stevemcqueen1 wrote:dangermouse wrote:Hoping Love goes to the Warriors.... He isnt THAT much of an upgrade for them.
Kyrie/Bron/Love is a lot more worrying than a Kyrie/Bron big two.
100% agree.
Do not want a super team forming in Cleveland right as we finally get a legit good team.
And plus I kind of have a soft spot for GS and want to see them truly compete in the West.
Plus the West got very top heavy this summer, feels like SA, OKC, and LAC became the only teams capable of winning the conference. Wouldn't mind seeing a fourth team get into that mix.
Why on Earth did GS drag their feet about including Thompson with Barnes and Lee? Barnes sucks, Lee is in decline, and Thompson has zero chance of ever being close to a 1:1 swap with Love (and he's only like one or two years younger). Thompson should have been on the table immediately. They get a deal done weeks ago and Cleveland is never a threat.
I strongly believe it wouldn't have mattered. Flip was always going to wait to see if LeBron went to CLE first and let the bidding war start.
As for the loss TA and guessing if we will be better. I fully expect them to be better this year. Not a maybe. They will need to ramp up but they should get off to a better start that and recent years. People seem to forget the team had to gel last year. They didn't start like they finished.
Wall and Beal is going to start the year better players. I expect both to take another step defensively.
Defense is a team thing more then an individual thing and PP knows how to play team defense. Sure, come the playoffs you do that man on man stuff to shut down the other team top scorer, but you don't see that as much during the season early on. We have all year to sharpen up the skills of Otto, Temple and Glen to be man defenders. I would guess Temple is the main target to turn into that player for now until someone takes that from him. cough cough Otto Porter. The young man is a TA clone with handles and a mid range off the dribble. Give him a chance to show it.
There isn't going to be one player that replaces exactly what TA did last year. But they added lots of good pieces and they are bringing back lots of good pieces. They will work it out.
I expect this roster to be real tough inside. Teams will have to S4 to spread them out and every team can't do that well. When they do that, Wizards will have to turn to PP and Gooden as S4 and Gooden can even S5.
And lets remember, team have to play both sides of the ball. They want to S4 us, we turn around and pound them in the post and get them in foul trouble. Or we spread them out ourselves and open the lane for Wall.
We have advantages to cause match up problems we well.