Who do we trade next?

[Braggins]

Can we even name anything substantial MKG has improved on since entering the league. He has shown no upside at all besides being a great defender. Doesn't help when every team has sharpshooters and his d doesn't support his poor offense

The claim that MKG hasn't improved is completely misleading. Development isn't linear and MKG has been a really weird case of someone who has show cycles of improvement followed by regression.

He showed a lot of promise his rookie season and then regressed between his first and second year. He showed substantial improvement in years three and four before significantly regressing after our dumb ass coach decided to sacrifice his shoulder and 1.5 years of prime development in order to add another low playoff seed + first round exit to his resume.

He has seemingly plateaued the last couple seasons, so I don't expect a big breakout or anything, but its worth remembering that he has shown the ability to improve in the past, he missed a huge chunk of development time to injuries right when he seemed to be breaking out, and he has been playing his entire career in a dreadfully rigid offensive system that marginalized his few offensive strengths and exacerbated his biggest offensive weaknesses.

I'm mostly indifferent to whether or not he stays here, but I don't see a lot of scenarios where trading him actually improves our situation at all and I feel like a lot of peoples desire to trade him is for symbolic reasons because he was a disappointment relative to his draft spot and not because trading him is actually the right thing to do. Its almost as if people want to punish him for being a disappointment and don't care about the actual effect it would have on the team.

I totally agree. It's just tough to stomach having him starting in majority of games. His offense is just that bad and the NBA continues to trend away from a defensive league. If he accepts a more limited role, he should be okay here. Just please don't put the ball in this guys hands in important moments; and that's if you can find him.

I don't mind him starting. He can start and play fairly low minutes. We have a roster issue because he is the only player we have that is a good wing defender. No one else on the roster has a chance in hell at bothering opposing primary perimeter scorers unless Miles turns out to be a defensive beast.

I think MKGs ideal role would be a poor mans Iggy bench type role. He can guard four positions, is a great rebounder for his position, and has an excellent motor. He has a place in this league. We just unfortunately don't have anyone else on the roster who is good at all at his specialty (perimeter D), so we don't really have the luxury of playing him in his appropriate role.

[Braggins]

Eh, the number of minutes reflects your assessment of the value of each player to the roster, as an individual piece and a team piece. I have MKG at 7 minutes because my valuation of him is low and I have determined that his development is over. Furthermore, I value the development of multiple other young and youngish players. The minutes they get from me reflect my priority in developing them around Kemba. The minutes game is not a prediction. It's a short mathematical exercise that holds you to a specific number of how you see each player. To me, MKG doesn't deserve more than 10 minutes on this team. The hope is that some team values him at 25 minutes at least, considering the amount he makes. I seriously dread giving him 20-25 minutes here, especially knowing we need to move a contract to keep Kemba justly compensated.

I gave the same amount of minutes to Lamb and Devonte and slightly more minutes to Monk, Miles, Willy, and Treveon. Looks like i value their development more than you do.

I did this intentionally after looking over your allocation specifically so you couldnt make this argument.

But you left off Frank, and he's one of the players whose development is not OVER

This part of the conversation started because you seemed to be suggesting that it wasn't possible to balance our minute allocation with Frank gone and MKG still here and you asked me to come up with a minute allocation for that scenario.

Franks development might not be over. I brought him up as a trade possibility mostly because of character concerns I have with him and because I think our roster would be more balanced with one less center. He wasn't my top choice of who we could trade and I agreed that he has a valuable skillset and is a great fit on the roster. My feelings about being weary of paying him aren't particularly strong, but I do get a hint of some red flags with him and if our front office shares those concerns and could find a deal where someone gave us a decent return on him it could be something to consider.

If we feel good about Willy's future and aren't worried about Frank following a Spencer Hawes career arch (remember, he was a very similar prospect to Frank right before he got his first payday) then I would look to trade Cody.

I'm honestly not convinced that we really need to force a trade right now, as we don't really know how things are going to play out under our new coach, but if I was looking to make a trade to balance the roster I would start with the center position. Trading MKG still leaves us with a log jam in the front court and probably leaves us with fewer assets than if we traded someone who is more likely to have positive value.