Rip to play some SF
Posted by pistonsnationThis from Keith Langlois’ True Blue Pistons blog:
If Rodney Stuckey is going to get 30 minutes a game, as Michael Curry has said, and Arron Afflalo’s minutes are going up appreciably over the 13 a game he got as a rookie, then the only way to accommodate them without cutting Chauncey Billups and Hamilton’s minutes to the bone is to find ways to get three of them out there at the same time.
The logical extension of that premise is Hamilton playing small forward for 10 minutes or so a game, which he proved pretty emphatically he could do last season. The Pistons will want to be careful they don’t give Hamilton too heavy a dose of playing against bigger, stronger players for fear of wearing on his wiry, 185-pound frame. He’d never beg off of that challenge, so it will be up to Curry to make sure Hamilton doesn’t get ground down.
Naturally with Rip’s size, or lack-there-of, that can cause some matchup problems for us, but with Rip’s speed and constant motion it may work the other way too.
You’ve got Rasheed playing center, Tay possibly playing some PF, and Rip doing a little moonlighting as a SF. That’s 60% of the starting lineup who at one point or another will be playing out of their natural positions.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Rip Hamilton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
