RealGM

With Biz gone, Vonleh gone, and Kaminsky and Hawes added to the team, where is the defense coming from up front?

Zeller can guard stretch 4s well but he simply cannot body up a Zach Randolph or a Dwight Howard- he'll get killed. He's not a shot-blocker either. Hawes and Kaminsky are not good defenders by any stretch of the imagination right now. There's no way we actually go into next season with Al Jefferson as our best interior defender, right?

There isn't a competent team in the league without a defensive big man. Hell, even the LeBron-led Cavaliers were just treading water till they landed Mozgov. We're following trends by finally making an attempt at getting shooters- that's great, but did our FO just forget that a defensive big man is still necessary? Dwight Howard, Brook Lopez, Andre Drummond, etc are going to go ape-sheiße on the hilarious unit of Al/Hawes/Kaminsky. Even if we somehow sneak into the playoffs in a bottom three seed, we're just setting ourselves up to be shat on by Al Horford or Marcin Gortat or the number of bigs Chicago has.

There can't be a question about whether we replace Bismack's defense- it should be a matter of "how". Which is now a highly puzzling question. We've got no cap space even without Bismack. Are we using our MLE on another big when we've got question mark nearly as big at backup PG? We've depleted our assets by going full (Please Use More Appropriate Word) over the last couple weeks. Who do we target? We're obviously trying to compete now rather than later, but this team isn't ready to compete without a defensive big, and who knows if we've got the means to get one this year.

Do we have any answers for this? Has our front office even thought this far ahead? Or are they really delusional enough to believe that Clifford's defensive system transcends the game and that we'll be an elite defensive team with Zeller and two wings as the only competent defensive players in the entire rotation?

We don't need one. We have this coach who has this super top secret magical defensive scheme that defies all logic and doesn't need any kind of interior defense to work.

Robert Upshaw. Pray he don't make the Lakers 15 man roster and add him as our 3rd big for the lo lo.

I expect the team to be somewhere in the 10-15 range on defense and 15-25 range on offense. I don't think the playoffs are the happening.

I recall Cousins going to work against Biz in the paint. When I'm not feeling lazy I'll look up Biz's advanced defensive stats. I feel like he's a far better help defender than on ball defender in the paint.

Cousins does work on pretty much everyone. That did happen though. It was a short stretch and Clifford yanked him really quickly for Al and Cousins continued to go to work on anyone and everyone we threw at him. Biz was the only one that got blamed even though he probably didn't play more than 10 minutes that game.

Won't need one until mkg dies mid game of exhaustion.

this is all we need

JDR720 wrote:

this is all we need

Bargnani is just pure intimidation

Perkins, he's a free agent with championship experience that will give Al a restaurant buddy.

Oden? Brandan Wright? Jason Thompson?

wouldn't be surprised at all if its Oden, we worked him out for some reason. i would think he would want to be on a contender though.

JDR720 wrote:

this is all we need

took me a second to realize what I was looking at there.

Cliff and Cho don't think we need one. They're probably wrong, but that's what they believe and I expect them to hold that position at least until a month into the season after teams prove how roflbad it is when Cody Zeller is your most intimidating defensive presence down low. Might see a trade then, but with those clowns they'll probably ship MKG off in the process because he's redundant with the dude who will walk next summer for nothing.

I do remember Charlotte being tied to Oden. But if they seriously think he can be relied on to stay healthy and play a signficiant role they're completely deluded. More likely we just kicked the tires and then Cliff/Cho said "eff it, spacing 4 lyfe fellas" before critiquing each other's Kamisnky fan fiction the rest of the afternoon.

Zeller isn't a bad defender. Just... meh. We rehab a player into something valuable every 2 years anyways. Livingston. Kwame. May as well believe the same can be done with Oden. Oden can at least be Kwame.

Philadelphia's frontcourt is stacked with big men. I wonder what it would take to pry away someone like Noel or Embiid. Both would compliment Kaminsky very well. We've got 2 expirings and they seem to love future 1sts.

Any chance we could sign Kosta Koufos to the MLE or is he worth more than that?

Regarding the Philly idea... maybe they would consider Zeller and a protected 1st for Noel. We might be giving up too much but Zeller would probably be a better fit next to Okafor than Noel. Wouldn't totally hate a future frontcourt of Noel & Kaminsky.

catch20two wrote:Robert Upshaw. Pray he don't make the Lakers 15 man roster and add him as our 3rd big for the lo lo.

The rumors about why that guy dropped aren't good. If there's any truth to him, L.A. is the last place he should be.