Scase wrote:Johnston wrote:How far off are we from Orlando a cpl years ago before they drafted Banchero? Likely a little better, but I'd say our overall depth is likely worse.
If everything goes as planned we likely win 35ish games, if we are hit with an injury bug, or trade Poeltl we are likely in the 25ish win category.
We have a couple guys who COULD take huge (unexpected) leaps this year. That is something to be happy about.
A long way off. Our depth isn't "likely" worse, it is inarguably worse, and objectively one of the worst in the league lol. Their depth just got them the 3rd best defence in the NBA
I don't think the injury bug is needed to derail us, a collective 20 man games missed by anyone in BBQ is like to put us firmly into bottom 5 territory, we are thinner than saran wrap.
Orlando's depth a few years ago (before they drafted Paolo) wasn't very good. I don't think a team that won 22 games is a very high bar though lol.
That being said, I feel like people are underrating us a bit. We barely saw Scottie, IQ, RJ and Poeltl all playing together last season, but their 4-man lineup stats were good (+10.8 NetRTG in 234 minutes) and we went 7-7 in those games. Our starters are going to keep us in a lot of games and it's not like they have a history of being injury-plagued; Scottie missed 13 games through his first two seasons, RJ missed 29 games through his first four seasons and Quickley missed 13 games (with a few being DNPs in his rookie season) through his first three seasons while Poeltl missed ~10 games per season (with 1/3 of those games coming in his rookie season where he was in the G-League or DNP and a handful more coming at the end of the season when the Spurs were tanking) through his first seven seasons. Last season there was a lot of unfortunate tragedies (Barrett and Quickley both losing close family members and missing extended time) while Scottie suffered an extremely unlucky injury then we started giving guys extra nights off. It's unlikely that they only play ~25% of our games together barring an early-season Poeltl trade.
Our bench isn't good, but there is potential for internal growth (Gradey's sophomore year being more like the 2nd half of his rookie season and Agbaji getting back to being a ~35% three-point shooter would be big boosts for example) while the players we added through the draft or via trade could surprise us. Personally, I think Mitchell is going to be a good piece for us. He had very little opportunity on a guard-heavy team in Sacramento the past two seasons, but his defence can be a game changer off the bench and his improvement behind the arc could make him a pretty valuable backup guard.
