Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-31278419-20170331010234/@comment-31278419-20170405193429

Right. A team is only as strong as their weakest link and Kakashi should have known that. Kishi not writing that in makes Kakashi seem like a bad captain/leader for not doing anything to help her improve. The fact she had no idea what kinda shinobi she wanted to be until Tsunade showed up how many chapters in is just lazy. When your team nearly dies on a mission and all you did was hold a kunai you should either think of a career change or train harder.

Truth be told though a good deal of the Konoha 12 were not ready for that exam. While it was a large part about teamwork the second half is all about combat and standing alone. Sakura, Ino, Hinata, and Choji were not ready for that exam. Sakura for she had hardly any combat skills, Ino because her clan style revolves around teamwork to pull off effectively so she's the same level as Sakura combat wise. Hinata's flaw was her crippling lack of confidence ,and getting paired against Neji that computer was evil. If she had more confidence in herself she'd have been better off for she probably could have beaten half of the other contestants. Choji lacked skill and confidence in my eyes for him to be thrust into the exams like that. His clan style is awesome, but he was just too green relying on his team too much.

Everyone else was had a good chance, but some lost mainly due to being paired up against their kryptonite or against a main character. Gai had every reason to be confident in his team passing for let's be honest here if they fought any one of the other Konoha 12 teams in a team fight it would be a stomp. That's the level of prepared you want your team to before going in. Everyone has their own specialty, knows each other's specialty, and no one drags the team down. And no Tenten doesn't drag the team down before anyone makes some funny anti-Tenten joke. She got matched up against Temari whose elemental release shuts down projectile users and for some reason Gai never told her about wind release which is weird to me. You have Tenten fight the other weak links preshippuden and she would destroy them. Heck she'd likely beat most the Konoha 12 save for Lee, Neji, and Sasuke since most can't deal with that massive weapon barrage till later.