165bows wrote:hugepatsfan wrote:He’s just so damn… competent lol
He draws a lot of criticism because he’s simply the most logical person to be replaced. If you look at a fully healthy roster (excluding Gallo because out for year):
Smart / Brogdon / Pritchard
Brown / White
Tatum / Hauser / Jackson
Horford / GWilliams
R Williams / Kornet / Blake / Vonleh
The depth chart is legitimately fantastic at PG/SG/SF/PF. You can nitpick, but realistically speaking none of us can really propose too much that improves us there. That doesn’t even include Pritchard who is a phenomenal 3rd unit player.
Then you get to center and you have a great player in Rob, but major injury concerns. So the need for a strong backup at that spot is probably the biggest on our team. And then while Kornet is competent, he’s the only guy on our first or second unit who isn’t really great for their role.
So even though he’s competent, just from a purely logical standpoint the only way to improve this team even further without a major shakeup is to target a backup center to take his spot. It’s not even really a criticism of him individually, the rest of the team is just so stacked that it’s hard to really think of practical ways to improve there.
Imagine if this team had had Gallo on it to this point, let alone Rob. Replace a couple hundred minutes of Griffin/Vonleh with Gallo for an already historic offense is pretty wild.
It’s a tough call, at full health (even without Gallo), I think Kornet is totally fine as the third string guy. But like you said the full-health piece is a tough gamble.
Still think Olynyk is the “push all your chips onto the table” move to bring him in as that backup. More realistic though they will get a more true backup guy closer to Kornet level.
Best option there I can see currently is if Saric gets bought out and returns to form. He fits their play style in several ways and is still competitive on the boards which is a tough combo. Plus if it worked he’s young enough where he and Kornet could be a solid third string center combo for a couple of years after this without giving up much in the interim.
I think Olynyk is playing himself out of our range. That level of shooting plus his favorable contract for next year being non guaranteed is going to make him a hit commodity.
