Jamaaliver wrote:It's worth noting that a much inferior CHA team was able hold a solid lead over MIA in Game 1 of their playoff series until Jefferson injured his foot. It's worth noting that a much inferior Indy team took MIA last year to Game 7 led by Hibbert's interior defense/rebounding and post game. Gortat solidified Washington's frontcourt. Dwight elevated Houston from fringe playoff team to top 4 in the West. Joakim anchors CHI's defense. Tyson anchors NYK's defense. (His injury early in the season was most costly to their playoff hopes.)
Let's not understimate the importance of a traditional Center altogether.
Wait, let's back up here. This is what I'm seeing:
Big Al - borderline AS; considered a snub this year
Hibbert - AS; perennial DPotY contender - #2 this season
Gortat - "Which one is not like the others / which one does not belong"
D12 - AS; multiple DPotY winner; Top 5 player in the league
Noah - AS; winner for DPotY this season; top player - without going through a list I'll say Top 20
Tyson - DPotY winner; borderline AS
To be clear here: If the plan is to trade off Millsap or Horford for a top 5 C with the accolades to prove it, then yeah, I'll ride shotgun and am perfectly willing to pitch in gas money and take a leg at the wheel. If the plan is to get a Gortat-type to be the C while Horford and Millsap battle it out for PF minutes and we have 4-5 guys who played decently this year riding the pine, then eh, let me off that ride.
Jamaaliver wrote:theatlfan wrote:I see this a lot and serious ?: why would you (and others) think this?
Antic has performed admirably, indeed. But he is very much a limited player. A solid role player. Nothing more. Let's keep in mind that his PER for the season was an underwhelming 11.7. (Don't know what this means, but I'm told it is bad.)
I suspect PK thinks we need a Center for the same resaon I do. Horford is stuck recovering yet again from disastrous injury. The last time he did so, took him months into the season before he was back fully. Antic is not a long term solution. Bebe and Muscala are not yet strong enough to depend on.
And at 35, Elton Brand is on his last legs..literally.
To make it explicit that we're on the same page here: Antic is a backup. A role player who could see 20+ minutes a night and whose main role should be to stay out of the starter's way. I won't debate this point at all.
As far as the PER number, 11.7 isn't good, but it also isn't as bad as it appears that you've been told. Now, there's a lot of point that we could discuss here as to why we shouldn't be throwing around a rookie's PER as a marker of his true worth regardless of age, but I'll go with this tact: a quick sampling here of our road to the Finals over the next few weeks - IND's backup C is listed as Mahinmi whose PER is 10.18; Round 2 opponent is CHI (listed backup C is Nazr Mohammed with a 10.18 PER) or WASH (Seraphin 12.52). Don't try to turn the conversation back to the backup PF being the 3rd big either because Scott hanging up a "disappointing" (for him) 15.3 PER which is comparable to any of them - including Gibson. Outside of the obvious point that for a backup C at 11.7 isn't completely out of whack (the average backup C is probably around 13.0), my real point here is that backups don't really affect the Ws column too much. If you don't get bang for your buck by paying for a really good expensive backup over having an adequate cheap backup. Outside of what a MIN fan will argue, backups just don't move the dial that much.
I'll cover the last points in this quote above with the passage below:
Jamaaliver wrote:azuresou1 wrote:I mean... I'd say that Brand and Antic have performed pretty admirably as starters considering what they were expected to contribute before the season
This is actually part of my gripe. Horford repeatedly asked for help, Ferry was
unable to heed his warnings and left us with players who were NOT expected to produce much at backup Center. It nearly proved disastrous.
To the point: if we're looking to move Horford off C, then I'm all for it as long as the amount of talent we put on the floor is equal to or greater than what we have now or what we reasonably could have used the opportunity costs to add talent elsewhere. That's not a small task: Millsap and Horford are AS bigs; behind them, we've got adequate to good backups; behind them, we've got some interesting prospects. Honestly, that's about as good as it gets from the 40,000' view. On the wings, it's questionable if our starters aren't backup grade, and after them it's backups PGs, guys who spent 6 weeks of the year on 10-day contracts, and a prospect whose career in his jeopardy due to back surgery (We're pulling for you - Great well soon Jenkins!!). If you've got ~$10M to spend, why are we spending it at the position we're solid at?
The big problem (excuse the pun) is that Millsap and Horford are 1-2 in team salary and still considered amoung the best bargain contracts in the league. Both of these guys are 30+ mins/night guys and have to be on the court in crunch time. Assuming no tragedies or inexplicable falloffs, every dollar you spend here is a dollar that won't be on the court in the final seconds of a close game in the playoffs. Going out and giving Gortat, say, $8M means that we have an $8M player sitting the bench in crunch time (which, if you think on it, isn't too far off the cost of the entire bench this year). OTOH, you find a similar deal as Millsap for one of the wing positions, and we're moving a guy making basically BAE money to the bench. That's a huge difference.
PandaKidd wrote:Our front court depth is :
Al Horford (missed 2 of the last 3 years)
Millsap (tweener)
Pero Antic who is 31 and a Rookie?
Elton Brand?
and a bunch of no names that will most likely NOT pan out.
You forgot Mike Scott who most definitely has panned out. I'd say that he's had a more positive impact than Boozer and Scola from your list below and wouldn't think I get much argument from CHI and IND fans respectively.
PandaKidd wrote:We depend on Horford too much, we need another front court piece. Sorry. Its just how you compete with the other big teams in the league. ALMOST every other team has MULTIPLE bigs. We have 1 legit big guy IMO in Elton who is far past his prime.
D12/Asik/Montejunas
LMA/Robin Lopez
Noah/Boozer/Gibson
Gortat/Nene
Bosh/Haslem/Birdman/Lewis/Oden
Hibbert/West/Scola/Copeland/Mahhinimi
Splitter/Duncan
I mean our front court is composed of 2 AS and a bunch of projects. It would be nice to go get an Asik or something so we at least have 1 backup rim protector going forward. Or draft a young PF to develop under AH. Its just going to be needed.
I honestly have no idea what to think of this. We have 2 AS, some solid backup grade vets, and a couple of projects... and that's worse than these teams with 1 AS, a couple of solid starter to backup grade vet, and some projects behind them? All I can think is that there's a point here that I'm just completely missing.
PandaKidd wrote:Wing scorer, I think we need another guy to shoulder the load off Teague. OR a Small Forward that can create his own shot.
I think we can agree here, but we also don't have unlimited resources. We have to work within the confines of the CBA which includes not only limits to what we can spend but also to the size of the roster as well. Do we do after a wing scorer first or a big first?
I think the larger point that may be missing from both the posters I'm responding to here is that Horford is pretty good and the fact that he's been hurt and out for the last 4 months shouldn't detract from that. IF you think that his injury was just a fluke or a product of his conditioning plan that should go away now, then you're fixing a problem that really doesn't exist. If, OTOH, you think that he's now damaged goods and he's just an injury waiting to happen every year, then we should trade him now and get what we can get. I really don't see how moving him to PF full time will save wear and tear on him. It's not like PF will clear the paint altogether - he's still in the thick of it down there.
