I'm going to pick apart this article by Jay Bilas on ESPN.com because this is exactly the kind of garbage you can expect to see from the national media with regards to the Virginia Tech men's basketball team this season. I'm not saying it's entirely Bilas' fault... it's really hard to make general assumptions about a team that you haven't really seen play very much, but it still kind of bugs me.
In the article, Bilas makes the statement, "(Malcolm) Delaney's first instinct is to score, and the best thing that the Hokies can do is get him off the ball and allow him to concentrate on scoring. But to whom does Seth Greenberg give the ball? Five Hokies are averaging more than 31 minutes per game. Greenberg is not hiding a point guard on his bench." Therin lies the rub... Bilas seems to either have completely forgotten about Erick Green, or else figured he didn't make sense to include as a legit point guard off the bench. Either way, he made a mistake as Green has done a nice job at the point so far this season.
In reality, Delaney plays off the ball quite a bit. In the last game against UVA, Delaney played all 40 minutes, 16 of which happened while Erick Green was in the game playing point guard. That's 16 minutes where Delaney is technically playing off the ball. In reality though, I don't think he does anything different when he's playing point guard as opposed to shooting guard once the offense gets set up in the half court. He passes the ball off to a teammate, who then looks for another pass, and sometimes Delaney runs around a set of screens to get free for a shot and sometimes he doesn't. The same is true if he's playing shooting guard.
The other thing that Bilas doesn't consider is that Delaney came back for another year of college to show that he can play point guard in the NBA. He isn't big enough to play shooting guard in the NBA, so he needs to show that he can play the point. The only other player I can think of who regularly plays 2-guard in the NBA at the same size and weight would be Steph Curry, and Curry is a MUCH better shooter than Delaney (an ideal trait for a shooting guard). If Seth Greenberg comes to Delaney and tells him that he's going to play primarily at the 2, that screws over two players, Delaney and Dorenzo Hudson, which almost certainly would kill the team's chemistry.
Delaney is actually the best ballhandler on the team, so he IS the guy you want breaking backcourt pressure and setting up the half court offense. That's not where Malcolm's turnovers are happening. Delaney's turnovers are mostly from bad passes, which right now is the reason he's averaging over 5 turnovers per game. He's the first one to get the ball on a fast break, and he's been exceedingly poor once that happens. All three of his turnovers against UVA came right after a defensive rebound by the Hokies where Delaney tried to push the ball quickly and made a bad pass. If he cleans up this part of his game and stops going for the home run pass, he can show the NBA scouts that he is capable of being an NBA point guard. There's still plenty of time this season, as Bilas even points out himself at the end of the article.
I've been known to be critical of Malcolm Delaney because I know exactly what his faults are, and I know what he needs to do to improve on them. I've also said before that if Delaney can find a way to clean up those areas, he is undoubtedly an NBA talent. It just bugs me to see him get picked apart by people who don't know what they're talking about because they have only seen one or two games this season. To that end, I will pooh-pooh Mr. Bilas.
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