michaelm wrote:Depends whom you regard as “they”. Some in the organisation clearly value bigs, the trade for Bogut was the keynote of the ownership change, they put years into Smilovic and Jones, and drafted Wiseman at 2, have treated his meniscal injury with iimmense care, and have hired multiple coaches with a reputation for coaching bigs to aid his development.
I agree there is not much place for a conventional plodding big in Kerr’s scheme, and believe they drafted Wiseman to be an offensive player eventually, although how keen Kerr was is unclear. I also agree there is not much place for the offensive potential he has flared at times, 3 point shooting and dribbling and what have you, this season and catching lobs should be about all he does. Kerr had someone on the roster who excelled at that in Javale McGee and didn’t play him much particularly in the play-offs though.
He is huge physically already however, and if he is not being pushed around in late season NBA games I could see some role in limited minutes rim protecting/altering shots, rebounding, boxing out etc in regard to which which he seems to have been drilled, and perhaps tiring elite large opposition bigs, if he doesn’t get in the way defensively otherwise, the latter admittedly a big if. Joel Embiid in particular is elite in many respects but being possessed of elite stamina is not among them.
The they I was referencing to was the ownership front office coaching in regards to getting a big with the two way instead of Chiozza or Weatherspoon.
I always noted the change in philosophy when they had Bogut to the centers they are targeting now. No one knows the decision making that went into choosing bigs, but by induction I assumed the front office changes matched the change in big men they favored. If you look at the Clippers, Zubac is the type of bigs that the Warriors targeted early in the dynasty.
The transition came and the last center that was worth anything was McGee when they made the push to go younger and went with Jones. Since then they always had a center in mind to fit in their schemes. They even neglected McGee who was a serviceable backup in favor of choosing Jones.
They haven’t been good at identifying any useful big men in some time. The issue is they may have lost a part of the front office decision makers that were good at picking big men because they were nailing most of the choices early on. And from Myers past 95.7 interview he seemed to imply the coaches influencing the decisions that they preferred going smaller.