Post#212 » by Fencer reregistered » Tue Oct 6, 2020 10:46 am
I'm going to go against consensus here, and say I'm in favor of keeping Hayward. Yes, his run of injuries may be more than bad luck, but that possibility will be more than baked into his trade value in any deal. Besides, he's only of significant value where he's likely to re-sign, and Boston is one of the likeliest places for that.
Part of the reason to keep Gordon is that of our five best perimeter players, one -- Kemba -- is very questionable to close games. So it would be nice to keep the other four. Overlappingly, Smart/Hayward/Brown/Tatum plus one of our more mobile bigs truly can be a switch-everything defensive unit.
Langford and Grant both seem like pretty good bets to be useful backup perimeter players next season (Grant mainly vs. stretch-4 types). Romeo may still have problems with his 3-pt shooting; Grant may still have problems with any offense except 3-pt shooting; that's why they'll just be backups. But that does suggest our depth could be decent.
The real challenge is beefing up our center-by-committee squad to be better able to defend the boogeymen -- AD, Jokic, Giannis, Bam, Embiid or whoever else might seem particularly scary. Unless jettisoning Hayward advances that in a big (no pun intended) way, I'd favor keeping him around.
Banned temporarily for, among other sins, being "Extremely Deviant".