Duke4life831 wrote:
Oh I agree that he hasnt been good defensively in the timespan, no one really on this team has been all that good defensively in that timespan. The main thing I was pointing out was just a solid trajectory when it comes to his overall shot. And with a consistent shot (3pt and FT) that opens up him to the kind of potential many were intrigued with.
There are two major differences between Kuminga and Wiseman in my opinion.
1. Kuminga's offense is far more team friendly (fast break, cutting, lob threat, drive threat and so on).
2. The defensive assignments and responsibilities is drastically different. Even if Kuminga never becomes a good defender you can still hide him on defense. You can either just put him on the worst perimeter player, or if he is an okay on ball defender but bad off ball defender, you just toss him on the primary ball handler. You cant do that with a bad defensive 5. You just cant hide a bad defensive 5.
Now ya if Kuminga never becomes a defensive player than it drastically lowers his potential, but you can still hide a bad perimeter defender.
I'd say in general, yes to all the above. Especially the jumper, which I kinda hit on the Moody thread (his 3pt shot looks more legit than Moody's, going solely by eyeballing results) However specifically...
Kuminga was put in a MUCH better position than Wiseman ever was. Wiseman was never a slasher, yet he's being given the ball around the same area Kuminga is, and much like with Kuminga.. our team kinda stands and watches. So Kuminga can work with that, because thats his strength.. but Wiseman? That wasn't a good plan
As for defense, I agree with the idea that its easier to hide perimeter players, but there a lot of sub-points that mean its pretty irrelevant when talking about Kuminga:
- we've only been able to hide guards, not wings. Think about our run, since 2012. When we've had a bad frontcourt (3/4/5) player, they stuck out tremendously. We've not had a poor defender getting 20+ minutes on our winning teams since David Lee, and we were all pretty glad when that ended
- the only potential exception to that is Zaza (who didnt play 20mpg but still), and thats because we had 3 elite defenders in their prime with KD, Dray and Klay. Add into that how teams would force perimeter shots to try and keep up with our crazy elite offense, and it really favors them
- I actually do disagree that we cant hide a bad defensive 5. The first 2 months, Bjelica was a heavily positive defender according to tracking, metrics, etc.. and while that petered out hard, he's still a net neutral when we switch to zone. There's an argument about whether switching to zone is sustainable for about half the game, for sure, but I dont think its impossible, and I think our more frequent use of zone this year is a nod to that
- but I dont think you can hide Kuminga unless we're talking about post-Steph, because while he and Poole are our PGs, they have to occupy that hidden spot. And that's not factoring in Klay, who may or may not regain his defensive form. At the end of the day, whether its at 3, 4, or 5.. Kuminga has to be able to defend in our system, or we're going to have a problem. I mean he'll still be useful, like a very dynamic Eric Paschall, but as a starter? I dont know.
But thats all a little off-message here. The point is more that Kuminga, when given lets say about 50% of the adversity Wiseman had to deal with his rookie season, struggled in a very similar way. So either people need to chill on blessing Kuminga as a future stud, or ease the hell up on Wiseman who had to deal with COVID, no offseason, no veteran C help, and of course the biggest obstacle of all, Kelly fkn Oubre
