No bench player will win ROY over a guy who starts and leads his team in scoring.

He's not going to have Durant's type numbers because he's not going to get the minutes, unless Chauncey is out. It will be mightily tough.

Durant had to big a lead the day of the draft........

he's a golden child of the league... his only worry hurt himself in oden

Okay so maybe they need a rookie of year MVP award.

You couldn't give that to Durant or Yi, but maybe Horford rather than Stuckey. However, if Stuckey keeps improving he might even become more valuable to us than Horford is to Atlanta based on the two teams records.

Durants going to be watching Stucky in the playoffs this year.

I almost forgot what it was like having a truly talented rookie who can play right away. Even in his 1st game he was ready to contribute.

No dear in the headlights deal that we are used to seeing from our young guys. Stucky just came right out and if you did not know he was a rookie there was no way to tell.

Same with Afflalo. I'm really impressed by how well these 2 fit in. It's more than just their actions on the court. They seem to have the perfect Detroit Piston attitude. Professional, poised, unselfish, humble. Joe had a great draft.

Uhh, thats why I said it should be added. The rest of this is just to make the post long enough.

I like your insights and it is one of the main reasons that the usual time frame for a comfort level out of a young player is generally three years.

A whole host of occurrences must happen: the right organization, the right coach, the right attitude, the right position (or lack thereof), the quick learning curve, etc. And yes, the refs do come into play, especially for the type of ball player who gets many, many touches during the course of the game.

I agree it is a tough break for the passer when he doesn't get the assist because the guy he passes to gets hacked. The problem is your credit for making a good pass shouldn't depend on someone else's free throw ability. Just one of those many things (taking charges, setting a good pick, etc.) that helps a team win, but doesn't show up in the stats.

Yes, it does make a difference how good the guy shoots the ball. You really should not get an assist for passing the ball to Ben Wallace of 4 years ago when he was under the basket. First, the other team wants you to pass it to Ben. Oh yes please give it to the non-scorer. And they foul Ben and he misses his free throws.

Bottom line, an assist is a pass that leads to scoring. Post feeds very well could be called assists. Passes to shooters who are fouled and make free throws could be called assists.

Here is the best argument for not calling a post feed an assist. If Shaq is on your team, and you are the point guard, two things are pretty certain. One, you will be able to get the ball to Shaq, as he clears out a wide chunk of space. Two, he will score points many of the times you pass him the ball. (mind you, we are talking Shaq of 6, 7 years ago) Maybe you think it would be unfair for this point guard to be able to rack up so many assists? Well, guess what, nobody can get many assists to a non-talented team that can't score. Billups gets a lot of assists because all he has to do is hit Rip with a pass pretty much anywhere on the court, and Rip won't miss. How easy is that. Assist totals are never really 100% fair. But as they are suppose to measure passing ability, all passes that result in scoring should be counted.

Lets give an example. Team B has three dynamite post up players, all of which generally take a dribble after they are fed the ball. All three are great scorers once they get the ball where they like it, but they do all have the same weakness too. They need pretty much perfect post entry passes to operate on or they simply can't get anything going. A point guard comes along who really knows how to feed the post. Excellent, well timed passes. Because of him, his team wins the whole thing. But in his stats column, virtually no assists show up. Great passer, nothing to show for it in the stats.

Next you have a guy with Ray Allen and Redd on his team. The guy has very little passing ability really, but he can manage to get the ball to one of these two fairly regularly. And these two just continually hit their shots. This guy racks up an absolute ton of assists.

In the first case, you have a team do what it should do, play an inside game. In the 2nd case, you got a jump shooting team that generally gets nowhere in the playoffs if they even get to the playoffs. But in the 2nd case, the point guard has all the assist stats.

I say promote good inside play, and it just might help to call a post entry pass leading to scoring an assist.