Weekly Hodgepodge
It’s only been two days into the regular season; not every team has even played a game yet, but there have already been some fascinating rotation decisions that I wanted to call out. Here are three that caught my eye.
Cam Reddish Arrives…Maybe
What an exciting development for Knicks fans, Duke fans, or people who have been on the Camwagon for years (imagine my buddy Peter, who is all three) — Reddish actually got to play!
Reddish was one of the most baffling stories of last season. After a couple of years as a tantalizing-but-frustrating wing for the Hawks, where he mixed incandescent scoring with horrible decision-making in varying amounts each night (usually heavy on the latter), he was traded to the Knicks for a first-round pick. The trade was lauded by many at the time as a relative buy-low on a talented prospect (Cam was considered a top-three player in his high school class, and many of his more successful peers still speak of his prep school days with awe).
Then, Coach Thibodeau benched him. And benched him. And thought about playing him, but benched him again. In all, Reddish had more Did Not Play - Coach’s Decisions (four) than games with more than 20 minutes of burn (two) before missing the rest of the year with an injury.
A rough preseason didn’t set high expectations, but a foot injury to Quentin Grimes gave Reddish a shot — and he made it, over and over again.
He played a Knicks-career-high 28 minutes and finished with 22 points, five rebounds, and three steals, including a tough three-pointer with just 3.0 seconds left in the fourth quarter to send the game to overtime:
I’m not sure if Reddish will hold on to this playing time, and we know the only thing New Yorkers hate more than Times Square is Coach Thibs’ rotation decisions. He took and made a lot of tough shots; if a few of them rim out, maybe we’re having a different conversation about the same ol’ Cam. But it was a hell of a start, and it could open the door for him to finally, finally carve out a consistent role.
Collin Sexton, Sixth Man?
I was slightly stunned when the Jazz announced a few days ago that Sexton would be coming off the bench. Three possibilities for this bad decision exist: