mkot wrote:lilfishi22 wrote:
But what we got in KD is what most people expected him to be.
I'd say he exceed what I'd expect from a 35 year old. Again, I just don't believe team can win with him as #1 option and leader because while being a dominant scorer, he does very little else and lack leadership skills when things are hard, but I expected us to be at least a fun and high scoring team in the regular season but ultimately flame out in the playoffs because of size and defense. What I didn't expect is 1) trading of CP3 leaving a big void in that leadership role and 2) Book regression. So definitely not KD's fault that we are not putting the right pieces around him.
Every trade is a gamble, again I said it many times I don't mind the trade, we overpaid but fine, what I'm disappointed at is that the inability to identify the mistakes and pivot. Instead they double down and made several more horrible trades to dig ourselves into deeper hole.
I’m right there with you. I think we got exactly what I expected from KD. If anyone expected him to carry this team single-handedly—like Jokic or a prime LeBron might, dragging them into the playoffs through sheer force of will—they don’t really understand who KD is. He’s never really been the engine of the team kinda guy. Even back in OKC, there was always the debate about who was the bus driver—him or Westbrook. While both guys are raising the floor and ceiling together, you could argue the team is maximised with Westbrook raising the floor, while KD is the one raising the ceiling.
At this stage in his career, KD just can’t be the guy who lifts the floor anymore. Sure, take him off a team and the floor drops, but if you’re expecting 36-year-old KD to play 36-40 minutes every night just to keep the baseline steady, that's an incredible poor utilisation of him.
I look at KD and Book (to an extent, same with Beal) as similar type of players; lethal weapons that can win games for you in the right situations. They are the ceiling raisers. What's missing is a true floor raiser which Chris Paul was. Once CP3 left, this team just struggled to close out winnable games, especially in the regular season. The Vogel Suns collapsing in the fourth quarter, after looking competitive or even dominant for the first three quarters, is the clearest example of that. We spend almost all our talent capital in the first 3 quarters only for it to run out in the 4th. I'm not even going to talk about this past season because I can't even be bothered to do a post-mortem on it to figure out exactly what was wrong with this iteration of the Suns.
So, to me, there’s a clear distinction between the expectations for the team after trading for KD and the expectations for KD himself. KD either met or exceeded my expectations as a player, depending on what aspect you look at. But the team, post-KD trade, seriously underperformed especially when you consider the future we had to mortgage to put this disappointing team together. While KD shares some blame, the bigger problems with the team ran much deeper than his individual performance—which, honestly, was pretty great.
