HomoSapien wrote:I'll be honest, I'm noticing almost no difference in Lonzo's quickness or athleticism. He looks like the exact same guy. The two things I am noticing is that he doesn't have the timing on his shot and his passes are slightly less accurate than they used to be. Both things will get better with time.
Lonzo definitely looks slower to me in the open court and has less burst, like that first dunk he had the other day, it looked like a huge effort for him to dunk and also a huge effort to even sprint for it. I think the difference is that doesn't impact his game so much, he's just an incredibly heady defender and he is incredibly long physically so has a lot of tools on the defensive end that don't rely on his speed, and he was never a 1st step player or open court finisher anyway, his open court value is how fast he passes the ball.
You are right about the timing/rust for him too though, I think there are slight gaps there. It's easy to see how if he can stay healthy these things will improve though and even probably some of the speed will get better over another year of playing on it, strength training and rehab.
There was a recent rumor from Marc Stein that we'd possibly be trading Ball. If the return is a 2nd round pick(s), I'd pass. We're unlikely to draft someone that's going to be better than him in the 2nd round. Ball is still only 27... at this rate, I'd like to lock him down to a value contract. More times than not, he's one of our biggest impact players despite being a minutes restriction.
I think I'd be okay with this plan too. A lot depends on what that next contract looks like, and he will be a UFA so every team will get to bid on him, but I said at the beginning of the year, if he makes it through this year healthy that they basically replaced everything in his knee that was bad, so he has a whole new knee. It wasn't the super athletic knee he trained his whole life and was born with, but it also isn't a knee that is prone to injury with meniscus shaved down and no cartilage. His injury risk going into next season if he emerges problem free from this season is probably much lower than people will think it is.
That said, if 10 teams reach the same conclusion, especially about his impact, maybe he's a 20M player again, and I'm less excited to take the risk. I'd probably be more excited to keep Lonzo than Giddey though.
