NoDopeOnSundays wrote:cgf wrote:ctorres wrote:
Scoring bench guard -> Jordan Clarkson
The trade is going to be Miles McBride and Mitchell Robinson to the Utah Jazz for Walker Kessler and Jordan Clarkson
I'm calling it now
Deuce has more value to us than Utah, they already have 50 small guards they are trying to develop...and I just don't know if Thibs would play Clarkson or if he'd get Bogdanovic'd. Dadiet is our expendable piece that is probably going to be most interesting to them because they don't have any wing prospects with size like that.
And I'm still not sold we'd need another scorer off the bench if we solidified our center depth so we could start owning the offensive glass again. With Mitch / Kessler / Precious attacking the boards, Karl having a size advantage over every other 4 in the NBA, and Josh coming off the bench to outwork tired starters / bench bums, we could be a dominant offensive rebounding team again as well as having a ton of shooting around those more traditional bigs.
...Brunson, Bridges, Anunoby, Towns, Payne, & McBride all being very good shooters, Hart is a clutch shooter, and Kolek has been showing a nice stroke in his cameos. In a perfect world, I would also want someone like Kuzma, if he bought-in to what Thibs was selling...then our depth would be absolutely perfect, but the CBA is a thing and we'd be in a really good spot with 3 rim protectors/offensive rebounder + 6 top notch shooters + Hart.
Josh is the secondary creator on the team now, you take him out of the lineup and our offense gets even slower and more Brunson dominated. I have zero faith in Bridges at this point.
That's fair...although Bridges midrange has been automatic he needs to get his 3ball going. But I think that loss of Hart's playmaking in transition could be alleviated by:
A) scheming around Towns' passing ability more...he can't pressure the rim to force doubleteams before finding the open man, the way Julius did, but Karl has the passing touch to do a lot of the stuff Hartenstein started to do for us to get Brunson more off-ball buckets and create for our other shooters/cutters.
B) dominating the glass again. Our shooters having an off night wouldn't be as crippling if a lot more of those bricks were ending up as 2nd chance pts like they should if we had someone like Mitch / Precious / Kessler constantly crashing the glass and Karl bullying opposing 4s.
C) fixing our defense. With high-quality rim protection, Towns back in the defensive role he played well for Minny, and the perimeter defenders we have on this roster; we should be able to win games with our defense even when KAT & Brunson are both playing terribly. Not just by lowering the # of points we needed to win, but by creating more transition opportunities.
So I don't think our offensive results would necessarily drop off much, if at all...Karl is just as much of a mismatch for opposing 4s as he is 5s...and with a strong defense, there would be a lot more room for error offensively; so a bad shooting night wouldn't kill us like it did yesterday.
EDIT:
But that lack of secondary playmaking is why I had my reservations about the trade and wish we could afford to bring someone like Kuzma in for our bench. Someone who has been a good defender when on a contender in the past, and has been learning to create for his team-mates in Washington, despite still being a streaky scorer.
RIP mags
