I was going to write a long (okay, medium-length) diatribe on how it’s TOTALLY NOT COOL that Frank Jackson is stealing all of Ian Clark’s minutes, but when I looked at Clark’s minutes splits this season, he’s getting more minutes per game in the month of March than any other month this season. So my diatribe was cancelled before the first word was penned. A shame. It was a good idea for a description, honestly.
In my mind, Jackson and Clark are similar players. They’re both small shooting guards who would probably play full-time as point guards if they had any point guard instincts at all. Since Jackson has been playing quite well lately, I naturally assumed that his minutes were coming at the expense of Ian Clark. That has turned out not to be the case, so my second guess is that Jackson’s and Clark’s combined minutes are coming at the expense of Stanley Johnson. Stanley Johnson is a different type of shooting guard (the defense-playing kind) and he’s not the kind of player whose services are necessary on a team that is only competing for ping-pong balls, so it makes sense that he doesn’t play a whole lot.
I’m still itching to write some kind of diatribe, though. The feeling of indignity that welled up within me when I thought about Clark’s seemingly unfair minutes situation hasn’t really gone away, but it needs to be diverted to another cause. How about Solomon Hill’s gross contract? That’s something that all Pelicans fans should be writing diatribes about.