Yes. His handle is actually very good but it’s not polished enough just yet for him to be able to do the things he wants to do; it’s not at Amen’s level yet. I think he has all the potential in the world to be an elite ball handler.
Players such as Paul George and Poole developed a great handle from a much lower base than the one Ausar is starting on.
I think way too much is getting made of his shooting
Not that he’s a good shooter but there are plenty of rotation players in the NBA who have way fewer ancillary skills that don’t shoot well. Not literally everyone needs to can threes. Yes, the floor needs to get spaced but you don’t need 4 three point shooters on the floor. It’s be great if gets ok at it, obviously.
There’s so many levels to “he can’t shoot”
If his “I can’t shoot” baseline includes “but I can do these” in it, my concern level is zero
This was a good breakdown.
“Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women, man.”
I think the player film breakdown format brings out the best and most informative version of him
Interesting stuff. Def worth noting what was said re: new CBA. And everybody thinks expansion is inevitable.
I’m fascinated by how an expansion draft would be done in the modern NBA. The Bobcats/Hornets have been really horrendously bad. The NHL has started super charging their expansion teams. I don’t know enough about hockey to say, but I know in general there’s more parity and randomness in that sport so I assume that is some of the reason for their success. But the NHL also did not used to give their expansion teams this much runway, as I can attest as a very salty fan of the defunct Thrashers. The Wild and Blue Jackets were also started around that time and also have been bad franchises from the beginning
Not really a way to get an expansion NBA team in the playoffs immediately I wouldn’t think.
The immediate success of the expansion teams in NHL has been really really confusing as someone who isn’t even a casual fan at this point.
Think expansion teams in the NBA would basically just add 2 more tanking teams to the league, I think? Which doesn’t personally bother me but is something the NBA would probably take seriously. Would be pretty curious to see how they’d go about it. They’d at least expand the play in, which really isn’t a high bar.
Might depend on how many players the league allows teams to protect.
The advantage in the NBA, at least theoretically, is that you need fewer good players to be competitive than in all of the other major sports. But figuring out expansion is wild since all of the existing teams have been working so hard to structure their roster, cap space, draft picks, etc. Now suddenly a new team from Seattle swoops in and takes some of those guys? Could shake things up in a fun way or a tire fire way. I would assume if you look at the Pistons roster that the type of guys available would be Bojan, Wiseman, Livers, Hayes, etc. and they could protect the entire core of Cade, Ivey, Thompson, Stew, Duren, Sasser. So the expansion teams get mostly middling players unless a team or two has to leave someone decent unprotected.
Over Weaver’s dead body will he leave Wiseman unprotected
In the last expansion draft you could protect 8 players, so the Pistons would protect:
Leaving
I can’t see rookies being exposed. They probably wouldn’t be eligible.
well I think the expansion draft would be before the actual draft
The NBA should make it interesting and allow an owner to swap their entire team in place of the expansion team. So Washington, for example, could just hand their entire roster over to one of the expansion teams and instead draft a full new team from the expansion draft.
They obviously would never do this but I would:
Expand to 32 teams.
Get rid of divisions and conferences.
Shorten the regular season to 64 games (each team plays twice). No back to backs.
Have all 32 teams make the playoffs.
And all 32 participate in the draft lottery, a one night event where every first round slot is determined.
I like some of those…but I don’t know how I feel about “all 32 make the playoffs”. The regular season has to have meaning. Now if what you’re saying is that the top X teams get locked in, home court, etc. while the bottom (32-X) teams have to play in some crazy play-in situation…maybe I’m interested. There may be a way to avoid tanking in such a scenario depending on how you structure the lottery based on that play-in. I just don’t want a 4 month playoff where the 32nd place team has almost the same chance as the 1st place team.
I got your 32 team playoff.
Top 8 are in and seeded.
Next 8 are in the play-in round (or the first round or whatever you want to call it) … and play the winners of the qualifying round (bottom 16 teams play each other – you decide how many games) to earn the right to play in the play-in round.
Reseed the 8 play-in winners based on regular season record and matchup against RS top 8.
(this can easily be adjusted to incorporate East vs West if desired.)
My thought is the extra round makes up for the loss of 18 regular season games. Plus, playoff basketball is just fun. Even if the first round is the (1) Nuggets v. (32) Pistons.
And then since all teams are in the lottery in my scenario, there’s less incentive to tank out of the playoff race.
EDIT: But something like Dirk’s idea would be cool too.