Nobody’s blaming Nellie for not playing Randolph at the 4… people are blaming Nellie for not playing Randolph enough. That may be changing, but this interview certainly isn’t proof of that… it’s not like Nellie commits to starting the guy or anything. He talks vaguely about expanding Randolph’s responsibilities, but what does that prove? Must we go back through the archives and point to the eight or nine times Nellie announced that he was giving Brandan Wright a longer leash last season?

It’s a waste of time trying to divine anything from Nellie’s interviews; he lies, he exaggerates, and commits to strategies he deviates from mere hours later. And I’m not even saying that in a critical way, as I like Nellie’s approach towards the media. I’m just saying, the only proof of shifting strategies will come on the court, not through a microphone. Randolph’s 36 minutes the other night are a very positive sign. We’ll see where things go.

The only news of real merit in this article:

Andris Biedrins (strained abdominal muscle) and Ronny Turiaf (sprained left knee) both participated in parts of practice…

Depends on what parts of practice, of course — if they only participated in the part where you say your favorite color, this doesn’t mean much. But if they’re both able to do even a few physical things right now, that’s a massively encouraging sign.

it was about responsibility. Based on what Matt wrote, I think Nellie’s been training Randolph on how to handle the point and how to look for and pass to the right player on the offensive side. Nellie said that opponent centers don’t get in your face, so that would give more room for Randolph to look around and handle the ball from the point spot. We saw a couple of examples of point center plays from Randolph in the Wizards game.

In a recent Nellie interview or radio show, he said that Randolph’s stamina was a concern, so I still don’t expect Randolph to start at the power forward, so he should still be a backup instead.

However, the exciting thing to see is if Randolph can play the backup POINT forward, not power forward. That is a whole new dimension for Randolph, mentally, so he’s going to need to stay in the backup role and get used to thinking as a POINT forward before he can challenge today’s starting opponent power forwards.