jbk1234 wrote:Revenged25 wrote:JonFromVA wrote:
Quite the contrary, I was being very intentional.
If Collin isn't going to lift his teammates then our best case is that our team's offensive efficiency approaches his personal efficiency which also needs to be significantly higher than what we're giving up on defense when he's in the game.
We also need to keep in mind that TS% league wide has been skyrocketing ... for instance, league average was 53.4% just 6 years ago.
Of course Collin isn't going to get paid (or not paid) based just on his TS% ...
So you were intentionally skewing the data knowing it was wrong.
Just answer me this, would you have paid Devin Booker 3/4 years in? Just a straight yes or no is needed.
Settle down with the yes or no ultimatums. It's not particularly conducive to a dialogue nor is it particularly relevant to the question facing the Cavs. Booker and Sexton have completely different games and the Suns and Cavs were/are in completely different situations. The Suns drafted Booker in 2015. They then drafted Chriss and Bender in 2016. Within two years it was obvious they were busts. In 2017, they drafted Josh Jackson. By his second season, it was obvious that he too was a bust. The only young players they had to worry about paying when they extended Booker were Bridges and Ayton both of whom were on rookie deals.
I understand that the Suns had a bunch of busts that didn't need to be paid, but you don't pay someone simply because you have no one else to pay, as you've mentioned before, so if Booker wasn't worth it you still shouldn't have paid him.
Like I've said before, I don't think anyone outside of a handful of players are really worth a max contract, but I also acknowledged they get handed out based on a certain amount of production with little variance. Efficient scoring with continual improvements of Sexton's level get's rewarded with a max 100% of the time, heck less does more often than not.
Now if you want to use the argument that Garland, Okoro, and now Allen all need to be paid eventually. What do we really see those contracts/rosters being with those players. I'm not nearly as high on Garland as you, I think he's a very good NBA PG that you'll never feel the need to replace outside of a big time upgrade, but I also don't think he's a guy that you view as a franchise guy or someone that can carry a team. Okoro so far is a good defensive player with some on-ball skills, a flashed offensive game, but once again a guy that can't really carry a team. Allen is a very good NBA center with potential top 5-10 center ability and maybe a potential DPOY at some point, but once again not a player that can carry you.
Sexton needs specific players around him to really help him shine, just like Booker I see both as offense 1st scoring guards, their games are different because Booker gets more points from 3, but Sexton scores just as efficiently and on similar shots doing it in the paint. I think having an elite scorer, closer to 2 or more, is something an NBA team needs to be a true contender and Sexton is in that mold. Philly's biggest issue is that Embiid can get his, but no one else can be relied on to go out and get points on their own either. Part of the Suns issue is that Booker can go get his, but outside of CP3, no one else can really do it and even then it's not always. The Bucks even have that issue with Giannis, but they also have Jrue and Middleton being not quite individual elite scorers but they can each take their turns doing it.
Granted having 2 elite scorers doesn't always work if the rest of the team isn't great either. Portland is a great example because although they have 2 players that can go and get 30+ on any given night, possibly together, positions 3-5 have been underwhelming and/or oft-injured, not to mention their bench. So I get the concerns about locking ourselves in, but if we are going based on projections to build a roster, the Cavs need an elite scorer regardless, that's Sexton. They also need a secondary scorer, might be Garland, might be #3, might be Okoro, or a combination of them being that. They also need to ensure that players will be healthy, and that's been a huge problem for the Cavs.
Even the suggestions that replacing Sexton with Suggs seems like a bad idea. That's still a 6'1 bad defender at PG with a 6'3 defender at SG, but that's not really going to fix the "size" issue that some complain about due to a smaller backcourt just because one of them are good at defense, just like 6'1 good/great defense and 6'5 bad defense would be any different if the end result was that other players needed to shift to accommodate the rest.
