SalmonsSuperfan wrote:RaptorPride wrote:SalmonsSuperfan wrote:the "advanced stats" show a guy with role player type impact. it's a positive impact, but i'm not sure why you guys are not processing that gasol is an all-star who is now a 4th or 5th option. in my mind, that's not going to cut it. so far, this team is being carried by leonard and siakim. what if kawhi doesn't have a jordan-esque performance? he's bound to come back to earth eventually. gasol ought to be playing like he's the second best player on the team, which is what yall traded for. did you trade for him so he can come in and "fit in" to what's going on, or should he be exerting himself as the star player that he is? one of the raps commentators said the exact same thing, i'm not just pulling this out of left field.
He brings amazing defense, the ability to move the ball quickly, make plays and make threes consistently. All of which he does at better than JV. Pascal and Kawhi have been the top options all year. Kyle and Gasol don't have to waste so much energy on offense so they can bring it on the other end. And Gasol is not as efficent as Kawhi or Siakam so we are better off with him not having to score all the time.
is his defense amazing? he's 34 and slow. we're past the era where a slow-footed 7 foot center a la roy ribbert is pivotal for a good defense. his defensive rebounding is probably his best attribute on that end, but is it better than val's?
the things you say are true, he 'fits' well in the offense, like a role player. did you trade for an all-star or for a role player? would you rather have, on a championship level team, a guy who stops nikola vucevic or a guy who limits kevin durant, or at least kind of offsets his scoring? vuc could have gone off and the raptors still would have won. even in game 1 vs the 76ers, embiid had a bad game but you couldn't give all, or even the majority, of the credit to gasol. the raptors have a good team defense, they have all season, and when a superstar plays lousy, ultimately it's on the superstar (embiid).
like, i'm not saying he's been 'bad' for the raptors, but he has underwhelmed and isn't playing as well as he did in memphis. memphis gasol clearly puts the raptors above the other teams in the east in my mind, current gasol makes me wonder if they have enough to get out of the east. i'd like to be wrong, but i don't think 8/5 in 25mpg makes a tremendous difference; i think you'd rather have a super-efficient bully center like JV. i think his physical play and dominance around the rim(scoring/rebounding) gets to the opposing team over the course of a 7 game series. if i'm embiid, i'd rather play against a 'finesse' guy like gasol than a bruiser like jv. not that gasol isn't physical, but jv is on another level.
Yea I get what you mean. He could be more aggressive on offense. But I think it could also be a coaching thing telling him to focus less on scoring since he doesn't have to be the main guy. I would like to see Gasol post up more and look to score.
