If strength and weight are an issue at the four, won’t they also be an issue at the five?
Personally, I’m not that worried about Brandon’s weight. 225 at 6-foot-8 seems OK to me. I think the biggest hurdle will be learning to play in a way that leverages his length, strength and athleticism. Playing a bit tougher, going through not around people, etc. There’s just a switch that he has to learn to flip.
In this way, being compared to DJ Wilson is a compliment but also, potentially, an indicator Johns needs to up the physicality before getting productive minutes.
And this is what I think people mean when they say this is one of the deeper UM teams/rotations, that a recruit of Johns’s caliber is possibly searching for minutes.
I am just going by my eyes and don’t have numbers on how much weight any of these guys can lift but my guess is that Livers, Iggy, and Matthews are all functionally stronger than Johns at this point.
I know I am coming off as a contrarian but I think this team is not very deep because of youth. Next year and the year after that we will be deeper. I think Johns can get on the floor. I think it is unlikely he will get on the floor as a 5. I also think it important for the success of our team that he gets on the floor as our seventh or eighth man.
I hear you, youth is not necessarily reliable depth. I was comparing this to years where recruits like Smotrycz or Chatman, or others vaguely in Johns’s rankings range or even lower, like Doyle, were penciled in for serious minutes pretty much out of necessity. Or even last year with Livers and Poole.
The question that has to be answered:
Is Michigan better with Livers/Johns at the 4/5? Livers/Davis? Livers/Castleton?
If the answer isn’t Livers/Johns, it will probably be hard for Johns to crack the rotation.
Hey Rian, nice job on your first two articles. Welcome to the gang!
Maybe my train of thought is just misguided, but isn’t this question a little unfair because Davis and Castleton really aren’t even in consideration for the 4 in the “4/5” discussion?
Maybe the question I’d ask is, are we better playing small ball or are we better playing a traditional big?
Oh Fridays…
My point was just that if Johns can’t play the five, where is he going to play?
We’re clearly better off if we can play both ways.
Yeah now I read your question and that is the obvious point. My bad!
I sure hope the answer is (eventually) Johns at the 5 to open some things up for the guys who excel at driving to the hoop.
You seem to be assuming that Livers is locked in as the starter at the 4, which is what most people are probably hoping for, but it’s by no means certain. He will probably start the season there, if for no other reason than experience and familiarity with the system, but he may eventually be passed by Bradzeikas, and possibly even by Johns. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that’s likely, but I don’t think it’s crazy either.
Not saying Livers will necessarily start at the four. Hit on the fact that he was with the twos in my takeaways post.
My point is that I’m comfortable with splitting 120 minutes between Poole, Matthews, Iggy and Livers. Right now it will be hard to crack into that pool of minutes for Johns.
Also, I would worry a lot about Iggy/Johns as a 4/5 than Livers/Johns, I think Livers provides that extra defensive flexibility.
I think there’s a very real shot that Poole, Matthews, Iggy and Livers are 4 of our 5 best players (along with X) and there could be a significant drop between them and the 6th. I think there has to be at least the option to get those 4 on the floor together and my guess is that we see some Livers at the 5 at some point this year. Johns on paper makes more sense at the 5, but I worry he won’t be ready for Big Ten level physicality just yet, and I have no concerns that Livers can defend and embrace hard contact against bigger guys.
I wonder if this all amounts to Johns probably won’t be ready to play any position relative to the other guys. In terms of a rotation of our 8 best players, Johns seems to be competing against Brooks and Davis for the 7th and 8th spot. Maybe Brooks and Davis are both doing very well? My assumption was that you could either make room by making Poole point and Matthews 2 in spots. Or you could also make room for Johns’ minutes by making Livers a backup at 5 in spots.
If you are doing this, we are just talking about semantics and both guys will be on the floor at the same time. The fact that Johns is currently doing drills, etc. with the 5s, means that he would technically be more of the 5, but rotationally it would be the same thing.
I’ve never been as high on Livers as some, but right now I just don’t see Johns beating him out for minutes – but a lot can change over the course of the season (remember, Livers played limited minutes early last year).
Interestingly the plan was for Livers to start from game one last year but his head was spinning too much and NBADRIII was forced into the starting unit until the fateful game in East Lansing when Livers entered the starting rotation, and the rest is history…
Livers backing up 5 would not mean Johns would necessarily be playing alongside Livers when Livers is playing 5 would it?