DCZards wrote:payitforward wrote:What are we talking about? Guys who are playing a lot of minutes at the 2 this year & being more productive than Brad?
Malcolm Brogdon, Harden, Jeremy Lamb, Tony Snell, Jrue Holiday, Josh Hart, DeRozan, Marcus Smart, Danny Green, Allonzo Trier, Victor Oladipo, Spencer Dinwiddie, Kent Bazemore, Fred VanVleet, Buddy Hield.
Off topic: this kid Allonzo Trier is really something. Undrafted, & he's 6th in minutes among all rookies & @4th highest in productivity. Even more surprising than that is the fact that the 4 best rookies so far are Mitchell Robinson, Deandre Ayton, Hamidou Diallo & Trier.
That's 2 R2 picks, an undrafted kid, & the number 1 pick in the draft. Wow....
I know how you hate to talk about role and context, pif, but here goes.
Is it fair to compare Beal, who is arguably his team's primary scorer and the focus of the other team's D when he's on the court, with guys like Brogdon, Hart, Green and VanVleet, who share the court with superstars and are typically their team's third or fourth option when they are on the court, or guys like Smart and Snell who play the bulk of their minutes against backups.
I think you also have to factor in per game minutes. Snell may be more productive than Beal playing 16 mins and Smart, Lamb and VanVleet may be more productive playing 24-28 mins. But there's a good chance their efficiency/production would take a hit if they were asked to play the 36 mins a game that Beal plays.
There are maybe 4-5 players on your list (DeRozan, Oladipo, Harden and maybe Holiday) that most GMs would take over Beal. And, since this is the trade thread, isn't that what this discussion is really about.
So, yeah, if you take a statistical snapshot of where things stand today, these other guys may be more productive than Beal so far this season, but I seriously doubt that many people consider them better basketball players than BB.
There's a lot to what you say, Zards. & I hope you noticed that I didn't use the "better basketball players" framework. All I did was point to "guys... playing a lot of minutes... & being more productive than Brad."
In fact, I dislike the whole "good, better, best" framework, as it is kind of "metaphysical," if you will -- as if there were some "thing" called "goodness," & Brad had more of that mysterious substance than some other guy. In fact, "good" is an honorific term, a term of praise -- very like "beautiful" &, for that matter, "intelligent."
If we look back at a whole career, ok, we have the ability to judge how "good" a player was. But, in that instance we're looking at a closed case; if we compare that guy to another such "closed case," we have some distance & we have all the data. It's possible to compare & to rank players.
But we don't know how "good" Brad is in that sense -- he's 25 with most of his career ahead of him.
Maybe the point is even clearer if we talk about Allonzo Trier. Right now, this undrafted rookie -- a kid who wasn't even projected to be drafted! -- is playing way better than Brad. But, I wouldn't draw any metaphysical conclusions about the essential "goodness" of Allonzo Trier!
Still, there's no problem taking note of how well he's playing. &, in the same way that I wouldn't say he has more "goodness" than Brad, I also can't say "well... he's not as good as Brad Beal." &, to your other point, of course, any GM would rather have Beal than Trier! Brad has proven more.
But "rather have" is kind of meaningless independent of a player's salary. Allonzo Trier is on a 2-way contract. No doubt it'll be converted as soon as he gets near the maximum time a 2-way can be with the mother team (pretty soon I would think -- the kid is 4th on the team in minutes). & Beal's salary (along w/ Wall's & Otto's) is what stands in the way of improving this team. Or better just say that our overall salaries are the problem, & trading at least 1 of the 3 huge salaries seems almost inevitable.
In that sense, i.e. salary taken into account, I'd rather have Buddy Hield than Beal, & I'd much rather have Josh Hart than Hield or Beal or Trier.
In short, since as you say this is the trade thread, would I trade Beal for Josh Hart, Allonzo Trier, a high R2 pick, & an expiring salary just big enough to get the deal legal (while small enough to get us under the tax or at least help a lot in that)? I sure would -- in a minute! With no criticism of Brad Beal implied.
