Middleton/Johnson to Wash for Kuzma/Baldwin

[JayMKE]

Trading AJJ is so **** infuriating

[Illawarra_Buck]

I guess the mind boggling part is that if the game is to re-tool around Giannis, you want some tangible data that suggests the players you're getting will become efficient due to Giannis' gravity.

The best version of Kuz in Washington was as a high volume, low efficiency chucker. I dont think there were stats that suggested he was a knock down shooter on open looks or anything.

[ShootingtheJ]

Kuzma always was a losing empty stats player, still can't believe we dealt positive assets for him.

Middleton was not a positive asset

Maybe not, but he was a positive player, unlike Kuzma. A pick swap has value, and AJJ had some, though limited, value. Kuzma is a massive negative who's owed more money than Middleton.

[JayMKE]

“At least he’s playing” doesn’t apply when the guy has negative BBIQ & is super inefficient. Kuzma is a negative and to get rid of him we’d have to give up assets, the fact we were the ones giving up assets for him is insane.

[Bernman]

I guess the mind boggling part is that if the game is to re-tool around Giannis, you want some tangible data that suggests the players you're getting will become efficient due to Giannis' gravity.

The best version of Kuz in Washington was as a high volume, low efficiency chucker. I dont think there were stats that suggested he was a knock down shooter on open looks or anything.

40% & 39% from the corners the last 2 seasons. That's solid. Here that's what he should be doing. But he couldn't, on account he shot 30%.

Then he went from being a good finisher in the paint, to a bad one. 59-60 to 54.6.

So if he dialed back his usage, which he should have done next to Giannis & Dame, there was a clear way you could have used him in the past. But his shot-making cratered this season. And Doc nor he would mitigate that thru a more minimalist strategy.

His rebounding % also was the worst since his 2nd season, when it should have went up next to Brook. His ast % was the worst since he was in LA, which might be fine, but somehow he also had the highest TO% of his career.

It's hard to measure his d in DC given they were tanking. But in LA his d-ratings were good every season. He started off well here, then plummeted. He went from a player people had mixed opinions on, to someone everyone could agree sucked, cuz he objectively did.

Hope for a bounceback to salvage something here. That's just not sunk-cost fallacy. Rather it's not selling low & having perspective. Regardless it was a bad trade/idea to offload a guy we both liked for the future, and another for the present, for a guy who'd been badly struggling.