I don’t see who you’d remove to add Sabonis
all the actual all stars are better
Sabonis plays with a metric ton of real NBA talent and his team is barely in the play in but he’s an All Star?
Nah.
I think Sabonis has been better than Sengun. I like both though.
Fox is good, Sabonis has been top 10 for mvp past couple years. After that it’s 35 year old DeRozan. Heurter has been terrible, Murray has been mid. Literally the Kings have nobody else over 6’8 to help Sabonis. Lyles doesn’t count.
you can just watch the playoffs from 2 years ago and it’s obvious that making your team play without any rim protection or stretch 5 threat doesn’t make up for some cool bounce passes. the Kings at their best were young and super high effort and almost dragged the old Warriors down with their energy. Sabonis is totally fine and not at all worth building a real contender around.
Sengun has struggled with scoring efficiency but is otherwise an excellent player in every phase, Sabonis scored exceedingly efficiently, is a genuinely very good rebounder, but has lost a ton of his facilitation game and is a terrible defender. I don’t think the gap is that big (I think Sengun is better) but if I’m splitting ties you better believe I’m taking the best player on the 32-14 Rockets over the second best player on the 24-24 Kings.
I’m not a believer in “team x has to have some guys” but…you can’t tell me the 32-14 Rockets don’t have one of the twelves best players in the conference.
**I type this and can’t sidestep the fact I am watching Amen Thompson single handedly nuke the Grizzlies…this dude is a LOAD
If you made me play offense against these Amen/Eason/Brooks lineups I’d chew glass
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Watching the Rockets now. Amen is so good.
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Irate Dusty couldn’t recruit Jaylen Wells out of the Memphis Grizzlies
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Pretty wild that Memphis’ answer at this point to Ja absences is to bring in Luke Kennard and just have Desmond Bane run point for 30 minutes. (reading draft-time scouting reports of Bane is a trip given what he is now)
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So, as a Bulls fan, I’ve been thinking about viable trades for Lavine and Vuc.
Can someone tell me why this basic framework (assume Bulls want a pick and maybe Orlando doesn’t want to give what they want) doesn’t work? Seems to address an extremely glaring hole for Orlando (this works per the trade machine):
Bulls trade: Zach Lavine
Magic trade: KCP, Cole Anthony
Orlando feels like a great fit for Lavine - he’s best as an off-ball scorer, is an elite shooter, and they seem well built to absord his defensive problems. You still have Gary Harris or Anthony Black around when you want to D up.
Main argument against is that I think Orlando’s recent form may be prompting some existential questions that would prohibit acquiring a $40 million a year player to add to a group that just got absolutely punked at full strength by Portland and seems to lose literally every single game by 20.
I do agree that Orlando feels like a good fit for Lavine. And although they have recent struggles, they are only a half game back in the division to a team who has some real problems of their own (Miami). They already have a couple young all star caliber players to build around. I think they should be buyers and Lavine feels like he would fit next to Franz and Banchero.
“Fun” fact:
The Magic have 1 active player shooting over 33% from 3 on the year - Gary Harris, who just played his first game since New Year’s Day last night.
I just don’t think Lavine’s contract is worth having given he’s not changing their fortunes. I’d prob rather have a couple decent guys on smaller deals who will play a lot more minutes in aggregate.
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To be fair
I conceived of the framework when it seemed that the Magic were like the 3rd or 4th best team in the conference at full strength with a fatal flaw that Lavine would address in a significant fashion.
At this stage, now that they’re strapped to a torture rack every night, the calculation may change
But even if they had the same NetRTG as the Knicks this year, Lavine just doesn’t change their fortunes enough. I think KCP and Mo are prob both at least worth their contracts which makes them reasonably appealing as matching salary for any deal they make for a genuine star to add to their core. Lavine isn’t that and teams prob don’t prefer his salary to KCP + Mo for similar reasons.
Teams that would really want Lavine in the second apron universe are ones that are deluded about how good he is or are desperate to be a little bit better.
Or they have a couple really bad small contracts and are happy to throw in a bad pick to take on Lavine.
I think it’s especially the case for the Magic where they really aren’t sure how good their core is. Like, how good does that next piece need to be for them? For the Nuggets, those guys only had to be Gordon and KCP bc Jokic was a perennial MVP candidate. You’d guess the Magic will need more bc Paolo and Franz will prob not both be All NBA guys.
But hey, maybe they will be and they’re 3-4 years from being the Celtics now.
Beef is suspended and it looks like it’ll fall on Beef’s bobblehead giveaway game lmaoooo
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Bring back the Shock!
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It would be great to have the Shock back to the WNBA.
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Like that Grant Hill is part of the group which is awesome.
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