Mr B wrote:Warriors Analyst wrote:dirkdiggler4177 wrote:
Nope. He has not played a lot with Doncic because of injuries. He is basically a backup that sets screens, plays some defense, and score when he is in the right position. He is in no position to have the ball in his hands considering his role this far. The Mavs is also based a lot on Doncic and Brunson creating from the wing. When Chriss has been playing it has been with Brunson.
I assumed he was like 28/29 since nobody had picked him up. What happened to him in Golden State?
That’s a damn shame. Chriss is one of the better passing C’s in the league. That’s no exaggeration. He’s quite smart at making passes off of dribble hand offs and he was such a good passer from the elbow that he would lead cutters into his passes. Chriss was legitimately the best passing big we had had since prime Bogut and his development was the only real bright spot in the 2019-20 season.
This highlight reel has some of the nice passes:
So what happened to him?
He came to the Warriors at age 22 as a training camp body and wow’d the coaching staff with his passing and athleticism and had his career changed overnight by playing up the 5 where his BBIQ and athleticism were considerably more useful than they were at the 4. He grew a lot with us and went through some contract BS to stick around and then Warriors drafted Wiseman and after a solid training camp where Chriss was bombing threes at a high rate, he broke his leg at practice two games into the season and so we traded him at the deadline for tax purposes.
And now, this Warriors’ team desperately needs a center because Wiseman is unlikely to play before the ASB and because Draymond has a nerve issue that’s messing with his calf. But the Warriors, and Joe Lacob in particular, had no interest in putting up and boundaries to Wiseman’s playing time and that’s how you end up with a roster where you have only two healthy centers, neither of whom you want playing more than 25 minutes a game max, and otherwise run oversized wings at the 5.
I understand that in retrospect if we'd signed Chriss to a camp deal we wouldn't have Gary Payton II and that would be a huge loss. But not signing Chriss on a hardship deal as it became clear Wiseman would miss more time was ridiculous. Wiseman had a second surgery in December. We signed our first hardship deal some time before Christmas. It's been known for over a month that Wiseman was unlikely to return prior to the All-Star break. And now Draymond's body has worn down, Looney is about to play lots more minutes and he's already injury prone, and we're going to have to ask lots of minutes of Otto Porter Jr. and Kuminga and Juan Toscano-Anderson at the 4/5. Signing Chriss would have been a slam dunk for a team like ours that needs a vertical threat. Chriss already knows the system and he was one of the better passing C's we'd ever had. He just had the misfortune of getting injured at the wrong time and playing the same position as Joe Lacob's #1 boy in James Wiseman.
Part of the problem Chriss has had is he can’t stay out of foul trouble. If he was able to stay on the court for any length of time we might be able to see some of the other things he can do. He’s a walking foul machine at this point though.
I can see that being an issue. He got better with fouling later in the year during his full season with the Warriors, particularly when it came to maintaining verticality, but he's definitely foul prone.