GimmeDat wrote:Axolotl wrote:GimmeDat wrote:Here's an interesting hypothetical - say Trae Young falls to the 10-12 range, and say our Pelicans pick is in the 14-18 range. Let's say 18 for the sake of the example. Would you trade Portis to move up and take Young?
Right now, right here I would. For me it would essentially mean trading a proven, solid 6th man -type for a potential star.
I think Young's playmaking abilities should translate, and he is an obvious floor stretcher. Even with his questionable defence, that projects to an adequate 2nd unit PG at the minimum. With the upside being a winning impact player, I don't see us losing in this trade.
I'm on the fence, I think I would. His regression is a bit scary, I think at worst he's a good 2nd unit player, obviously he has star upside, he's one of the biggest variance picks in the draft. It's not a team need necessarily, but you gotta give it a crack at that point in the draft imo. I like Portis so it would be a big loss, but you're also avoiding the upcoming Portis contract as well.
Yeah, I'm on the fence too, that's why I said right now. I might feel differently next week... I've been wondering about his regression too. It could be that since he is head and shoulders above (not literally) of the other players in the team, the others just wait for him to do something, and the opponents homing in on him en masse.
To be honest, I haven't watched the team enough to make a definite statement on this, but somehow I feel the regression is not Young forgetting how to play basketball.
Unfortunately Dunn and Young can't co-exist at all though. Both guys need the ball in their hands. So that will probably turn in to an either/or situation. And of course Young/Lavine would be terrible defensively if that's the way it plays out. But purely trying to get the most value out of the draft as possible, it's an interesting outcome.
Young is obviously a poor fit. It would be benefical to have a couple of good defenders on the floor with him, and I think our bets defenders are Dunn and Nwaba. The problem then would be that neither of them is a very good scorer, and, as you said, Dunn is ball-hungry. He is versatile enough to play SF though, I think, especially if he improves his shooting.
Or, we would need to have a C who is a plus defender.
I agree on the fit with LaVine too. LaVine's defence has been improving, but it's still not on a good level. He handles 1 vs 1 pretty well with his quickness, but is overall still quite bad. Markkanen will probably be better next season, but still average.
With Young and LaVine on the floor together, we'd need a SF and C, who are +defenders. If Dunn would play SF/secondary playmaker, we'd be left with getting that +d C. It would still not be a defensively good unit, but at least Markkanen, Young and LaVine should bring enough firepower. And that C would need to be serviceable on the offence too.
All this said, I'm not too keen to play Dunn as a SF. I don't know how well it would work, and I definitely want to see what he does as a PG next season. There's also the question of would he want to play SF.
If we did draft Young, I'd put him in the 2nd unit first, to see what he does against NBA opponents. If he becomes as good as Dunn, we can choose the starter based on whether we need more offensive or defensive playstyle. In the end, the best PG in the team should start.
From the basketball's perspective, travel is a nice pause from being pounded to the floor.
