Beautiful Imperfection
Posted by Rob Mahoney on July 28, 2010 under Commentary | 
Even as Rodrigue Beaubois continues to grow and evolve as a player, it’s impossible for him to match the torrid pace of our ever-growing expectations. Beaubois, after all, is all things to all Mavs fans. He is the shooting guard of the present and the point guard of the future. The replacement for Jason Terry and the protégé of Jason Kidd. He is the great hope of all times, yet in all likelihood he’ll fall short of the absurd standards used to measure him.
So let’s start accepting this one itty bitty step at a time: Rodrigue Beaubois is not perfect. If we learned one thing from Summer League, it’s that Beaubois’ development is a process. He can’t be made into a point guard simply by sending him away to Vegas, and though he’ll continue to improve, there are limits to both the speed of his development and his overall potential.
As for the now, in Rodrigue’s second year the kid gloves will begin to come off. His mistakes will be a bit more unacceptable, and Beaubois will be expected to make the right play rather than just make a play. It’s not so hard to be a rookie sensation, but it’s not so easy to avoid a sophomore slump. It’s Rodrigue’s job to continue to absorb. There’s so much to learn from day to day and from game to game in the NBA, that any second on the job that’s not spent as a sponge is practically wasteful.
We know the basic skills Beaubois needs to work on, but even his strengths need to be fortified. He’s a scorer, but if Beaubois is going to get through the league as a scoring guard (the most likely path for him through the L), he needs to maintain his efficiency (not his exact efficiency, but at least in the same neighborhood) as his playing time — not usage rate, which is already pretty high — increases. It’s deceivingly difficult, but that’s the road that leads to true stardom. That’s what it will take for Beaubois to live up to his flashes, and there are already echoes in his game that say he’ll fall short.
It’s hard to judge Beaubois too harshly on a rookie year in which he played sporadic minutes and was jerked around from the mid-bench to the starting lineup before being thrown in the dungeon and released moments too late. Still, in his second year the warts will begin to show. Maybe he won’t develop quickly enough. Maybe he’ll struggle as teams begin to tech against him. Maybe his jumper will go far, far away for months at a time. There are all kinds of pitfalls for Rodrigue to stumble into, and with them a lesson for all NBA fans: be patient. While the Mavs’ swing-and-a-miss on the summer’s elite free agents puts even more pressure on Rodrigue, he’s going to contribute, he’s going to mature, and he’s going to be just fine. There are limits to what he can do, but the last thing Rodrigue Beaubois should be blamed for is merely being Rodrigue Beaubois.
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DOH