Danilo Gallinari played well and Bilal Coulibaly didn’t seem to get enough time. I’m not sure if that’s what a rebuilding team should do.
I will second Kevin Broom and let everyone know this. The Washington Wizards are in the first year of a rebuild. Most of the top players are gone. They didn’t get the top pick in this year’s draft and hope that the player they drafted will be quite good. And we need to be ready to expect a lot of losing.
Last night’s loss against the Indiana Pacers was bad. But we did get to see Kyle Kuzma lead with 25 points. Bilal Coulibaly, Washington’s first round draft pick, made his NBA debut where he blocked three shots after coming off the bench. And we also saw some other newcomers like Danilo Gallinari come up big with 16 points in just 17 minutes off the bench.
Of all the Wizards’ players, while Kuzma and Jordan Poole will get their fair share of playing time, it is just as important to see Coulibaly get as much useful time as possible, barring injury or acting out in practice.
Coulibaly played 23 minutes, which seems good on the surface. But he only played 3 minutes in the first quarter with Gallinari playing more minutes in that period. And to head coach Wes Unseld, Jr.’s credit, Coulibaly played for most of the fourth quarter.
But as Kevin noted in his stats analysis, Coulibaly had an 11.5 percent usage rate. In the fourth quarter, his usage rate was just 13.6 percent, not much better. Meanwhile, other players like Ryan Rollins had a usage rate of 36.3 percent on the floor.
If Coulibaly had more time to get involved on offense, that last quarter could have been genuine developmental time. However, he was more of a bystander, except for his two blocks in the fourth quarter. So I’m unsure if Coulibaly made the most of his time in the game.
Do you agree or disagree? Let us know in the comments below.