ANY kid learns ALL those things in year 1 or 2. The question as far as playing time goes is are your skills, be they offense or defense or a combination thereof likely to make you a net contributor or net detractor?

A player that puts up or contributes more points than they give up is going to see the most time. The coaches job is to decide what mix/rotation of all 5 gives him the highest probability of scoring more than his opponent.

If you are a blue blood name program you can afford the burger boy mentality because the next one is likely coming right behind, however, if you do not have continuous access to that pipeline you live on the system and development and the off chance you get one of those diamonds. You're right that it isn't brain surgery, however, it is slightly more complicated than just rolling the ball out there and seeing who puts it in the hole the most.
Player A puts it in the hole 8 times and player B puts it in the hole 4 times. Easy answer says player A. However, if player A turns it over, fails to defend adequately or move the ball to the right player in scoring position he negates those 8 buckets and maybe more while player B does not make those errors, then the easy answer is player B. The good coaches are paid well to discern those subtle differences between player A and B while we fans get to call them idiots on a message board for free.;-)
[Post edited by 2hhoop3 at 01/21/2022 8:38PM]