“Yeah we lost tonight becaus Knox is just a horrible player. I’m not sure he was the right pick for us. He could improve but if you look at his advanced statistics, the chances of that happening are really slim. Mudiay is better this year than he’s been before, but even with his improvement, at best he’s a 3rd string point guard on an average NBA team. Dotson? He’s pretty good but he’s all ready 24 years old, so the odds of him getting better are slim. Frank is a decent team defender, but he’s so bad on offense right now that the path to him being a good NBA player is very slim. We just don’t have good players on this team right now.”

Is this what you expect him to say? Positivity is actually a necessity when you have a bad team full of 19 to 22 year old players in the NBA. Part of his job is to talk them up so that they themselves believe they can get better. Its one thing to call out a superstar player on a max contract when they mail it in. These are all young players making peanuts compared to most of their peers. Cut him some slack.

Maybe Fiz is a psychopath, but that’s reading a lot into a situation.

All the things Fizdale said should honestly be seen just as random PR, I don’t even think he believes in what he says most of the time.

That’s why I’ve referred to him as a snake oil salesman.

I’ve run into personalities like this in the past. Typically they are high level executives. They’ll take you through a presentation about the company and talk glowingly about the culture change, new direction of the company, great financial projections, etc.. You’ll come away feeling like this is going to be the greatest company in the world. Then 3 weeks later 3 of your best friends in the company (highly competent workers) get laid off, they suspend payments to everyone’s 401K, the stock is down 20%, and all hell is breaking loose.

I think part of “political” success in this world (not just actual politics but in business also) is being so wildly optimistic you border on delusional. Superiors, subordinates, and just people in general respond much better to optimistic delusions than uncomfortable truths. Every CEO I have ever known was wildly optimistic and exuded that kind of positivity no matter how badly things were going.

In the end though, the truth usually prevails (though usually not before the optimist has lined his pockets and moved on to the next gig).

Kadeem is set to be an RFA unless we sign him to a new contract before the offseason, right? It would be great if we could get him to sign a Trey Burke contract right now.

40 players from the 2017 draft class have played 500+ minutes and Frank Ntilikina’s WS48 ranks 40th among them, so while I hope he’s ahead of Mudiay in the rotation I’m not going to be able to gin up outrage if he’s not a major factor for Fizdale down the stretch.

All the things Fizdale said should honestly be seen just as random PR, I don’t even think he believes in what he says most of the time. What should matter is that as a franchise we finally have some hope to go with, as there’s two possible scenarios that are very favorable to us (Zion and / or top free agents).

The rest is just stuff people say to fill media time.

DSJ is younger, more athletic, was just the centerpiece in a trade for KP, and is under contract longer. So you can easily argue he’s the #1 prospect on the team. But on merit, I’m not buying that he’s been playing better than Mudiay so far (which of course is not a compliment to Mudiay).