SelakStreet wrote:When they go up against the Raptors in the 2019 ECF
Bill Cartwright
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Khris Middleton
Malcolm Brogdon
Eric Bledsoe
Brook Lopez, Ersan Ilyasova and Nikola Mirotic off the bench
How would they do with pre-Bulls Cartwright?
Caveats
1) A lot depends on how you do time travel stuff
2) A lot depends on what you think about the progression of the league over time
3) A lot depends on what version of Cartwright this is
4) There is an extent to which this is nothing to do with the player added and just rests on the series being reset and how much you think the actual outcome deviated from the actual outcome but we'll ignore that here.
Optimistic view(s)Cartwright was one of the first 7 footers to shoot 80% from the stripe for a season indicating some floor spacing potential (though his unorthodox release - though one matched in game iirc - may be confounding to extending the range??)
Cartwright could draw fouls and put opposing centers into foul trouble (and with their final season roster the Raptors didn't want to go beyond their first 8 with 2 conventional bigs).
He was an efficient scorer over his career.
Cartwright was in the end on the Bulls at least regarded as competent on his man with a willingness to be physical.
If nothing else ... you don't think he's good, or even rotation-worthy ... the coaches aren't forced to play him. I get the post lists him as starter ... but if in actual context he really couldn't play then he likely wouldn't. This scenario doesn't remove Lopez so one could argue the risk is minimal.
Pessimistic viewsThe above combined different versions of Cartwright
(Like many bigs from that era) the money is on that Cartwright can't defend out on the floor in the modern game
Playing him and attempting to extract those positives come at risks ... do you want to be putting the ball in his hands ... he's not a passer ... does that range really go far enough etc.
I think I'd generally err towards the negative angles but then I don't really care about time travel stuff and don't know how to do it fairly and am not thinking that deeply about it.