© Mark J. Rebilas | 2021 Mar 4
Warriors Twitter has been on one all season, but things reached a fever pitch on Thursday night.
Many Warriors fans were very upset by Steve Kerr’s decision to bench rookie James Wisman for the first three quarters of the blowout loss to the Clippers, for missing two COVID tests over the All-Star break. The missed tests caused Wiseman to be ruled ineligible for the Warriors practice before Thursday’s game, a game in which the team implemented a new second string lineup that Wiseman was supposed to be a part of.
When Wiseman did enter n the fourth quarter, with the game completely out of reach, he looked phenomenal, scoring 14 points in 12 minutes, his seven rebounds leading the team. He also faced the media after the game, owning up to his mistake in a postgame Zoom call, while reiterating that it won’t be something that affects him moving forward.
Still it was the type of thing that to many is an example of the Warriors, and Kerr’s, mishandling of the 19-year-old, who has been up and down in his first year with the team. Wiseman is known to be extremely hard on himself, and some Warriors fans believe that benching him in such a public manner serves to do more good than harm.
Former Warriors big man Tom Tolbert isn’t buying that at all, and made it clear at the top of Friday’s “Tolbert, Krueger & Brooks Show’ how ridiculous he thinks the outrage about the incident is. Here are his comments in full:
“It was just not good last night. Of course way more entertaining than the game was Warriors Twitter, complaining about the benching of James Wiseman, and how is it going to affect the young man, and ‘Why would he bench him? Why would he bench him and then play him in the fourth quarter?’
“I want to know, I actually want to know, I want to poll everyone, and this is where I pull the ‘I played’ card. I want to know of everybody who played, who complained about a coach cracking down on a player? Do (coaches) do it to all the players? No, they don’t do it to all the players. Rules are different in the NBA. May be different in college. In college you can just crack down on anybody; the rules are the rules in college.
“In the NBA we know what it’s going to be, but if you do something like that, there could be consequences. Maybe if it was Steph or somebody maybe there wouldn’t be. Maybe there would be, I don’t know. Hell if it were (Greg) Popovich he’d be like ‘Dude you did it, sorry, you blew it. Those are the rules.’
“But man, it’s just amazing how soft everybody is. Like ‘Oh my god, what’s it going to do to this kid’s confidence! What’s he doing to him? Why isn’t he playing, he needs to develop, he should be out there.’ It’s a half of a game! And then people say ‘Well if you’re going to sit him the game, why’d he put him in in the fourth quarter?’ Because the game was a blowout and he decided to give him some run!
“I’m not going to get too caught up in the way he played, but I liked the way mentally he responded. Like he came in there with some fight, and I loved to see that. And oh by the way, he answered all the Zoom questions at the end of this, so this tells me something about this kid. That he may be a little more mature than people want to give him credit for. That he’s not going to go into the tank, that he’s not going to go into a shell, that he’s not going to shrivel up and die as a player. Guess what? If you’re going to punish a guy and he does that, he’s not the guy you thought he was in the first place.
“Any player should be able to handle something like that. You messed up, you pay the piper, you move on. That’s it. It shouldn’t be a lingering thing. It’s not like this is a theme with him. If it’s a theme, then you have a different story. But it’s not, so it’s like a ticket. You get a ticket, you pay it, you move on…that’s all there is to it.
“But good night, everybody thought the Warriors foundation was crumbling because they had the audacity to sit James Wiseman for missing two tests. That’s our world now we live in. ‘Ah, he made a mistake, give him a break this time.’ Nobody wants to say ‘Ah he made a mistake, you get punished for it, and you move on.’ It kills me now. Everybody’s like ‘Give him one more chance, one more chance, one more chance.’ How about just stopping it the first chance, and then he learns something from that? And then you move on. It just wasn’t that big a deal.”