dr_peb wrote:The other side of that coin is when we play true half court teams (that are one of the best 5-10 teams in the NBA), half court defense becomes more important too. And that's where its hard to justify Lee's salary.
Defense wins championships, and the teams that have won, or come close, in the last 5 years have had good to great defensive players at the 4. Duncan, KG, Pau/Odom, LeBron/Bosh, Ibaka. The only exception is Dirk, who the Mavs surrounded with two great defenders in Marion and Chandler. Maybe Odom too, but he had both Artest and kobe helping him from the wing.
So unless you're willing to bring in a Marion/Artest/Deng-level defender at the 3, and potentially shake up the way the entire team has been built, any team with Lee at the 4 is going to have a hard time stopping opponnents from scoring and a hard time contending. and that's where I question how valuable Lee is even against half-court teams.
Those players and combinations are pretty elite and cost more than Lee. I am all for replacing Lee with players of that caliber, but if someone proposes replacing Lee with someone like Amir Johnson, there are drop offs elsewhere and the savings in not using Lee's money would have to be well spent. None of the proposals in the trade thread really gets the Warriors a Duncan, KG, Lebron, Ibaka, etc... except maybe getting Pau. The good thing is that the Warriors do have Bogut, and if he's healthy, with Lee, Curry and what the Warriors have now, the Warriors could come close an Orlando w/ Dwight type contending team.
