bucknersrevenge wrote:celticfan42487 wrote:bucknersrevenge wrote:
I have trouble calling anything "make or break" for a 22 year old kid. Especially someone with his skills. We've seen so much of these kids that it's easy to forget, His prime years when the maturation of his game and his body start to intersect; that's at least 3-4 years away.
Just like "potential" can be read as the highest possible ceiling no matter how unlikely.
The vast majority of all-star level players will have had their breakout season by Tatum's next season (some even in their 2nd or 3rd years).
His 4th year in the league is a reasonable timeline for that to happen.
At some point you have to adjust expectations to be able to move strategically. And that is even the timeline the Dun'c On podcast takes. It's just calculating.
Even if Tatum never improves from where he is right now that's still a very good starter. Tobias Harris kind of level who as I think we're all aware of was just given the max.
Maybe a defining of what the "make" and the "break" in make or break season should be defined. I'll say this: I don't think he will have reached his ceiling after next season.
That's nice. And when you do you actually change your opinion on prospects and their likely career outcome.
It doesn't matter if someone has a high ceiling and 0.0001% of reaching that outcome. It would be stupid to make decisions concerning yourself with something so unlikley to happen, ect.
And you can't just say you never make those judgements and wait till they're 26 or something when they're fully formed. Because we are not Los Angeles who can just sit there and have MVP candidates force their way to our teams after signing a max like Paul George. Or force their way to our team by trade demands like Anthony Davis. Or by winning a championship for another team and coming there in free agency like LeBron or Kawhi.
You have to take chances, you have to project forward and take risks in order to hopefully hit on more bets than your competition. In the end this is nothing more than an asset management game in an unfair environment. And we are the underdogs in this universe because we are not LA or NY.
It's also okay if you don't want to play that game as a fan and not be concerned with GM moves. But that's going to be a lot of the topic of discussion for my posts. But plenty of people are just fine being that way and then complaining when trades are made that makes the team win less games because they're not looking at it from the full picture perspective. But they are no less of fans because of it and whatever makes one happy is the right choice.