barelyawake wrote:The more I look at it, the more the story goes trade Beal for a big with defensive and leadership abilities.
Wall/Sato
Oubre/Sato/Rivers/Brown
Porter/Oubre/Green
MIllsap/Porter/Green
Howard/MIllsap/Diaw
That’s my current dream. With them giving us a pick, because of the age difference.
A 'no' for me in the current era.
I hate the alchemy of it on the offensive end. Too frontloaded in the paint, no space to operate. Our best mismatches are Wall's speed and Dwight's power. Both need credible threats on the exterior to prevent teams collapsing. Oubre's jumper is unreliable for months at a time. Otto works best when he is left alone to slip between the creases back door, or if he is left wide open on the drive and kick. But there's no room to drive without teams respecting our outside shooters. Losing Brad isn't the way we get there.
I don't see any team winning currently if they clog the middle. It's not even the best defensive metagame right now. You need players who challenge the outside shot, versatile and mobile bigs who can show and recover, and players who rebound long range shots in the midrange. Consider that even the DPOY Gobert was unplayable in the post season. Loading up in the interior, even with smart tough nasty players like Millsap does not seem to the the way the game is working right now. What you want is a team of Otto Porters or better yet Kawhi Leonards. Yeah? No? Not possible?
Still. With the team we have right now we could threaten to do something if we had a little more depth in 3 pt shooting, versatile defense, and the ability to go four out with Dwight in the middle. We need outside an outside shooting forward who defends well. Paul Millsapp is a nice add, an upgrade for Keef, but not at the cost of losing shooters or forcing Oubre to be a first option on offense.
Find trades that bring us a DeMarre Carroll, Trevor Ariza, Khris Middleton. Tough frontcourt options who are smart and can hit the three. They can defend a PF but not get lost on the switch.
Better if we had actually landed Al Horford though, passing, smarts, range, defense and the ability to swing between 4-5.
But we dont improve by swapping out Beal, who is still young, improving while earning more touches. Is he as good as his contract? Not currently. Does he have room to improve? He does. HIs 'clutch' outlook needs work. Sport therapy, hypnotism, near death experience, something, a new baby, a reason why his focus improves when things get more important. But still. He's maintaining his efficiency fairly well considering he also increased his workload. Rather than swap him out I'd rather add shooting behind and next to him so teams can't load up on him as an outside threat. Teams know that with John off the floor all you have to do is double Brad since we have no other options. If we put shooters and attackers around him then we can diversify our offense and get back to that "everybody eats' efficiency, even without Wallstar running things. I liked the Courtney Lee rumor. More minutes for Saty would help. Get me a Nico Batum, even Jeremy Lamb, a Reggie Bullock, a little depth and range at the 2-3 to take pressure off Brad. Get me someone from this list
(link) and we're a significantly better team.
Dumping Brad is not the way this front office is likely to go. And I dont think we should anyway. Not for a minor upgrade in defense and less room in the front court. And ZERO improvement in outside gunnery. If this is the squad we got, we need more and better shooting on the exterior to make room for: John, Howard, Saty, Troy Brown, Otto, each of whom has talents but needs room to make them shine.
