Development happens during practice. If a player can’t grasp what they’re supposed to do during practice, why would they be expected to know what to do during games. Practice is where players start to understand concepts and once they start showing that understanding in practice, then they start applying it in games. There’s not some magic wand that instantly makes a player know what to do.
Kelly Oubre gets brought up quite a bit in regards to this. It took him until Christmas time for the light to come on and for him to start showing that he understood what was expected of him in the system and to be able to execute within the system.
Playing a player who does not know what he’s doing on either end of the floor doesn’t change just because he gets thrown to the wolves. That can actually be quite detrimental to the development of a player because it can destroy their confidence.
Right now, Cheick Diallo us clueless on the court. He just doesn’t kniw how to operate within Bill Self’s system on either end of the floor yet. Playing out of control and being out of position doesn’t help KU win games or help Diallo’s development. We can all see the talent Diallo has, but that talent is not very developed yet and until he starts showing in practice that he understands where he needs to be on offense, can play at a slower pace (he rushes way too much when he has the ball now), knows how to rotate on defense, and can guard his man without fouling, his minutes are going to continue to be limited. Once he shows the ability to do thise things in a low pressure situation like practice, Self will start giving him more opportunities in the high pressure situations of games. Missing out on those early practices definitely set his development back several weeks and when the season is only 14 or so weeks, losing that time was huge blow to Diallo. The upside is that it could very well be a big enough blow to keep Diallo around a second year.
