The Point Guard Spot

[gtfomycourt]

Based upon Dakich’s surprisingly decent play and based upon Simmon’s surprisingly poor play—It is clearly debatable whether or not it would be to our advantage for us to have Dakich instead of Simmons, as a backup to our backup. Nobody here has made a claim that Dakich, if he were here, would be beating out z or Brooks for minutes. To the contrary, even the pro Dakich side has admitted that Dakich’s “meaningful and positive” impact, if he were still here, would most likely come in the form of off the court mentoring and all the things that come along with him being universally known as a great teammate.

Also, after being asked, an answer was given by Silverblue to the side question: “Out of curiosity, why do you not like it when players are criticized?” He answered. Does it make sense to put on a big show pretending Silverblue is guilty of non sequitor thought processes when he is answering a side question about his personal policy to not criticize players?

Silverblue’s objection to disparaging Dakich seems to have been born out of not only his general distaste of criticizing players generally but also because the disparaging comments were being passed off as valid stand-ins for actual reasons. Arguments are only reasonable insofar as they contain actual reasons. Makes sense to me.

If people have reasons for why Dakich over Simmons is not even debatable, I think people would be open to hearing those reasons. FWIW, the people on OSU message boards have mostly been pleasantly surprised how Dakich has been playing defense and helping the team win games.

[kturnup]

Silverblue, I will say that I agree in not disparaging college athletes. I tend to stay positive when posting about Michigan athletes of any kind online. I do this by saying “He needs to work on X and Y” and opposed to “he stinks at X and Y.” I do think many on the internet take it way too far, not so much here (I have seen nothing said about Dakich that I think is inappropriate) although I have defended for Duncan at times when i think people were being unfair to him.

Having said that, I will not retract any statement I made on Andrew Dakich lol

[silverblue]

Thank you gtfomycourt. I think you’ve rather eloquently delineated my position, and I appreciate it. Thank you, too, to mgobluehoops23. This “discussion” began when I simply disagreed with a seemingly innocuous statement by Dylan that Andrew Dakich wouldn’t make a “meaningful and positive” contribution if he had stayed at Michigan. I disagreed with Dylan and asserted Andrew WOULD have made meaningful and positive contributions as a great teammate, a senior leader, a sort of “mentor” and teacher to our young point guards. As a former coach I believe those contributions would have been “meaningful” and they would have been “positive.” Then the argument was extended by others to something along the lines of, well he wouldn’t make contributions “on the floor.” So, I pointed out Andrew’s stats at Ohio State, which while perhaps surprising, ARE fairly impressive for one that many thought wouldn’t see the floor. Those stats were then diminished by others here in an attempt to make their point and to, frankly, argue against mine. So, I then talked about Coach Holtman’s appreciation for Andrew and what he is doing for the Buckeyes. No matter what I said, it seemed, one or two guys would immediately diminish those arguments, and it really became, I thought, a criticism of Andrew Dakich, and an unfair one at that. No matter what I said, folks had a reason why not. Now, mind you, I don’t care if people disagree with me, and I don’t care if they just want to argue, but when it extends to diminishing the real accomplishments of a great kid, a former Wolverine who now plays for our arch enemy, I DO have a problem with that. And, yes, I DO stand up for players.

I just read kturnup’s comment, and I appreciate it when you defend players, especially Duncan. I’d have to go back and read your statements on Andrew Dakich to comment about any need for retraction (LOL). Since I agree with bebopson that this thread is getting rather tedious, I don’t intend to do that. I really don’t want to write another comment on this thread because I think THIS “discussion” has become really quite silly and rather ridiculous. I think it’s probably an exercise in futility to make my position known with some people, and I just have too much going in my life, yes even at almost 71, to have to deal with futility.

One last thought, and an apology of sorts. Last night Andrew had a wonderful and remarkable first half. I think that’s pretty indisputable. I found myself being VERY happy for him, even though I hate Ohio State! I may have made a couple of comments on here out of, perhaps, a bit of a sense of vindictiveness. For that I’m sorry. That wasn’t very nice for a “kind old silver haired gentleman” like me. And I will say, to all, those who are supportive of my position and those who can’t stand my positions or my comments, this is a great site, the best one out there, in my opinion. Dylan does a phenomenal job. For such a young guy (LOL) he seems to have a wonderful basketball mind and provides great analysis and insight. People on here are generally respectful. I’d love to end this discussion on that note. Thanks all.

[bebopson]

Get a room.

[chezaroo]

All this for a player that isn’t even here anymore?

[umhoops]

I don’t even have the energy to go back through this. A couple things:

1. Yes, I said I didn’t think Dakich would play a meaningful role on this team. When I said that, I meant on the court as in I don’t think he’d be in the rotation. That doesn’t mean I hope he fails at Ohio State or anything like that, it is great to see him finding success after a pretty thankless role as a walk on. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t think he was important to the team when he was a walk on, he just didn’t play a meaningful role on the court. That’s fine, he literally didn’t play last year because he was redshirting so that isn’t really controversial.

2. It isn’t “disparaging” to discuss how someone plays basketball. It isn’t disparaging to say something like “Duncan Robinson is in a deep shooting slump and he isn’t valuable to Michigan when he can’t make shots” or “Moritz Wagner is the worst post-up defender in the Big Ten”. Nothing about that is disparaging and @silverblue it hurts the conversation here when you call anything like that out as “disparaging”.

Something would be disparaging if someone was throwing personal insults or something like that about a player. Or dug up some kind of compromising personal information. Anything like that. As far as I’ve seen, there hasn’t been anything like that in this thread (and if it shows up anywhere I try to remove it as soon as possible).

3. Closing this thread.