DarkHawk wrote:Perfect scenario would be to trade Gortat for the #10 pick and draft both of these guys.
Yeah, I really like the idea of bringing on Oladipo/Zeller as teammates. Gortat/Tucker for Freeland/10 would be ideal, but a lot of PDX fans don't want to give up a lotto pick for a 30 year old who could be a 1 year rental.
Bazz's interview:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgXmPJlCBac[/youtube]
Good Chad Ford piece on Bazz:
http://detroitpistonsforum.com/forums/1 ... t3666.htmlLooks like he's put the character concerns to rest:
Those issues go to character and virtually every NBA scout and GM I spoke with doesn't seem overly concerned. Muhammad did what he had to do in his interviews and teams came away with the impression that Muhammad wasn't going to be a problem in the locker room or off the court.
That showed in his review of Muhammad's vertical jump (motion analysis). While Muhammad is a slightly above-average leaper for his position (he measured with a 37-inch max vertical jump at the predraft camp), what stands out in the P3 data is how quickly Muhammad gets off the floor. He's a fast leaper; in fact he's the fastest wing they've tested at P3 in a sub max jump to 10-feet-6. His quick explosion off the floor, combined with an extraordinary wingspan, explains while he was one of the top wing offensive rebounders in the country last year.
"The NBA only measured how high a player gets," Elliott said. "But if you watch basketball you know that only tells a small part of the story. Vertical quickness is a bigger part of the game than pure vertical jump height. We would take fast to 11-6 over slow to 12-6 any day. For a player like Muhammad, you'd rather have him be a fast jumper than have him jump an extra few inches."
Muhammad also generates significant force in his various vertical movements and fairly large forces in horizontal planes. Again, he showed up as significantly more powerful than the average wing player at his position -- something Muhammad uses to his advantage when scoring the basketball.
Where Muhammad needs work is on his lateral quickness. While he still shows a lot of power, his relative lack of hip and ankle mobility mean that the force he generates tends to project vertically instead of horizontally. Elliott showed me computer graphs of both his horizontal and vertical force and walked me through how P3 was getting Muhammad to change his technique so that he could explode the same way laterally that he does vertically.
...
Overall P3's data-driven approach was one of the most thorough I've seen and went a long way in alleviating fears I had about Muhammad's athleticism. Is he an elite athlete? No. But there's more than enough there to make him an above-average athlete at his position and his reactivity and explosion should be among the best at his position.
...
Hanlen has been tweaking Muhammad's shot, pushing him to work on his right-hand dribbling and teaching him a number of moves that players like Harden use to get their shot off in the NBA.
What I saw was a work in progress. Muhammad still is getting used to the new motion. When he opened up his hips and got the right follow-through, he was almost perfect shooting the ball. However, at times he's still reverting back to his old form at UCLA, which led to inconsistent results. He's only been in the program a month. These things take time and GMs generally believe that a jump shot is one thing you can fix.
What was more impressive was Hanlen's use of a number of Harden hesitation dribbles and step-backs to help Muhammad create separation in order to get his jump shot off. While Muhammad still doesn't totally look comfortable using his right hand, Hanlen is bringing him along slowly using two to three dribble jabs with his right to get him open.
The biggest thing that stood out during the workout was Muhammad's energy. He was relentless for the full 45 minutes. He brings a great work ethic to the table, and Hanlen was pushing him at a pretty insane pace. At the end, Muhammad was huffing and puffing, but he was still able to dunk and hit his jumpers.
If teams believe that with a little effort, Muhammad will be able to transform his game, he might have gone from being the most overrated player in the draft to the most underrated.
With his motor, toughness and natural aggression scoring the ball, Muhammad has the potential to be one of the best, if not the best scorer in a draft devoid of talented scorers. The question is, when will a team take a chance on him?
He really seems like he'd be best suited as the main microwave off the bench, similar to Mayo's role in Memphis, or even like the way we used our old friend Barbosa. He would definitely give the bench a scoring punch that this team desperately needs, especially since Kendall doesn't look like he's going to be getting time with the starters any time soon. Kendall would look better with a scorer next to him.
I wouldn't mind taking him late in the lottery if you could get that Mavericks pick(13) by taking on Marion's salary or something(this assumes you stretch Beas, waive Brown/Haddadi/Garrett). If you did that + the Tat trade, you'd be armed with 5/10/13. Take the BPA at each spot. At 5, it would be Oladipo(assuming Noel/Porter/McLemore are gone). 10 and 13 are much harder to project. Maybe you end up with Oladipo, Zeller, Shabazz.
Dragic/Marshall
Oladipo/Shabazz
Dudley/Marcus
Scola/Markieff
Frye/Zeller
Fill in holes with #30(Ledo, Goodwin, Rice Jr, Snell, or maybe you stash a guy like Giannis if available), #57(Solomon Hill?). Marion would most likely ask for a buyout or a trade to a contender; maybe you can trade him for a future pick.
We'll see what McDonough can pull off.
This is complete speculation on our part, and a discussion as to what we THINK will happen, or what we WISH would happen. Unless people here have inside information, no one knows any more than anyone else around here.
