LloydFree wrote:Ericb5 wrote:LloydFree wrote:
I don't know why you put Kevin Love as a proof. He can't guard his position either. But he can be useful because he rebounds, is a word class passer, and has 3pt range. Okafor does none of that.
As for the Lemarcus Aldridge comp: I've already said that's not out of the realm of possibility, but it would take an extreme makeover of Okafor's game to get there. Okafor would have to lose a lot of weight and improve as a shooter to be one of the best, big, mid-rangd shooters of all time to be Lemarcus Aldridge. It's possible... but not probable.
If your dream scenario for Okafor is Lemarcus Aldridge, you'd be better off trading Jahlil Okafor for Myles Turner, who is more likely to become that, rather than waiting 5 years for Okafor to transform his body and jumper into that. What's the purpose of trying to force player like Okafor into a position he isn't suited to play, when you can just get a real PF to do all the things you want Okafor to change his game to, in order to be useful.
It's not that I think that he can become those players. It's that if they are able to be successful defending the 4, I don't know why he can't.
Successful in the sense that they are able to do it, and not successful in the sense that defense is their strength.
He doesn't have to shoot like Aldridge for example because he is far more gifted offensively than Aldridge. He doesn't have to play the same game to be as good is my point.
The 4 is a viable path for Okafor. It may not be his ideal position, but if he can do it then why not let him? I wouldn't make the same argument for Embiid simply because Embiid is a better talent and should play where he is best.
Okafor is a tier below him though, and is going to support our core(if he stays) rather than BE he core.
I really don't understand your (wish) or obsession with attempting to play a player out of position and having a player that is a defensive liability in the frontcourt at either position.
My wish is to make it work in a way to capitalize on his phenomenal talents. It is the "out of position" part that is really the heart of it. I don't think we know what his position really is.
Yes, he is traditionally understood to be a center, but to me "out of position" implies that you are in the wrong spot, as in square peg in a round hole. Putting him at the 3 would obviously be out of position.
However, as has been said by you, or maybe it was Kobble, Simmons is a wing, and not a big. Well Okafor is a big. That means that he will exclusively play big man positions, but it doesn't mean that he has to be a 5.
As people always say, you are the positions that you can defend, and if Okafor is able to defend the 4 even mediocrely, then he can be a 4. While many people don't think he can do it, it hasn't definitively been established that he can't do it. I'm much more convinced of Noel's inability to do it at this point despite his elite athleticism than I am convinced that Okafor can't. This upcoming season is where he will have a chance to prove it.
As you have conceded before, his offense doesn't need defending. He doesn't have great range on his jumper yet, but he has certainly shown a propensity to improve his skills so far, and it is completely reasonable to expect that he will continue to extend that range.
I always defend stridently his potential to play the 4 in a vacuum, but I STILL am in agreement that he is behind the 8 ball precisely because he may not mesh well with Embiid and Simmons which are better players.
If Embiid can be healthy, and is what I think he is, and Simmons is what I think HE is, then we may need to surround them with different kinds of players than what Okafor is. That is a fact that doesn't bode well for Okafor's future on this team.
So the question is obviously "what do we do now?". Well what we do now is hold our fire on Okafor and see what happens. If he can't play the 4 then he is out after this season, and if he CAN play the 4, but doesn't fit with emergent superstars like Simmons and Embiid could be, then he is PROBABLY still out, after this season.
In the second scenario though, I am willing to gamble that his trade value will be higher then, than it is now. It all comes down to this for me with him. I think he is going to be a much better player long term than Noel, despite his worse fit, and I don't want to mess up by trading him for too little. That's it.
I agree with you when you say that Noel protects us from Embiid flaming out, and that he can anchor a defense. I just think that in the end he maxes out as a really good role player, and I think that Okafor maxes out as an all star, even if it probably won't be with us.
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