Yes he is stubborn. He stubbornly follows his own counsel and didn't waver for a second last year. That's why we made the Sweet 16.
He did make some player adjustments, giving Alan's crunch time minutes to Robert. He did it because he trusted Robert's experience+shooting ability+height and he couldn't depend on Alan to make those plays underneath the basket. It was based on what he saw in practice and what he saw in the games.
Some of JB's critics insisted that he wasn't playing Jesse cuz he never intended to play Jesse the entire year, but there's zero evidence of that & JB of all people has seen his developing players improve markedly throughout the course of a season in practice performance alone.
The assumption that JB didn't play Jesse more early because "he's stupid" is just pure malign supposition. He's seen team after team, and player after player, improve over the course of a season, watching it as it happens in practice every day.
Kadary played better toward the end of the season, just like most of the other players were. More practice, more familiarity, better team play. The kinds of improvements that Jim Boeheim's accustomed to seeing from his teams every year, which is why he still finds coaching gratifying...
