ishoy123 wrote:Tacoma wrote:Scase wrote:How, they are essentially the same player, except old Siakam actually played defence and BI is marginally better at 3.
And if anything, the composition of the team makes it look like Siakam may never actually have been that bad of a 3 point shooter. So I fail to see how having a younger, worse, and more injured version of Siakam, that didn't work before, will work much better now.
The team still has the same deficiencies.
Both BI and PS were drafted in 2016. In 9 seasons, BI avg 19/5/5 on 47% FG & 36% 3PT and PS avg 18/7/4 on 50% FG & 34% 3PT. BI takes more 3's but only marginally more effective at making them (36% vs. 34%) over their careers. The biggest different since draft day has been in games played where PS has played a whopping 134 more games highlighting serious concerns of BI's health.
I agree BI is a better fit for Scottie but neither BI nor PS are first options, so we have the same problem as before. If PS/FVV/OG with SB were not good enough to contend, then I don't see BI/RJ/IQ with SB as being much better taking into account both group's offense & defense.
In this light, it seems we've largely just rearranged the deck chairs of a ship that Udoka once said was a "mid-level" team with a "5-seed ceiling." We're slightly younger but about equal in terms of # of seasons played such that we shouldn't expect any one of them to have a breakout season.
Overall, short of finding a true #1 option like Kawhi, I did not see a path to becoming a championship contender with PS et al, and that view is the same with BI et al, or maybe even less so if BI is always injured as has been his usual.
You never know what is the actual ceiling of a good team. There was not a single analyst or pundit who put Indiana as a potential finals contender with Haliburton and Siakam as a core.
Exactly.
And yeah, luck always matters along the way too.
But we are just starting our rise back up. This is far from the finished product.
People forget the Raps traded for Serge without ever having that #1 option in place. But Masai was just trying to continually upgrade. Let's see if/what happens this offseason.
