drosereturn wrote:MrFortune3 wrote:Leslie Forman wrote:Well of course Carter has a much better chance of reaching his ceiling, it's about three feet lower.
That's just cold
I think they're similar players in terms of roster fit and what they can give you. Unless the plan is to trade Lauri or WCJ, you don't take Okongwu. That's like taking Gordon, Isaac and Mamba while you already have Vucevic and no balance to the roster.
WCJ isnt an untradeable core like your saying. He is very expendable for moving up or replacing him for Okongwu.
The Bulls can even draft Okongwu and bring him up as the 3rd big 20min garbage minutes to build up trade value.
I didn't say anything about WCJ being untradeable. My exact words were "Unless the plan is to trade Lauri or WCJ, you don't take Okongwu. That's like taking Gordon, Isaac and Mamba while you already have Vucevic and no balance to the roster."
If you take Okongwu...where is he going to play? Lauri and WCJ are going to command 30+ minutes a night each for their roles and development.
Gafford got over 14 mpg as a rookie, Thad was getting just under 25. If you eliminate Felicio and Kornet then that would free up almost 32 minutes a game, but OPJ if healthy is likely to get 30+. Assuming Gafford is getting around 20 mintutes, OPJ gets 30, that would leave around 19 minutes a game.
From a developmental standpoint, you have to trade either WCJ or Lauri to make that work. If you trade Thad, that would free up starter level minutes for Okongwu. But now you once again have to find a way to develop him, defensively he will be fine, offensively is where he is going to need the most work and he will need the ball to do that.
Lauri and WCJ also need the ball to help get their development back on track. You can't just take 3 young bigs, 4 if you include Gafford and say "Hey. let's put them all together and play them minutes and see what shakes out".
Now the exception to that is if the player has franchise altering potential. Okongwu does not. So you don't make that move.