bad knees wrote:I'd love WCJ if it was 1998, or even 2008. I even like him a lot now. But here's my question: can he be on the floor in a conference finals when everyone has gone small, and the centers are the equivalent of Love, Horford, Green and Capela? Can he cover guards and wings out on the perimeterr well enough to be effective and stay on the floor?
He seems like he has good feet, but I have heard there are doubts about his "north-south" mobility. Is there any reason to think that these doubts are incorrect or that his deficit can be addressed through player development?
Because it seems like a real waste to make a pick at 7 that you know will not be able to play at the highest levels. The trend toward positionless basketball, small lineups, and centers who must be able guard on the perimeter, is fully here, and there is no reason to think that it is going to go away anytime soon.
Some people say that the Bulls shouldn't just copy the current successful teams. We need to zig when the others are zagging. It seems to me that the next phase is finding two bigs who have the ability to be two-way players, and can still guard the little guys. We are lucky in that it appears we have found one - Lauri demonstrated that he can be a small ball center with his defense last year, and his offense speaks for itself. We should only add a big guy if we think that guy can be out there with Lauri at the end of games against the great teams. That's why I like JJJ so much. I am confident that he is one of those guys. With WCJ, I'm just not seeing it so far.
I keep seeing this line of thinking going around, not just for WCJ, but for Bamba and even someone like Bagley.
How many teams out there actually have the ability to go super small, to the point where drafting a big like WCJ isn’t a favourable thing?
You noted the 4 conference finals centers. Two started their careers as PFs. Their shooting improvements has allowed them to move to 5 and stay on the floor. Love certainly doesn’t have the footspeed to guard the five, but his offense gets him over the line.
As for Capela, he’s being played less because of these smaller lineups, despite being the modern archetype of what a center should now be.
The only ‘center’ in the league who can really do it all is Draymond Green. He’s unique but we’re reacting as if it’s easy to find a center who can do what he can. It’s not. It will be a generational shift that will take years to be the norm, if it happens at all.
My point is this: You can’t just pass on guys because they may have a tough time matching up against who will be declining as players once the Bulls (hopefully) are contending again. When the Bulls next make the Finals, the Warriors won’t be there. Draymond won’t be playing. What then?
What about the rest of the league and the entire NBA season, not just the ECF and Finals?
Centers haven’t been rendered completely useless and are still needed. I think we’re all going too far about how centers have been marginalised. And until there’s a greater supply of wings who can shift up positions, there’s nothing you can really do about it. That’s why guys like Tatum and Brown are so damn valuable at the moment. There may not be that type of two-way guy in this draft. As much as we want these players, if they don’t exist, what are the alternatives?
Against someone like Embiid, guys like WCJ and Bamba could be very important. But beyond that, really, matchups shouldn’t matter to Chicago this early in the rebuild. As I said, they shouldn’t be concerning themselves with if their No. 7 draft pick can stay on the floor against the Warriors or Rockets as they’re too far away from those teams for it to matter, and league trends may have shifted another direction at that point, anyway.
