There is a lot of player bias going on lately from both sides, IMO.
I went and compared
Aaron Gordon's most recent season (age 23) to Vuc's two seasons before this (age 26, 27) in basketball-reference. We obviously know what Vuc turned into this year on offense, but nobody expected the year he had. Hence why we drafted Bamba when we saw Vuc basically just turn into an average offensive option as he got older the last few years, exactly what Gordon is right now.
This wasn't that long ago. I remember getting in pages and pages and pages of debate with
the very same posters who have issue with Gordon prospectively being the "first option" or a default first option (and putting my two cents out there, I don't he should be that either, that's not his role).
But if we're going to debate the "merits" of first options, AG has much of an argument as Vuc did a few years ago.
This year's
AG vs 2016-2017 Vuc:
AG had better ORTG, True Shooting, less usage, more offensive win shares, more defensive win shares, more total win shares, better VORP, basically any advanced metric had Gordon with a better year than Vuc's 2016-2017 year.
This year's
AG vs 2017-2018 Vuc:
AG had better ORTG, True Shooting, less usage, more offensive win shares, more defensive win shares, more total win shares, the same VORP. Again, most advanced metrics have Gordon with a better year. Vuc took slightly more categories from him, so it's probably about a wash when it all comes down to it, but objectively, Gordon has a great argument for still having a better year.
I post this because on one side, the prospects of AG completely revamping his offensive game and becoming a player he never really was expected to be on offense is a long shot.
If you're arguing for AG running the show, you're basically arguing for Vuc's offense the last few years with a higher tempo. So it's hypocritical in a sense if you were against Vuc. I won't doubt that just like Vuc, he can add pieces to his game, become more efficient and eventually one year be as offensively great as Vuc was this singular year, but if I didn't expect that out of Vuc, it's hard for me to think Gordon can just replicate that as well. It's hard to do. Not impossible, but you need to be in the right environment and have the faith of the team behind you.
On the other side, some posters who are arguing until they're blue in the face about how AG will never be first option material, can't lead a team, can't do this, can't do that,
when he literally had similar if not better stats than Vuc the past few years. Similar offeseason arguments I was having with people in this thread about how Vuc NEEDED to add a better three point shot and get to the FT line for us to excuse the usage that we're giving him, and there was massive pushback on that by posters here about how he "doesn't need to do that" and his offense is "fine". The same posters in this thread against AG. That to me, shows either people need to eat crow and admit that Vuc before this year was extremely replaceable and average, or that there is an innate bias against Gordon (or for Vuc) because you need to take a logical leap to paint one guy's offense as "fine" and the other's as "needing a lot of work".
And again, I didn't want Vuc to be first option 2 years ago and don't want Gordon to be now either. I'll bite the bullet in a "down" year like I did for Vuc with Gordon, but realistically, no way.
So yeah, it's just weird seeing opinions flipping depending on who the player is. Are any sides willing to eat crow?