And I wouldn’t say that all his supporters knew their stuff either if he did turn his game around. As I said earlier, some of the supporters of these guys who struggled early on do, but then some are actually just blind supporers. Although, you did acknowledge that a bit in your first post so I must have misread you on that part. 

And I agree as well that a player is accountable first and foremost for his own development, but having a poor coach will not help a player’s progression much, if at all, and can actually hurt it at times. And that goes for all the young guns on the team not just Knight. Coaching is about as important in your typical players development as it is in the team’s overall play. It’s unreasonable to expect any team, especially a young one, to play to their potential under a poor coach. In fact, I’d be more surprised if they did manage to play to their potential than if they struggled to be consistent and string wins together in that kind of a situation.

But, in any event, that’s where we’re at as a team and hopefully things get better moving forward. Some changes def need to be made. Let’s just hop the team makes the right ones.

He was by his own admission, erratic.  He had good numbers without a tremendous feel for the game.  His development was helped by playing with (season vet pg) Nate McMillan.

Beyond that…
It took GP three years to average double figures in points.  BK7 averaged 12.8 and 13.6.
It took GP four years to have a three point shooting percentage higher than 27%.  BK7 shot 38% and 37%.  GP developed into one of the best guards in his time. 

There is hope…
The point I’m trying to make is GP went through the process and developed into a great guard via hard work and dedication.
BK7 has those intangible attributes, so there’s hope for him.

And I’d like give you a little restaurant analogy of my own from personal experience. Even the most promising restaurants and quality employees can fail if poor management (Joe D) puts a poor head chef (Frank) in control of the kitchen. You can’t expect your trainees or apprentices or whatever you want to call them to consistently put together a great product when they are learning from and being lead by a poor head chef with little knowledge of how to make great dishes or run a kitchen effectively.

Well now, that depends on what you consider a smart basketball fan to be. If by that you mean the fans that seemed to simply go along with the general consensus and looked almost solely to stats to predict future development with little or no consideration to the other intangibles those players possessed that play as big a role, if not bigger, in a player’s development, then I guess you’re right. However, I’m sure that the people who had faith in those players early on were considered unreasonably optimistic or just blind fanatics at the time. But, in the end, it turns out that some of them were actually more knowledgeable than the supposed “smart fans” who wrote those players off.

It’s easy to write fans off as blind fanatics when supporting a player who’s clearly struggling, especially when they disagree with the general consensus. But, the fact is, there are other things to look at than simply how a player is performing now, especially at what’s widely recognized as the most difficult position in the sport to master. So, as it pertains to Knight, only time will tell who’s right and which fans honestly knows their ish and who’s just full of it.

Also, I’d like to add another great pg to the list who struggled tremendously his first few years in the league, Steve Nash. When you look at it closely, that equates to about half or slightly over half of the best/greatest pg’s of the past decade or so that struggled mightily to start their careers. I think that shows a few things to be highly misunderstood about the position in general.
1. That it’s actually not unusual at all these days for even the best pg’s to struggle starting out, even for multiple years.
2. The development curve for young pg’s is less predictable, based solely on stats, than most other positions either partly or largely because many of the skills they are expected to master don’t actually have a direct statistical indicator.

As such, atm, Knight isn’t actually much out of line in terms of the development curve of great pg’s these days. Sure he’s not freakishly athletic enough to cover his deficiencies like Rose or Westbrook and he doesn’t have the amazing, almost once in a generation, feel for the game or polish starting out that Kyrie Irving does, but, he does posess a lot of the same qualities and  stats that many of the the best pg’s of the past ten or so years have/had.

Now I understand that the franchise can only be so patient with any 1 player when trying to build and develop an entire team and there’s no guarantee that Knight will figure things out and become a top tier pg, but I think I’ve made a pretty good case that the man deserves a little more time figuring out the position before we declare him not starting pg material.

But, to answer your question, the reason it’s the most difficult to learn is mainly because it’s the 1 position that’s expected to manage the flow of the entire offense. Basically 2′s and 3′s are mostly focused on getting open and scoring or making a play for someone else as a second option while 4′s and 5′s are usually battling for low post position and setting screens for the smaller guards and 3′s and setting up pick and rolls on offense and of course scoring and setting up teammates when they get the ball. Meanwhile the pg has to not only look to score and set other guys up for easy points but he’s expected to know his personel better than anyone to know where his teammates are most effective with the ball so the offense can be as efficient as possible. They have to realize when to push the tempo and when to slow it down and run certian go-to sets for a multitude of different reasons and also recognize the lineups on the floor on both teams to know what mismatches can be exploited to know who to run the offense through at times for easy baskets. And that’s just off the top of my head. Basically it’s ideally the 1′s responsibility to not only get points and assists, but to micro-manage the entire offense to make it as efficient as possible. That’s undeniably a tougher job than any other on offense.

However, a big reason point guards have been so effective lately starting out is because so many of these young guys are so incredibly quick and athletic that they can score enough to offset their lack of floor generalship starting out. For instance, guys like Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook especially, and even a bunch of the 2nd tier pg’s are impressive players but not necessarily great at managing games. They’re so great individually that they can set things up for others because of the great their individual scoring games are. Sp basically most of the top young pg’s play more like sg’s than pg’s these days. They haven’t really mastered the finer point guard skills, but they still manage to be incredibly effective.

Steve Nash recently said something to the same effect when remarking on the younger generation of pg’s. They’re so athletically gifted they don’t have to master the finer points as much to make their teams better. But mastering those finer skills at the point guard position is still not only the most challenging thing to do for young players but also necessary for players who aren’t freakishly athletic. ie the Chris Pauls, Deron Williamses, Jrue Holidays, and      Knight if he wants to reach that level. 

I liken this situation to going to a fancy steakhouse and ordering the best cut steak on the menu, but having the apprentice cook it.  Maybe he gets lucky and makes it right, or he may overcook it and ruin it.  Is it worth the risk not having the head chef cook it?  We can’t afford to have an apprentice learn on the job while sacrificing top cuts of steak.

If you haven’t realized already, Dre and Monroe are steaks and Knight it is the apprentice in this analogy.