Also, it’ll be fascinating to see how Thib will do with Ausar and Ron on defense. Will they make the Pistons play them 4 on 5, given they’re non-shooter perimeter wing players?
I think you’ve ID’d the source of the double they’re going to put on Cade 
1 Like
Cade will score 30-40 no matter what! IRRELEVANT! /s
I’m a moron
but for me the biggest thing for Pistons will be - can Duren guard KAT to the perimeter? If not, how much do they play Stew? Does that hurt the offense?
then
Can the vets - Hardaway, Harris, Beasley, Schroeder make them pay for over-indexing on help on Cade
Knicks blitzed Cade early in a previous game and got lit up by Hardaway and Beasley.
I would guess they don’t try to double him too early and wait til he drives. Try to cut him off and force him to spin back and blitz him there. Force him into some pick six turnovers.
The NBA is insane
I don’t think this is a huge surprise? Durant is going to be dealt and then they’ll have to figure out where else they’re going to make changes. At which point the roster will be bereft of talent outside of Booker and a bunch of vets that are mid level exception types. Seems totally plausible they decide to deal Booker to get their picks back from Houston, tho I’d guess Ishbia won’t want to actually tear it down bc he’s not built like that?
With all of that going on, does Bud even want to be there? It’s not hard to see why the Suns wouldn’t. They haven’t even picked a direction yet.
1 Like
This one was deserved tho
It would require Ishbia to admit that he was wrong about his team. They should tear it down and rebuild from there. They have KD and Book as valuable assets. My guess is Ish will just double down and run it back
They seemed like they were in good shape before they traded for Beal. Massive contract at a position/set of skills they didn’t need. Made it impossible to fill out the roster with complementary players.
2 Likes
I think the problem was that they boxed themselves into a corner where Bradley Beal was the only avenue to improve the team after they traded an entire rotation of productive players for Kevin Durant, and Ayton (shockingly! (sarcastic)) proved useless
Like the reason why Beal was available for basically matching salarly only (and some ludicrously protected firsts) is because his contract was a millstone, and they did because they had little of value to offer
I don’t think they would’ve been able to bring in enough depth pretty much no matter what. But they were wrong that Bradley Beal is an actual star of some variety. I really don’t think it changes much. They prob could’ve been somewhere between 7th and 10th instead of falling out this year.
Heard an interesting discussion of who was more screwed, Suns or 76ers?
At least the 76ers have the potential fix of “please stay healthy, Embiid.” Not sure what that ceiling is, but it definitely wouldn’t be miss the playoffs. Suns aren’t good even when all of their players play.
I know they have problems, but what was the argument for Philly being in even worse shape than the Suns?
1 Like
Basically that they were stuck with Embiid and Paul George, but the Suns could find a taker for Durant (and Booker.) The Suns could at least blow it up and start over if they wanted to.
If Embiid is absolutely done, it’s a hard comp. Both would have a player of value (Maxey, Booker) but no draft assets. Generally, I’d trust Morey to navigate out of the mess more than I would whatever the H E L L the Suns have
Yeah, I question whether Ishbia would actually take the steps to blow it up though. Doesn’t feel like something he would do until it is way too late to get approriate value for his players
This was my thought as well. The Sixers have two distressed assets locked in for 3 more years while you can at least believe that Booker and Durant hold a lot of value on the trade market if they wanted to blow it up this summer
I don’t think he has a choice? Durant is generally viewed as “gone”
1 Like