madmaxmedia wrote:nickhx2 wrote:madmaxmedia wrote:Regardless of how our roster should be played now, it seems clear that if we want a real title-contending roster we need 2 trades this deadline or in the offseason- a true point guard and an athletic big. If that big is more of a PF, then we should pick up a free agent backup center.
I love our guys, but this is a 2nd/maybe 3rd round roster as is assuming good health.
the yucky thing is i think we can pretty much only have one or the other based off of our limited resources, at least for this season. i mean i think we can still contend if all our guys stay healthy, we move morris so that our roster balances more, and we get either that PG or backup big, but we're still in pretty good shape if we just get the one.
a backup big probably will be more likely because i don't see the team wanting to move on from reggie, or that he's very desirable from other teams. if we grabbed a point guard (ideally we package wall/morris/whomever), we'd still have some silly roster imbalances because how are you supposed to juggle 3 small guards in powell/reggie/new PG guy? they've pretty much tried the micro ball lineups all season to terrible effect so i have a hard time seeing them go in a direction where we'd need to play small all the time.
thinking out loud, maybe i'm wrong, though, since powell's not a sieve at the 2, and he's developing a bit of chemistry with reggie in their backup duo role. so say we, idk, picked up conley for morris/wall/blah blah. conley would start (ideally with kennard), pushing mann to the bench where he can play as the clear cut backup 3, and batum/covington/mann/powell/reggie seems like a fair lineup. guess it all depends on what we do with mann, if we did acquire that new pg.
There's potentially a lot of moving pieces at play, which IMO is why the FO hasn't signed an available backup C or maybe made a quick trade for someone like Hart. They have to consider what trade pieces might be used in different potential trades, and how a combination of trades together would impact our roster. I could see one of those trades being a 3-way, for example we get Conley but a third team gets Morris and sends expiring money to Utah.
I think if our FO could land a younger front court player, they might combo it with a trade for a vet point guard who wouldn't cost much back. I also imagine that Terance might go out if we made a couple of deals at once. But it's also possible we line up one trade but can't finish the other, so for roster balance have pull out of everything.
Supposedly the price for John Collins is dropping, I imagine our FO is really monitoring that situation-Sources tell Sam Amick of The Athletic that they've dropped their mandate for a first round pick and are instead focused on landing a quality player, or players, in return for Collins.
https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/270217/Hawks-Significantly-Decrease-Asking-Price-In-John-Collins-Trade
ya, all sensible points.
fwiw i was reading 213hoops and lucas hann was talking a bit about collins, and mentioned something i didn't realize: his 3pt shooting is not good at all this season. so imagine we bring him in thinking he's gonna be our bouncy 4-spot floor spacer? well, about that... lol
he basically can't go into any lineup alongside zu, or it will obliterate our spacing. which in itself is i guess ok, because i guess collins is now the big man alternative to zu. that seems kinda limiting, but still better than our current situation.