Luigi wrote:erudite23 wrote:And we'll need to do it for more than just 5-10 mins a game, otherwise we traded Favors and Jae for nothing. Those two defend the position far better than Green will. Favors provided huge value as a 2nd center and insurance policy for Rudy. Jae was a more rugged defender, better rebounder and better ball handler than Jeff Green. We just made a huge investment in Bojan. If his main contribution is to push Joe to the bench and keep him fresher, that doesn't move the needle hardly at all. You have to play them together, and not for short stretches, either. It's gotta be 20mpg at least that they are on the floor at the same time, preferably 25ish. Then once you give Georges some time and play Royce some spot minutes, that leaves between 15-20mpg for Green, which is about where I think he should be.
There's a good chance it doesn't go that way, but if that ends up being the case, we won't be in contention for ****. It will mean we spent 73m to make Joe Ingles a super sub. **** that.
I buy all of this. It's why I was more comfortable with Favors + Carroll than I am with Bojan + Green. But I do think that adding that much shooting will make things look very different. Conley and Bojan means 64 more minutes of top notch shooters on the roster. Wherever that fits in, it is a lot more than we have had.
I think we'll need Mitchell to be our best player and provide some iso scoring. He's not Harden or Leonard or James. That's why I preferred to stay an elite defensive team instead of trying to win shootouts with Bogdanovic. So we could very well be pretenders--a high scoring regular season offense, that comes up short in the playoffs.
I think we'll need 24 minutes from Green at the 4, 16 from Joe (that's the Joe/Bojan soft fluffy marshmallow forward lineup), and 8 from Naing (continuing in the marshmallow mode). The marshmallows will try to make up for their lack of toughness and size by chucking a lot of 3s. But that goes cold sometimes in the playoffs, especially without a genuine star to carry. So we'll see how much Mitchell can offer at that point, and how much Rudy can defend all by himself.
If this is true, we are going to be disappointed with how this season plays out.
I think that a lot of people are underestimating the degree to which the 4 position has changed in today’s NBA. The old “stretch 4” is now just “the 4.” If you can’t shoot at all, you don’t get on the court at that spot. And if you aren’t at least an average shooter from distance, they are looking to replace you.
Look at the list of 4 men in the WC. There aren’t many that I would be legitimately worried about Bojan or Joe guarding. Many of them are weak rebounders as well. I don’t see 25 mpg between Joe and Boji being a huge problem defensively. It will cause some issues on the boards. But the benefit of having an elite shooter who can attack close outs and play some pick and roll will be a HUGE boost to the offense. The benefit easily outweighs the cost.
NBA players are huge for a reason.
NBA players are huge for a reason.
