dougthonus wrote:DuckIII wrote:I think one of them is going to be Buzelis. If he fulfills his archetype then you have two guys who fit excellently together and then you see what's available to get the third guy. But your challenge is really easy to satisfy. Its not hard to make a contender out of Josh Giddey plus any two star players in the NBA who aren't primary ballhandlers and distributors. I mean, you can just go team by team. I can go through nearly every contending team in the NBA - or probably every contending team - and swap out Giddey for a player making in the neighborhood of $25 million or more and that team would still be a contender.
A maxed out, absolutely best they could be, contender? No. But a contender nonetheless.
The whole idea that a player as good as Giddey, with his play style, warts and all, at $25 million per year (SGA and Book are just signed for 300% of that) is some sort of inherent contention-killer is just nonsensical to me. He'll be making 3rd-4th best player money. There was a time early in his tenure with Chicago when this was a tenable argument. To some extent I even shared the view and started a thread about it. But that time is ancient history. Arguments like this feel like a refusal to let go of an old view by disregarding or minimizing to irrelevance the most recent evidence and the reasons for that change.
FWIW, a lot of the replies to my post have extended it way beyond what I've said.
I didn't comment on Giddey killing you or anything. Just that if you try to position guys it is interesting. I agree generally speaking that one of your players is a Forward or Center superstar that you don't want playing on the perimeter, but I'm not sure where the other guy is. From a practical sense, I agree the Bulls have to really hope Matas / Noa are really big hits. I'm not sure either are star guys, but it's not crazy to see it with Matas, Noa just has no evidence yet one way or the other really.
At 25M, I think you could live with the less than perfect fit, and in our particular state, I don't think it matters, we aren't going to magically get two guys better than Giddey within the length of Giddey's contract anyway, and if we do, we can rejoice then solve whatever problem exists then.
We certainly shouldn't count on anything specific from Noa yet, but for his age he has plausible future star written all over him. Excellent frame, agility, fluidity, ball handling, defensive instincts and already proven ability to play a role in winning basketball. That doesn't mean much cause the majority of guys don't ever even sniff their potential, but in terms of raw ability this guy is a second tier prospect which is great (first tier being guys like Lebron, Duncan, Wemby etc when they come out). It's nearly a certainty IMO for example that Noa becomes a top 20th percentile NBA defender within a few years IMO. That alone will likely make him a pretty good player. If he's average to above average offensively that's a long term quality starter right there, which is 1/5 of the puzzle, which is something.