The Coby White Thread

[EmpireFalls]

Coby is a great scorer but not good at running Lee's favored two man guard screens

if you're making Coby White your PG1 then look for Kon and Brandon's shooting % to drop

I fail to see how this plan is best for your two most important players

You don't think a full offseason and preseason as the primary initiator instead of having to figure it out on the fly as a backup might make him more comfortable with the system? LaMelo had amazing vision and I loved watching him pass the basketball, so I'm not saying there won't be a drop off, but I would like to think Coby has some more depth to his game than we saw based on the circumstances.

He had full years in Chicago with that exact role and never once looked like a viable franchise PG. He was always a 1.5 or scoring focused guard who struggled to actually run an offense vs. NBA starters.

I love Coby, he's an NC guy and an incredibly likable person, but a PG and orchestrator of an offense, he absolutely is not.

[JMAC3]

This feels very Michael Jordan esq... hey we are making a bad decision because we are cheap... but here look at this guy that used to play college basketball in North Carolina.

[wilson115]

Read on Twitter

[luciano-davidwesley]

Coby is a great scorer but not good at running Lee's favored two man guard screens

if you're making Coby White your PG1 then look for Kon and Brandon's shooting % to drop

I fail to see how this plan is best for your two most important players

You don't think a full offseason and preseason as the primary initiator instead of having to figure it out on the fly as a backup might make him more comfortable with the system? LaMelo had amazing vision and I loved watching him pass the basketball, so I'm not saying there won't be a drop off, but I would like to think Coby has some more depth to his game than we saw based on the circumstances.

Coby has proven over his full NBA career he is a combo guard, not a PG. Using him to replace a guy with elite passing is not a recipe for success.

[yosemiteben]

I think the LaMelo move, even if they decided to do it in the last 48 hours (highly doubt that is the case), puts the trade for Coby White into perspective a lot more. just as a good move all around.

Agreed. They didn't just decide out of the blue last night to trade LaMelo. Peterson had a plan.

I wonder if they knew they were moving Melo last deadline. It always seemed surprising to me that Coby would be super excited to come and sign a long term deal here with a plan to come off the bench.

Read on Twitter

Knew it!!!

[luciano-davidwesley]

Well that is gross. If Coby is our Plan A at PG I'm pivoting to fire Peterson.

[driveandkick]

That’s insane if that had absolutely any weight on their decision to trade him

[Liver_Pooty]

Tarheels always **** us

[yosemiteben]

Read on Twitter

[bravor]

For what is worth, his contract seems to be very tradable (esp if it's a decreasing one, curious to know it).

Something like a 2 years window to figure out how to get a true Ball replacement at the point guard position (draft or trade).

[vorbis]

july 6th can't get here quick enough. sort out this trade and get it over with so i can stop wondering

[Bassman]

Anyone here think Coby may be running a modified Hornets system on offense this year? With Naz Reid and (hopefully) a trade coming for a quality starting center who can actually generate offense, this team might look more conventional à la pick and roll, faster pace, etc. What is Christian Anderson’s expertise? He is a P&R master. Hornets knew that, so it had to factor into his selection.

I might be wrong, but it’s my prediction we see a lot of variation in the offensive attack this season. Coby isn’t that different from most PG’s in the league. It’s more of a team game, ball movement and passing from everyone creating baskets…not just a dominant PG destroying defenses nightly with 16 assists.

[fatlever]

Read on Twitter

that reads as "WHOA, dont blame me for melo getting traded"

[luciano-davidwesley]

Not my fault they traded him when I told them I would only resign if I get a starting gig

[wilson115]

Anyone confirmed if Coby's new deal's a declining one? This is the only source I've found so far. (National media really leaning hard into painting the Wolves as the loser of this deal.)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7395855/2026/06/26/lamelo-ball-trade-timberwolves-hornets-analysis/

What does it say that a Hornets team that finished last season with a better point differential than the Wolves was willing to move on from a 24-year-old centerpiece? Ball was good last season and played 72 games, but Charlotte’s current front office didn’t draft him and clearly didn’t totally believe in him considering they took the first good opportunity to exchange him for cap relief and assets.

Because Green’s outbound salary offsets Reid’s inbound number, the Hornets have a whopping $40 million trade exception from Ball to use in the next 12 months and enough cap flexibility to actually make use of it. (So abundant is their room that they could easily accommodate designing Coby White’s new contract as a declining money deal.)

Reid is only 26 and signed for four more years, and the oldest of their 14 players with guaranteed money this year is 28-year-old Miles Bridges. Even before landing this haul, the Hornets were sitting on 2027 first-rounders from Dallas and Miami, a 2029 first that could be the one the Wolves originally sent out for Gobert and a cache of seven surplus second-round picks. Other than the little matter of not having a true star to build around, the Hornets are set for the future.

The other tell, I must say, is that nobody totally believes what happened in the second half of last season. So many teams were so uncompetitive that virtually everyone who was trying posted a winning record, if not a downright scintillating one. A 28-10 finish seems amazing until you realize an utterly unremarkable Atlanta Hawks team did nearly the same thing, as did several other underwhelming rivals. When it mattered, the Hornets barely beat an average Miami team in the first Play-In tournament game and then got smoked by the Orlando Magic in the second one.

Viewed that way, the move the Hornets made is the patient, grown-up decision of a team that knows it’s still far away from its intended destination and isn’t drinking the Kool-Aid on last year’s hot streak.

The Wolves’ move, meanwhile, seems more rash. But if you’re going to make a move like this, do it for somebody in his 20s who has All-NBA talent. It’s risky, but so was standing still and slowly circling the drain. Yes, the Wolves drained every single draft pick to do it, but this might be the one move that allows Minnesota to hop off the asset-churn treadmill and build more normally past this season.

[Stun704]

Not my fault they traded him when I told them I would only resign if I get a starting gig

Picky Cody over Melo is wild. It’s easier to replace Cody than it will replace Melo. In fact Melo is arguably the most talented PG in franchise history

[Walt Cronkite]

Coby has proven over his full NBA career he is a combo guard, not a PG. Using him to replace a guy with elite passing is not a recipe for success.

I don't doubt that Coby is naturally more or a scoring guard than a facilitator/playmaker, the eye test and numerical comparisons prove that out. I was more asking Snidely if he didn't think it was possible Coby could run the guard screen offense better with a full offseason. Outside of Coby destroying the Hornets when he was on the Bulls, I'm not very knowledgeable about his career before becoming a Hornet and would expect a UNC fan to have much more knowledge and probably follow his earlier pro career closer than I would've.

As I've written elsewhere, I think the FO has prioritized having above average passing across the board, so I'm not too afraid of the offense falling apart without LaMelo's playmaking. To statistically back that up, I'd point out that the team had the 5th highest O rating with the 27th pace and an about league average assist rate (14th). So as a team, they scored a ton of points on not a lot of possessions, but still ended up in the middle in assisted baskets. LaMelo had the 5th highest assist per 100 possessions in the league, Coby didn't qualify, but if he did would've been 95th, so there is an obvious dearth there. However, of the 234 qualified players, Miller (81), Kon (86), Miles (94) all make the top 100 with Sion at 113 (Naz Reid 126 for those interested).

My supposition is that the guard screen offense requires an initiator that is an efficient scorer first and foremost and as a secondary function is fueled by hockey assists. Head to head comparison shows Coby to be a more efficient scorer than LaMelo over their careers, so that is good news. I would expect that an offseason of drilling the offense and getting familiar with your teammates at Knueppel fajita nights would increase Coby's assists per 100. I'd also point out that before Lee, Coby was playing in an offense designed by Billy Donnovan, who I think of personally as more of a defensive coach (best Chicago orting was 13th), but I'm not a Bulls fan so I wasn't watching those games and could be mistaken.

Maybe I'm totally wrong and the offense falls off the cliff without LaMelo's nearly +6 Assist per 100 over Coby, time will tell. LaMelo definitely created more open looks for his teammates than most players in the league and I expect to miss that, but I don't know how relevant that is to the offensive system and wasn't actually a bit of a waste for Ball's inherent talents. A year ago I was ridiculed for suggesting that the Hornets were going to be competing for a play-in spot and that the front court wasn't as big a deal with what they wanted to do, so I expect harsh feedback for this post too, but I think there are some valid considerations and questions to some of these general assumptions that have been brought up related to Coby's competence relative to LaMelo for the team.