YogurtProducer wrote:DreamTeam09 wrote:Grew wrote:
He's got a breakout to do before he's even on Kelly's level. He does have the more aesthetic game, and they play the same type of roll, he's just never proven anything in this league yet the way Kelly has. Would be nice to see him breakout and actually become that upgraded version. Kelly is probably cooked at this point, but he's a been a proven role player for really good teams in his career.
Upgrade on what Kelly provided for us as a Raptor / maybe not the career highs as of Kelly
Kelly has gotten this really weird bad rep as a Raptor when he was the exact same player he has been his entire career.
Dude gave us 17/8/6 on 63TS% as a backup big playing mostly with scrubs. IDK why people act like he was so bad here. He just became the whipping boy for some reason despite being a more than adequate bench player.
Mamu likely won't be as good as Kelly was, unless he comes in a much better defender than advertised.
Olynyk has fallen off from his prime, especially on the defensive end. Not that he was ever even an average defender but during his time here he was atrocious (bottom 3 bigman level). I think part of the idea was that Barnes could cover for him but Barnes hasn’t shown the full ability to do that (yet). In his prime Olynyk was a 6th man. He’s now probably a 9th-10th man. Combine that with our inability to cover for him defensively (he absolutely cannot play the 5) and the Olynyk experiment went pretty poorly.
Mamu would have to be terrible defensively to give us less than KO. Now, given his rep that might be the way it plays out. I’d give Mamu a 50/50 shot at actually being in the regular rotation. We don’t need much, just a guy who won’t get absolutely destroyed at the defensive end. Hoping Mamu can evolve into that.
I was in Riga as well but that night I was in Vilnius, Lithuania where they turned a prison into a cultural center (Lukiškės Prison - apparently they shot a season of Stranger Things there too). So - huge screen in the outdoor courtyard but a bit hard to see because all the Lithuanians are like 7ft tall. But it was packed and a cool atmosphere to watch the game. Unfortunately Lithuania was behind the whole game so the crowd wasn't as pumped as it could have been. Cool experience though! And all 3 Baltic states were really nice.