during an interview, Peyton Manning walked up to the Colts owner, and said I hope you draft me, and if you don't, I'll spend the next 15 years making you pay for that decision. I'll make it a point to beat down on your team without mercy.

As Charles Barkley parrots, you can't fix stupid. Lance Stephenson is a world of talent, who sits on the TV and watches the couch. He's a locker room mess and plays out of control. Which would be fine if he was strictly a defensive stopper or the old style NBA enforcer ( i.e. a John Salley type) which is no longer accepted in the league, but as a legit rotation wing, he gives up more than he offers.

Steve Blake was a pretty mediocre player, but he knew his role and played within his role and limitations. Stephenson has 10,000 times the talent of Blake, sometimes it's not about raw talent, you have to be able to meld yourself into a role and system.

TripleThreat wrote:Back when the NFL draft had a debate on whether Peyton Manning OR Ryan Leaf should be the first overall pick, there were reports that a respected coach wrote this about Ryan Leaf

"The kind of player who would sit on the TV and watch the couch"

In the end, the Colts made the right decision. As the rumors go, during an interview, Peyton Manning walked up to the Colts owner, and said I hope you draft me, and if you don't, I'll spend the next 15 years making you pay for that decision. I'll make it a point to beat down on your team without mercy.

As Charles Barkley parrots, you can't fix stupid. Lance Stephenson is a world of talent, who sits on the TV and watches the couch. He's a locker room mess and plays out of control. Which would be fine if he was strictly a defensive stopper or the old style NBA enforcer ( i.e. a John Salley type) which is no longer accepted in the league, but as a legit rotation wing, he gives up more than he offers.

Steve Blake was a pretty mediocre player, but he knew his role and played within his role and limitations. Stephenson has 10,000 times the talent of Blake, sometimes it's not about raw talent, you have to be able to meld yourself into a role and system.

That's a good post. Good points. Yeah, Lance had the talent to be a better offensive version of Artest, but he was even more uncoachable than Ron in the end.

Still, if we're gonna look at the triangle again... Lance's best season came when the Pacers were running something close to the triangle with Brian Shaw as offensive coordinator. He's a playmaker from the wing position - something we haven't had for Phil's entire tenure here and something it seems the triangle might need. (Thinking of Odom and Pippen, and also MJ and Kobe). This is why I covet Josh Jackson in the upcoming draft.

But chances are we don't get Josh Jackson, unless there's some sort of miracle. I think I'd take a risk on Lance. He looked really good for Memphis last year and New Orleans to start this year. I'd say he's worth a low risk, make good contract. Though there are constant whispers that he has too many bad influences in the NYC area since he grew up here and that's certainly worth paying attention to and considering.

nykshaknbake wrote:There's virtually no risk in taking a flyer on Stephenson. Money won't be an issue. Team cohesion is already at the basement.

Theres a definite and real risk. We don't want to get helped into a couple of extra meaningless wins. It would destroy our lottery chances.

crzymdups wrote:I'd be okay on a low risk deal for Lance....

Here is how Stephenson can help himself

A) Learn to hit the three point shot at an elite rate. He has the talent for it, the raw ability, at this point, he just needs to put in the hard work. If any NBA player is not working on to improve their 3 point shot to a league average level, or working to get it to an elite level, then they are idiots. This is like anyone on the Yankees refusing to improve their bat speed if they can find a way to help themselves. Or a pitcher not working on finding that 3rd effective pitch on the mound as a starter.

B) Convert himself into a point guard. The guy simply needs the ball in his hands to function on the court. Trying to get him to play another way might be futile. There is nothing wrong with being ball dominant as long as

- No one else on the floor is also ball dominant
- You are a distributor
- You can create your own shot consistently

The problem with Born Ready is he can create his own shot sometimes, and those sometimes are in streaks. This is when he becomes unstoppable. But he can't do it all the time, which drives everyone insane because he doesn't understand when to throttle up or tone it down on the court. He can be very effective as a matchup play, but he doesn't play in control enough to exploit those matchups. In that regard, he's very much like Kendall Gill used to be.

Forcing him to be a distributor, if he can get over the mental hurdle, would force him to take responsibility for his teammates on the floor. At some of those rehab work farms/camps for kids, sometimes the best way to fix a broken kid is to force him to lead others and be responsible for others.

If he could reinvent himself as a 3 And D combo guard with the ability to distribute in a team format, he could be very very valuable.

He would need to be paired with a player like Andre Miller or a Derek Harper/Doc Rivers type of player, someone who could get him under control. John Lucas might have been able to help him. Nate McMillan, Mark Price, there are tons of former players who could probably heal his problems if he would humble himself enough to see he needs to reinvent his game to stay in the NBA.

Which all goes back to the Melo tragedy as a player. Melo will likely enter the HOF as a compiler, but his "natural" gifts are/were so off the chart, he'd be one of the best players ever, not just HOF but right the top of the conversation like an Oscar Robertson, if he just put in the hard work and wasn't such a selfish player. Born Ready, unlike Melo, doesn't have the natural talent to just coast. He does reflect how players who do coast are always tragic. I wonder if Melo will be old, surrounded by crates of his personal cologne and branded failed fashion line that didn't sell, seeing his chain of cell phone stores go broke as hover cars go by, ignoring the calls of his ex wife, who tried to bang Omar Epps in a failed attempt to get on a TV show, and wonder why he didn't do more to win and do more to leave it all on the floor. It's not just poor people and people without a natural gift in life who have a world of regret.

The NBA requires such a rare skill set to succeed that it's just a ready made environment for public sports tragedies at work.