Scalabrine wrote:jasonxxx102 wrote:Scalabrine wrote:
RJ had more value than Lauri at the time of the trade. There isn't much debating that.
There is definitely debating that because Barrett sucks and be sucked a year ago too. Lauri was at least intriguing.
At 24 and his 5th year in the league, Markkanen had a per possession career low in points per game, rebounds per game, 3pt%. He found a new role as a SF that made him more useful, but RJ had (and still has) Star potential. You have a short term memory.
Markannen had a frustrating career up until this season, but frustrating because he would look really good for stretches and then regress, but he’s been better than Barrett for pretty much every season of his career. I don’t think he’s as impactful as his numbers this year, but it’s highly doubtful RJ will ever have a year as good as Markannen has had this year.
I guess you can say RJ still has star potential because you can say it about anyone approaching 23, but at this point after having sunk over $100 million on his extension, I imagine the Knicks would take him simply being a league average player considering how horrible he’s been. He’s been consistently bad for his whole career now and getting worse. He’s one of the worst players in the league by every single metric before you even get into the contract.
When you try to find some silver lining to his game, it’s really impossible. Negative offensive player every year of his career. Negative defensive player every year of his career and Knicks worst defender this year. Even Wiggins didn’t pull of being a negative player over replacement player on both sides of the ball his first 4 years. He’s negative over a replacement player for his career. Markannen was frustrating, but better than RJ every year he’s been in the league at half the money.
Barrett has been consistently bad at every aspect of playing basketball since he’s walked in the door and getting worse at shooting, where he at least had one decent year shooting 3s in his second year.
He’s just horrible on both sides of the court with not a single positive sign he’s going to ever be better than league average, let alone worth his contract or a star. His extension and usage is an albatross around a team that has a lot of decent things going for it otherwise. I’m not some advanced stats tell the whole story guy, but in his case, you watch him and he’s bad on both sides of the ball and his metrics simply match up with his game.
His extension felt crazy at the time. but teams always struggle to cut their losses on high draft picks. They showed him a vote of confidence and he’s given them his worst year in a bad career. He’s improved at nothing in the last 3 years and is worse at shooting. Type of player you don’t want on your team eating minutes on high usage for small money, let alone $30 million.
