Alex Sarr

[Kanyewest]

In regards to the KG vs Sarr debate. A couple of factors to consider.

The league average TS % was 54.2% in 1994-95. The league average today is 57.4%, probably due to the increase in 3 point shooting. Granted, it may be harder for a rookie to adapt or become more efficient in the modern NBA. Still, KG's efficiency at 52% is more impressive relative to his peers (54.2%) than Sarr's True Shooting percentage (49.6%) relative to his peers (57.4%).

Garnett coming straight out of high school is also more noteworthy than Sarr coming into the NBA at the same age. KG was not only the only schooler in his draft, there weren't any freshman either. One could argue that this made KG's road tougher given that he was going against older players. Although KG didn't have to go against guys similar to his age like Tim Duncan either. It looks like Garnett didn't make all rookie first team because Arvydas Sabonis made his rookie debut. Also, players like Joe Smith and Antonio McDyess were further along in their development.

Finally, Kevin Garnett when he was a rookie primarily played small forward. Garnett was noted for having great agility but was considered to be too skinny to play power forward, let alone center. Garnett may have deflated rebounding numbers as well as his blocks. Or as noted before perhaps KG was not as strong as Sarr relative to his peers.

I do wonder what Sarr would have looked like as a rookie in 1995 where he would be considered as more athletic than his peers and vice wersa what Garnett would look like in today's NBA with the chance to play as a big earlier in his career.

[pancakes3]

I'm certainly not advocating for Sarr in a KG vs Sarr debate. I'm just saying the comparison is closer that I thought. Sarr's having a good year. If he can have Mobley's trajectory, that'd be huge for us. He doesn't need to have a first ballot HOF, top 5 PF of all time career for me to be satisfied.

[DCZards]

Well a couple of things here, it has nothing to do with who I would have drafted in the context of this conversation, I'm plainly observing how the young players have played thus far. So again, a counter balance to the group here acting like it's all roses with the young guys, and how dare anyone say otherwise.

I don’t see people here “acting like it’s all roses with the young guys.” What I see are people who like the potential of the yougins’. Whether or not they fulfill that potential remains to be seen.

Trading Gafford was fine, he was overrated anyways, but trading Deni was a huge error in my opinion. Deni would have been the perfect young vet to have the young guys follow by example, and fit any objectively reasonably timed (3-4 seasons) rebuild.

Wholly underwhelmed by Dawkins, him trading Beal to a desperate PHX team doesn't absolve him of the string of meh and huh since that trade.

I know you hate the Deni trade…and I get that. But I think the trade taints your judgement of pretty much anything Winger does or has done.

[payitforward]

Well a couple of things here, it has nothing to do with who I would have drafted in the context of this conversation, I'm plainly observing how the young players have played thus far....

Fair enough. & none of them has been "objectively good" -- i.e. performed like average or better NBA players. Given how much is asked of them I would not have expected any better.

...a counter balance to the group here acting like its all roses with the young guys...

"all roses" poisons the wells, as I'm sure you know.

What I have seen out of these kids is a significantly frequent & impressive set of "flashes," which gives me some preliminary confidence (so far) that they were good picks.

More than that is not possible. Pure & Simple &, frankly, I haven't seen many comments here that go beyond that.

...Letting Kuzma and Paul walk would have been fine by me....

For nothing? Not convincing, I fear!

... I've never, ever been behind trading for Poole, especially given how eager GS was to give him away. He was a bum last season, and while playing better this season on one side of the ball, still kinda sucks.

GS had to trade either him or Draymond.
We could have kept CP3, let him expire, & then let him walk -- given your comments on Porzingis, I can only imagine what you'd be saying now! .

That is exactly what GS did, btw. They got nothing for him. You like? You'd be praising Dawkins for that now? Gee, why do I doubt it?

... ...He got peanuts for Porzingis....

this is just plain nonsense. KP was in control. We didn't "trade" him in the usual sense. Not at all.

....Jones ... walked.

Yes, we should have traded him for a R2 pick -- if that was actually a possibility.

Of course, if we'd done that, you'd be in here saying that, in effect, we'd exchanged KP for a R2 pick....

...trading Deni was a huge error in my opinion....

What knowledge, experience, expertise, or anything else at all do you submit as reasons to consider your "opinion" as anything other than an utterly superficial view taken by a disenchanted fan -- an opinion with nothing whatever behind it.

Of course, you could (& should!) say the same thing about my opinion -- that two R1 picks (of which one was Bub), two R2 picks (some of the best players in the league were taken in R2) & Brogdon (or whatever he brings in a trade) -- amounted to a very solid get for Deni Avdija. We'll have to wait & see to know who was right. If either of us was.

[CntOutSmrtCrazy]

Well a couple of things here, it has nothing to do with who I would have drafted in the context of this conversation, I'm plainly observing how the young players have played thus far. So again, a counter balance to the group here acting like it's all roses with the young guys, and how dare anyone say otherwise.

I don’t see people here “acting like it’s all roses with the young guys.” What I see are people who like the potential of the yougins’. Whether or not they fulfill that potential remains to be seen.

Only talk about the potential and completely ignoring the results seems somewhat biased, no?

Trading Gafford was fine, he was overrated anyways, but trading Deni was a huge error in my opinion. Deni would have been the perfect young vet to have the young guys follow by example, and fit any objectively reasonably timed (3-4 seasons) rebuild.

Wholly underwhelmed by Dawkins, him trading Beal to a desperate PHX team doesn't absolve him of the string of meh and huh since that trade.

I know you hate the Deni trade…and I get that. But I think the trade taints your judgement of pretty much anything Winger does or has done.

Call my judgement "tainted" all you want, doesn't make anything change about Dawkins having a questionable track record so far. As you've said, I've made it abundantly clear I think trading Deni horrible, not an ounce of disagreement there. And let me say in for the 100th time again, I think it was an absolutely horrible move. I'll continue to stick to that, nothing to hide.

But me not liking that deal has nothing to do with poor numbers young players Dawkins has drafted are putting up. Or trading for Poole. Or not trading Kuzma and resigning him to a new contract no one wants. Or resigning Kispert. Or overvaluing Jones to the point where you have to let him walk for nothing (remember he was the best piece we got from the KP deal). Or that we overvalued the market for an always injured guard in Brogdon.

[CntOutSmrtCrazy]

Well a couple of things here, it has nothing to do with who I would have drafted in the context of this conversation, I'm plainly observing how the young players have played thus far....

Fair enough. & none of them has been "objectively good" -- i.e. performed like average or better NBA players. Given how much is asked of them I would not have expected any better.

...a counter balance to the group here acting like its all roses with the young guys...

"all roses" poisons the wells, as I'm sure you know.

What I have seen out of these kids is a significantly frequent & impressive set of "flashes," which gives me some preliminary confidence (so far) that they were good picks.

More than that is not possible. Pure & Simple &, frankly, I haven't seen many comments here that go beyond that.

...Letting Kuzma and Paul walk would have been fine by me....

For nothing? Not convincing, I fear!

... I've never, ever been behind trading for Poole, especially given how eager GS was to give him away. He was a bum last season, and while playing better this season on one side of the ball, still kinda sucks.

GS had to trade either him or Draymond.
We could have kept CP3, let him expire, & then let him walk -- given your comments on Porzingis, I can only imagine what you'd be saying now! .

That is exactly what GS did, btw. They got nothing for him. You like? You'd be praising Dawkins for that now? Gee, why do I doubt it?

... ...He got peanuts for Porzingis....

this is just plain nonsense. KP was in control. We didn't "trade" him in the usual sense. Not at all.

....Jones ... walked.

Yes, we should have traded him for a R2 pick -- if that was actually a possibility.

Of course, if we'd done that, you'd be in here saying that, in effect, we'd exchanged KP for a R2 pick....

...trading Deni was a huge error in my opinion....

What knowledge, experience, expertise, or anything else at all do you submit as reasons to consider your "opinion" as anything other than an utterly superficial view taken by a disenchanted fan -- an opinion with nothing whatever behind it.

Of course, you could (& should!) say the same thing about my opinion -- that two R1 picks (of which one was Bub), two R2 picks (some of the best players in the league were taken in R2) & Brogdon (or whatever he brings in a trade) -- amounted to a very solid get for Deni Avdija. We'll have to wait & see to know who was right. If either of us was.

Letting CP walk for nothing instead of trading for a chucker would have been fine. First because we already got value out of Paul in that he allowed us to get from under the albatross of Beal's contract. So we traded in Beal's albatross for Poole's bad contract because we wanted to say we came away with another asset. Sometimes the smart move is to stop chasing bad money with more bad money. GS found their useful idiot in us. If you claim they had to get rid of one or the other, seem like maybe that was an opportunity to get more. Poole played with Green after that incident BTW, happened to suck, but it isn't the situation you are painting it to be. Hell, Paul imparting his wisdom on a young roster to me would have been valuable for a season as well, and who is to say he might not have been willing to make sign on longer, but regardless walking was a fine outcome. For Kuzma, letting him walk instead of having a selfish chucker who doesn't want to play defense is better than wasting the 1.5 years we've already sunk into him when we all knew he wasn't part of the future would have also been a perfectly rationale, well-informed move to make. Hell everyone knew that from get go. Now he's requesting a trade when his value is tanked because he sucks is just another "oh so wizards" moment. Point being, sometimes you got to know when to fold it. But this constant accumulation of assets, not matter the quality of the assets and the toxicity of said asset doesn't matter to the "accumulating assets" drumbeat. Such a poorly though out point of view lacking any nuance.

In terms of KP, I was under the impression that KP wanted BOS pretty bad and that he needed us to facilitate the trade because he couldn't sign with them outright. Did that change or am I missing something there? When a player wants somewhere badly (who could blame him, he seemed like the piece they needed and was indeed correct), you actually do have some leverage. Sometimes you have to play hardball with players and not try to be seen as "doing right by the players" constantly. KP was the piece that got them over the championship hump and we extracted a one year rental of Tyus Jones out of them. How could I be so silly to miss the Dawkins masterclass of GMing you and others so clearly see.

Finally, save the whole that's just your opinion man spiel, I've heard it from you several times now and it rings hollow on a board where everyone is giving their opinion. You didn't really think I believed I was a RealGM now did you?

I do like how you've hedged down from a "great" get for Deni to a "solid" get. I expect that with keep on inching on over.

[TGW]

Questioning Dawkins/Winger's decisions is totally acceptable. No one they've acquired has played good basketball in their tenure except for maybe Valanciunas. Everyone else has completely stunk up the joint, including the rookies.

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

KG averaged 19/11/3 with 2 steals and 3 blocks per 100 possessions on 50% efg, with an ORtg and DRtg of 107.
Sarr is averaging 20/11/4 with 1 steal and 3 blocks per 100 possessions on 47% efg, with an ORtg of 102 and DRtg of 118.

it's closer than you think.

with McCain out for the year, Sarr's the frontrunner for ROY, but Castle just had a statement game against the Lakers (23/4/1 and a steal on 10/16 shooting) and could make a push in the second half of the season.

Hmmm.. interesting.

I occasionally have strong opinions until they are dusproved by facts that prove otherwise. I don't have any problems admitting I'm wrong.

So, Sarr is potentially a Garnett in the making.

It's worth noting that it's easier to score in the current era due to spacing and rule changes. The league average eFG% today is .541. The league average eFG% in Garnett's rookie year was .499.

So that 3% delta in eFG% shown in the individual stats is probably more like a 7% delta in proper context. Sarr is MUCH less efficient than rookie Garnett.

That's what I initially said, but was "dusproved" sic from thinking.

Sarr is much less efficient than young KG.

Thanks, nate.

[gesa2]

All of these discussions about Sarr as well as Dawkins et al are shallow without the poster stating what they think our goals should be with these moves.
For example RE Sarr in comparison to KG: KG was not an option in the 2024 draft unfortunately. We were left with choosing between various low ceiling moderate floor players or a couple of options that may have a high bust potential but have a chance to be something special. I like choosing the chance at a high ceiling player, so look for flashes of what he could be. I like what I see so far with this in mind

For the Deni trade - Deni was my fav Wizard and I was sad to see him go. But he’s not shown enough to think he’ll be better than the 4th best player on a contender and his improvement has stalled. Find me a non Washington based NBA expert that didn't like the trade for us. Pelton et al, The Athletic etc. all were good with it.
We don’t have anyone that we can confidently say is a top 3 player on a contender. Bilal Sarr or Bub may possibly be but they each have a ways to go. All of our moves are equivalent to buying more lotto tix. No one of the players we have/will get (except maybe a top 2 pick in the next 2 drafts) are more likely than not to get there. Thats why we need a lot of them.
If instead you want to argue the mean outcome or first year performance of a player we acquire is more important then we aren't really arguing about a player, we’re arguing a philosophy.

[DCZards]

But me not liking that deal has nothing to do with poor numbers young players Dawkins has drafted are putting up. Or trading for Poole. Or not trading Kuzma and resigning him to a new contract no one wants. Or resigning Kispert. Or overvaluing Jones to the point where you have to let him walk for nothing (remember he was the best piece we got from the KP deal). Or that we overvalued the market for an always injured guard in Brogdon.

Did you really expect 19 and 20 yr old rookies to put up “good” numbers? How often does that happen in the NBA…especially when those rookies have been given outsized roles?

Yet Sarr is #1 on the rookie ladder (and may end up being ROY), and Bub, the 14th pick in the draft, has been in the top ten on the rookie ladder all season.

[The Consiglieri]

I can't help but notice that the users who seem extraordinarily low on our rookies are the same ones that would marry Avdija tomorrow if they could. Really surprising stuff.

I don't know, he can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure PIF was fine with the trade and is just trying to be historically accurate in comping Garnett v Sarr, which is frustrating me because I 1000% believe nobody here is really talking about Garnett because they think they can be compared in the first place, they're simply pointing to some #'s as a reason to take a breath over the Sarr selection, instead of panic. But people are fixating instead on the name of Garnett in here being ridiculously insulting to Garnett, which was never the point in the first place.

[Zonkerbl]

Yeah I'm not arguing Sarr is as good as KG either. What I'm trying to say is everyone's numbers suck when they are trying to play in the NBA at 19, no matter how good they are. I would be interested in an analysis of all 19 year old NBA players - have any of them averaged more than 20 ppg?

Kevin Durant scored 20 ppg as a 19 year old.

Doncic scored 21 ppg.

LeBron scored 20.9 ppg.

https://www.audacy.com/wtic/blogs/rob-joyce/best-teenage-seasons-nba-history

[Zonkerbl]

I wonder if it's accurate as a rule of thumb to assume that once a player matures their ppg will be 10 ppg higher than when they were 19

[Chocolate City Jordanaire]

Yeah I'm not arguing Sarr is as good as KG either. What I'm trying to say is everyone's numbers suck when they are trying to play in the NBA at 19, no matter how good they are. I would be interested in an analysis of all 19 year old NBA players - have any of them averaged more than 20 ppg?

Kevin Durant scored 20 ppg as a 19 year old.

Doncic scored 21 ppg.

LeBron scored 20.9 ppg.

https://www.audacy.com/wtic/blogs/rob-joyce/best-teenage-seasons-nba-history

Just tossing these two names out there: 19-year-olds Kareem Anthony Townes and Evan Mobley. IMO, Sarr's not as good as either.

Anthony Davis was far better at 19 years old.

I don't mean to knock Sarr. It's just my appraisal.

[Zonkerbl]

Yeah I'm not arguing Sarr is as good as KG either. What I'm trying to say is everyone's numbers suck when they are trying to play in the NBA at 19, no matter how good they are. I would be interested in an analysis of all 19 year old NBA players - have any of them averaged more than 20 ppg?

Kevin Durant scored 20 ppg as a 19 year old.

Doncic scored 21 ppg.

LeBron scored 20.9 ppg.

https://www.audacy.com/wtic/blogs/rob-joyce/best-teenage-seasons-nba-history

Just tossing these two names out there: 19-year-olds Kareem Anthony Townes and Evan Mobley. IMO, Sarr's not as good as either.

Anthony Davis was far better at 19 years old.

I don't mean to knock Sarr. It's just my appraisal.

Oh yeah definitely. I think the lesson to learn from this discussion is to trust your eyes. The stats you put up as a 19 year old are not very informative. Although averaging double digit points and putting up decent rebounding numbers as a teenager is an indicator you are not a bust.

[Zonkerbl]

As a 19 year old Kwame Brown put up 4.5 ppg and 3.5 rpg

https://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/brownkw01.html

[Zonkerbl]

Kwame had 0.5 blocks per game, Sarr has had 1.6

[Zonkerbl]

ugh don't look at Jan Vesely's stats

[payitforward]

I'm certainly not advocating for Sarr in a KG vs Sarr debate. I'm just saying the comparison is closer that I thought. Sarr's having a good year. If he can have Mobley's trajectory, that'd be huge for us. He doesn't need to have a first ballot HOF, top 5 PF of all time career for me to be satisfied.

I would have picked Alex Sarr at 2. If the draft were held again today, I'd still pick him at 2.

But, no, he's not "having a good year," & no he's not on Evan "Mobley's trajectory." The biggest & most obvious difference between the two guys as rookies is TS% -- Mobley was at 54.1%; Alex is at 49.6%.

That difference is entirely a function of 2-pt. shooting -- Alex Sarr is at 46%, which is absolutely terrible for a Center -- the league average is over 59%.

OTOH, who knows where Mobley was halfway through that rookie year. If Alex can get better at scoring inside, maybe the comparison will make sense. Not for the moment, however.

[CntOutSmrtCrazy]

But me not liking that deal has nothing to do with poor numbers young players Dawkins has drafted are putting up. Or trading for Poole. Or not trading Kuzma and resigning him to a new contract no one wants. Or resigning Kispert. Or overvaluing Jones to the point where you have to let him walk for nothing (remember he was the best piece we got from the KP deal). Or that we overvalued the market for an always injured guard in Brogdon.

Did you really expect 19 and 20 yr old rookies to put up “good” numbers? How often does that happen in the NBA…especially when those rookies have been given outsized roles?

Yet Sarr is #1 on the rookie ladder (and may end up being ROY), and Bub, the 14th pick in the draft, has been in the top ten on the rookie ladder all season.

I don't expect 19-20 year olds to be able to do everything, but that doesn't mean they are some protected class of player and you can't make observations of and comment on. It sounds like you want a safe space to talk about the youngins so maybe do a thread called, "Safe Space to Talk About Dawkin's Draft Picks - A Tranquil, Positive Place to Talk About the Only the Good."

As far as the Rookie Ladder, bruh its a a piece of content on NBA.com (which mostly sucks) to promote players. Means little in the grand scheme, even more so when this draft class is showing how weak most people expected it to be. The fact that Sarr is talked about as a front runner for ROY and Bub might be a top performer from the class (yikes) is evidence of just that.