I appreciate the reply - I'm not trying to be a jerk, either - reasonable minds can differ on this, for sure. For starters, here is my (admittedly amateur) transcription of the Q&A exchange after the UNC game that started all of this:
MG: Hey, Jim - just wanted to ask about... um, Jesse Edwards... against maybe the best frontcourt in the ACC... pretty, really productive night for him - was this something you feel he was capable of earlier in the year? Or did he need...
JB: Yeah, I would've... yeah, I didn't play him, but I thought he was ready then, I just purposely kept him out, Matt. What kind of question is that?
MG: (inaudible)... benefit from practice.
JB: What? He's still not ready, he's not ready, but he did, he... he hung in there and battled. They out-rebounded us 20 rebounds... I mean, yeah... he did, he did some good things... but, you know... he's gotta get stronger. And, you know, if he was ready early in the year, he would've been playing early in the year. We took this game out and got back in it and got the lead at halftime with the smaller lineup. That's the lineup that was effective, that got us the lead. But Jesse did some really good things and helped us. But, you know, he still... again, like I said the other day, I didn't expect him to play this year, I didn't think he was ready... um, I still don't. But, you know, we need him to go in there and do what he can do.
My read on the Q&A and the whole situation is this:
- JB has been pretty open about the fact that he does not think that any of the young bigs are 'ready' to contribute in a meaningful way this year. Anybody paying even a little bit of attention to SU basketball knows this, irrespective of whether you agree with him or not. So to then essentially ask JB the question 'do you think Jesse was ready to do this earlier in the year'... I mean, what did Gutierrez think JB's reply would be? It was a bit of a troll question, in my opinion, given the fact that JB has already answered this and made his position known throughout the season.
- After the game and the press conference... and after Gutierrez's in-game tweets that SU would probably have at least 3 more wins and already be in the Big Dance if JB had played Jesse the minutes that he deserved (he actually used the word deserved!)... Gutierrez went on to tweet that "It doesn't make sense that Edwards could be characterized as 'not ready'." So Gutierrez essentially doubled-down on his position that JB is mis-handling Jesse.
- My guess is that someone shared Gutierrez's tweets (both in-game and post-game) with JB, and JB took the opportunity to fire back at the criticism during last night's press-conference. Which I think is fair, by the way - if Gutierrez wants to second-guess JB's handling of the rotation and the minutes distribution, then he has opened himself up to criticism in return. But where JB crossed the line (in my opinion) was when he brought Gutierrez's height into the response. I think that was a small, petty thing to do - and it has now shifted the narrative into "JB attacks the media".
- I truly believe that just about any coach is going to bristle at the suggestion (from a reporter or anybody outside the program) that any player "deserves minutes". I think most coaches are going to come from a place that "minutes are earned". A guy like Tony Bennett probably handles the same issue with a bit more class, but JB is notoriously thin-skinned and defensive - and he went a different way.
Anyway, those are my thoughts - that's why I think both guys (Gutierrez and JB) come out of this looking bad.
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