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Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread

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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1461 » by Liver_Pooty » Fri Oct 31, 2025 7:41 pm

SWedd523 wrote:
Liver_Pooty wrote:
EmpireFalls wrote:Just 5 minutes tonight… Liam preferred in the rotation… in a game where we desperately lacked size and needed 6’9” guys to get in front of Paolo/Franz/Carter.

#notgood


Liam has the potential to be a top 6 ish player out of this draft

That is a bold statement


I tend to say stupid stuff after drinks at Applebees.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1462 » by fatlever » Fri Oct 31, 2025 7:42 pm

Sunk Cost Fallacy: The Tidjane Salaun Thread
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1463 » by luciano-davidwesley » Fri Oct 31, 2025 8:01 pm

fatlever wrote:Sunk Cost Fallacy: The Tidjane Salaun Thread

It was obvious that we shouldn't have picked up Kai Jones and James Bouknight's third year options at the time too.

GM's and their pride.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1464 » by HornetJail » Fri Oct 31, 2025 8:31 pm

luciano-davidwesley wrote:
fatlever wrote:Sunk Cost Fallacy: The Tidjane Salaun Thread

It was obvious that we shouldn't have picked up Kai Jones and James Bouknight's third year options at the time too.

GM's and their pride.

I'll defend one of those guys getting his 3rd year picked up. Salaun is if Kai Jones was a mediocre athlete instead of legitimately one of the most athletic 6'11 players of all time. At least with Kai, there's a very easy path to being serviceable if he just becomes a rim runner and gets his head on straight. No reason he couldn't have at least a JaVale McGee type career with even a shred of guidance from the organization and he himself takes the game seriously. But neither of those happened and he flamed out.

If you gave me the option today, I think a 24-year-old Kai Jones that has already flamed out of the league once, has an easier path to a decent NBA career than a 20-year-old Salaun. That's how far away we are.

Bouknight though, nah **** him. Getting his 3rd year picked up after the DUI and absolutely dismal play was a genuine surprise to me.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1465 » by JDR720 » Fri Oct 31, 2025 8:56 pm

We weren't ever going to decline his option. We didn't pick a long term project to get rid of him in 2 years.

The question is will he improve enough to be worth keeping past this. My guess is probably not, he's just not good at basketball. Can we not pick "upside" players who don't know how to play basketball from now on?
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1466 » by Liver_Pooty » Fri Oct 31, 2025 9:22 pm

JDR720 wrote:We weren't ever going to decline his option. We didn't pick a long term project to get rid of him in 2 years.

The question is will he improve enough to be worth keeping past this. My guess is probably not, he's just not good at basketball. Can we not pick "upside" players who don't know how to play basketball from now on?


I do find it interesting how Jeff picked TJ last year and then went the polar opposite this season with high IQ can play right now players.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1467 » by JDR720 » Fri Oct 31, 2025 9:35 pm

Liver_Pooty wrote:
JDR720 wrote:We weren't ever going to decline his option. We didn't pick a long term project to get rid of him in 2 years.

The question is will he improve enough to be worth keeping past this. My guess is probably not, he's just not good at basketball. Can we not pick "upside" players who don't know how to play basketball from now on?


I do find it interesting how Jeff picked TJ last year and then went the polar opposite this season with high IQ can play right now players.

It's also not a coincidence that all of them are already better than TJ is.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1468 » by luciano-davidwesley » Fri Oct 31, 2025 10:12 pm

Legit almost vomited when Salaun was drafted just watching his YouTube highlights lol.

He looked that bad even in a highlights clip that it is like when you walk into a random gym and immediately spot some guy that clearly has no idea how to play.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1469 » by luciano-davidwesley » Fri Oct 31, 2025 10:14 pm

HornetJail wrote:
luciano-davidwesley wrote:
fatlever wrote:Sunk Cost Fallacy: The Tidjane Salaun Thread

It was obvious that we shouldn't have picked up Kai Jones and James Bouknight's third year options at the time too.

GM's and their pride.

I'll defend one of those guys getting his 3rd year picked up. Salaun is if Kai Jones was a mediocre athlete instead of legitimately one of the most athletic 6'11 players of all time. At least with Kai, there's a very easy path to being serviceable if he just becomes a rim runner and gets his head on straight. No reason he couldn't have at least a JaVale McGee type career with even a shred of guidance from the organization and he himself takes the game seriously. But neither of those happened and he flamed out.

If you gave me the option today, I think a 24-year-old Kai Jones that has already flamed out of the league once, has an easier path to a decent NBA career than a 20-year-old Salaun. That's how far away we are.

Bouknight though, nah **** him. Getting his 3rd year picked up after the DUI and absolutely dismal play was a genuine surprise to me.

It was pretty obvious straight away with Kai he didn't process anything at all though between the ears.

He was getting owned as a second and third year player in summer league along with the other bum Bouknight.

Signing Hayward caused this chain of events. Mitch Kupcake masterclass
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1470 » by EmpireFalls » Sun Nov 2, 2025 1:29 am

Tidjane Salaun is simply the worst NBA player I’ve ever seen. I’m not exaggerating. Not even on the 2012 Lolcatz have I seen players who ever had such a negative impact in games. The entire team’s spirit and rhythm drops as soon as he checked in. Multiple leads were blown due to his incompetence. He is not playable in any serious context.

His stats don’t even tell the story. No one wants to give him the ball. He has no clue where to stand. Any action involving him burns 8 seconds off the clock in confusion and any shot he takes is given by the defense. And the other side of the court is even worse. If you ever said he was good at defense, stop watching basketball forever. He is impossibly awful at on-ball defense. He has no instinct for the ball, he doesn’t read plays, his only strength is being big. He cannot lock anyone up. He’s just pure garbage.

He has no clue what he’s doing on a professional basketball court and when he returns to France after he’s inevitably cut, I am certain he’ll never be back.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1471 » by JDR720 » Sun Nov 2, 2025 3:01 am

Even when he does good things, I mostly feel like those are happy accidents rather than anything purposeful.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1472 » by Liver_Pooty » Sun Nov 2, 2025 3:10 am

He needs the g league and 37 minutes a game. Not just putting up 3s either.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1473 » by SWedd523 » Sun Nov 2, 2025 3:37 am

JDR720 wrote:Even when he does good things, I mostly feel like those are happy accidents rather than anything purposeful.

Bob Ross: The Tiddy Salaun Thread
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1474 » by fatlever » Mon Nov 3, 2025 4:11 pm

Read on Twitter
?t=4cHlOerrzzPG1wDL8jCeAg&s=19

And he's off to Greensboro.

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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1475 » by yosemiteben » Mon Nov 3, 2025 4:13 pm

Yeah, seemed like that was coming when McNeely took some of his minutes last night. Will be good for him to get some developmental reps down in GSO.
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1476 » by HornetJail » Mon Nov 3, 2025 5:27 pm

ok see you in the 2026 Summer League
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1477 » by GiggitySmalls » Mon Nov 3, 2025 5:30 pm

Ugh we could of had buzelis

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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1478 » by GiggitySmalls » Mon Nov 3, 2025 5:31 pm

Is actually any better than bronny the 53rd pick?

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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1479 » by fatlever » Mon Nov 3, 2025 6:05 pm

does the swarm have an f-league affiliate... maybe the lexington bumble bees? could he play there?
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Re: Eye of the Tiger: The Tidjane Salaun Thread 

Post#1480 » by Walt Cronkite » Mon Nov 3, 2025 6:08 pm

GiggitySmalls wrote:Is actually any better than bronny the 53rd pick?

He's younger, bigger and better statistically almost across the board. https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/basketball/versus-finder.cgi?request=1&player_id1=jamesbr02&player_id2=salauti01

The developmental project continues to need development. He's younger and smaller than Matas, who I think most of us would prefer to have at this point (and probably would've felt better about on draft night), but I'm still not so bothered by this as many of you. The selection was used by many posters to point out how hopeless the Hornets were because of how terrible and/or cheap Peterson/FO was, but there has been less of that with 3 of the 4 picks so far from this draft looking like good to great choices.

It is easy to be critical of the not-yet-developed prospect who's missed his last 6 3s, but I think it's curious that the thread was quiet from July until Oct 27 when yb bumped it after Tiddy started the season hot, but only got active again when he started to struggle despite getting increasingly limited minutes. He's still raw, we would have no hope of being anything more than a bust under the last ownership group, but he still has two seasons to improve before he's off his rookie contract and it's possible this staff is capable of developing him into a usable big for what they want to do.

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