All Eyes On Jrue and Evan

Bynum is here. Iguodala is gone. Roles are changing. The biggest one may be for Jrue Holiday and Evan Turner. I was one of those guys that said to take a risk and trade Iguodala and just hand the keys to the team to Jrue and Evan. I mean, it’s not like a championship was at stake, you know? I had doubts if Evan and Andre could work together. But it’s all over now.

Time to take a stand.

If Jrue Holiday wants that max contract, he’d better earn it. I’m sure Evan Turner wants to quiet all of his doubters. Collins needs to give Evan and Jrue the keys to run the offense. Give them a chance to prove themselves. Management needs to know what these players are worth. Is Jrue worth all that money? We’ll never know until he’s given that chance. Jrue will have a better chance to do that than Evan.

Evan may find himself on the bench for 2 main reasons: Just like with Jodie Meeks, Collins may want to stretch the floor with shooters; especially with Bynum drawing double teams. Bynum draws defenders and just kicks it out to a shooter. Easy 3. Number two though is he’d end up backing up Jrue at the PG spot. Royal Ivey was signed but he’s not a very good player. Again, he may just be here to mentor Jrue. Plus, Evan has great handles with the ball. I’ve said on Twitter he makes love with he ball the way he effortlessly dribbles around. I’m more entertaining on Twitter.

Anyway, I feel Turner should start. He can play SF while Richardson or Nick Young starts SG. Maybe Evan starts at SG and you have Wright at SF. Collins has options in his rotation chart to work with. Whatever the case may be, a starter just seems to have a better feel. Sure guys like Jason Terry and Manu Ginobili come off the bench. But, I just feel like Turner’s game isn’t 6th man type. But I guess if Turner gets the minutes he needs, it doesn’t really matter. Maybe Jrue and Evan handling the ball won’t work if they’re on the court together? I mean, Jrue is big enough he can shift to SG and Evan can handle the ball sometimes. We’ve seen it before but not enough in my opinion. This is the season for that.

For clutch situations, give Jrue and Evan the ball. What can it hurt? If these two guys are going to be a main part of your championship core, let them get a feeling of what to do in these situations early. Let them make mistakes and learn from them. Sixers may have been the best in league history in taking care of the ball last season but it came at the expense of Jrue and Evan’s development. They weren’t allowed to try experiments on the court. They weren’t allowed to take risks that are necessary for growing as a player. If they did, they were yanked. You can’t be a productive player if you’re only giving half effort in fear that going all out will land you on the bench.

To me, even though the Sixers got Andrew Bynum, the focus needs to shift on developing Evan and Jrue. Obviously, winning is a priority but I will gladly lose now if it means that Jrue and Evan develop to the point where we win in the future. What I’m saying is that I would rather win 35-45 games this season with a breakout Jrue Holiday and Evan Turner and then win 50+ games for like 5-7 games and be a contender, than win 45 games, not be a contender, and ride the whole, anything can happen and we got an elite Center.

Sixers still need that consistent scorer outside. We can try and mold Turner and/or Holiday into that player. We don’t 100% know the potential of these two players as I really feel Iguodala masked that ceiling. But now, we’ll find out just what we got here.

That’s how I feel about the situation. But hey, the Sixers are moving in the right direction. And, after so many years of foolishness, it’s a great feeling to look forward to something real.