Boston34Bg wrote:Andrew McCeltic wrote:Give Denver Brad Stevens and they're above .500.
Nurkic is comparable to Smart in defensive/offensive stats, but he's not being well-developed. Mudiay and Murray are as good as any young player in our pipeline, in terms of raw ability and upside. And Jokic is very good.
Like, a lot depends on context, system, role, usage, development.
I don't understand why Denver hasn't done a full rebuild (Gallo, Faried, Chandler out) when they're losing so much anyway. But their young players are all solid - if Murray, Mudiay or Jokic were in Boston you'd all be hyping the sh*t out of them, or hyping their trade value.
That's one thing I have been wondering about for a while. I'm not saying they need to trade with us or anything. Just saying that they should've traded Gallinari/Chandler and Farried for some asstets. The past 2 years they have been winning meaningless games- worsening their draft position. Their FO is full of ****.
To be fair, Ainge did the same thing in his first rebuild - the Gary Payton rental, the Antoine rental, keeping Pierce. The point is that your young players don't develop in a vacuum without experience or professionalism around them - like Noel and Okafor. And they play more meaningful minutes, if the team is just good enough to stay in some games, or at least the first quarter or two.
Even the Lakers loaded up this summer with Mozgov, Deng.
Denver also lucked out in having Murray slip to 7, and Mudiay (who was talked about as a potential no. 1 pick) being available the year before. And trading the McDermott pick for Harris/Nurkic was a brilliant deal.