I'll go with he sucks and the Sixers are still crap. Who knows if/when/how Saric plays on this side of the Atlantic. Embiid may very well be Oden redux. Noel doesn't seem destined for stardom. And there's not a decent guard in sight. When exactly will Philly win 40 games in a season, never mind 50? I guess that something will break their way sooner or later but there is a reason teams in all sports pay a premium for established talent.
Saric will play in Philly next season. Noel was the #6 pick. Should he be destined for stardom? Is that a fair standard? And Philly is about to draft a 6'10 point guard.
Is this so?
Definitely not so, given the number of deals he was able to make. Other teams don't need to talk to him if they don't want to.
Is this so?
Fans - and more importantly the NBA - got mad that he didn't pay lip-service to "winning". He committed to the exact same strategy everyone else in the same situation does and did.
This rings so true to me. When thinking about the Celtics returning to true contender status, it was always going to be about the Nets picks. Short of signing a Durant / Lebron type, or making a blockbuster trade (also using the picks), I always thought the Celtics had to get lucky in THREE different ways in order to capitalize on the picks:
What about the Payton/Orlando trade do you take issue with? Hinkie got back a first round pick to trade down 2 spots. I'm not sure I understand what the issue is?
You can't tank assets. You trade them. The Sonics traded their assets for picks. They did not intentionally sabotage their own team just to improve their draft stock. With the exception of playing big, letting Durant shoot as much as he liked and letting Westbrook to play through his turnovers they didn't do anything different from a normal team.
Pedantry is boring as fuck. They tanked by trading their assets. There have been plenty of other teams that did this, including our very own Celtics, but these are three especially extreme examples.
They did both at the same time. The Sonics were a middling 30-35 win team in the late Allen/Lewis era, thanks to injuries and the mediocrity of their surrounding talent. Dumping Allen and letting Lewis walk brought them down to the second worst record in the league.
Definitions matter.
That is a distinction without a difference, since you can (and often do) achieve both at the same time.
I don't really take any issue with it, but there were reports that Philly found about Orlando's draft promise to Payton and took him specifically to try excise some additional assets from the Magic. On one hand, you could say that's just smart practice, but it seems to have bothered some of the other GMs in the league. Maybe that's making too much of the situation, but the optics of some of the deals were really bad and no doubt contributed to the team replacing him with Colangelo.
The Nets and Kirilenko's handlers have intimated that the deal was made with the expressed intent that Philly would buy him out so he could return home with his sick, pregnant wife. The Sixers not only reneged on that deal, but started fining him for not showing up.
So...Help me understand:
Other than Kirilenko, are there lots of reports of player issues? I ask because Tayshaun Prince has similar criticisms of Ainge breaking promises, and no GM lacks a few critics. I have no sense of how much more prevalent this was for Hinkie versus other GMs.
I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole on this, but it was one of those stupid "unwritten rules of baseball" things where it was considered uncouth to draft a player you didn't want for the sole purpose of fleecing another team.
This is my take-away as well. We can't really rate his team-building skills, but he clearly failed at building long-term trust in his vision and that's why he no longer has a job.
Yeah that is one side. The sixers said publically from the start they wanted him to play. It's not his call after all. He threw a tantrum for being traded to the sixers as far as I can tell.
Hinkie is the best ever . . . . at convincing his bosses to throw away multiple seasons.
Every time I read about the Cs and tanking, I am reminded about this Chad Finn article that demonstrates the fine between success and failure: http://touchingallthebases.blogspot.com/2005/06/pitino-dynasty.html
Not sure if more knowledgeable applies, but sounds like the Sixers aren't interested in signing Noel to an RFA offer.
Especially for a team that has absolutely no shot at contending in 2016-2017. Would be a great trade for Atlanta.
I expect Colangelo to clean house from all of the players from the previous regime possibly as early as this summer. Clearing out the logjam of 5's and acquiring a legitimate starting 1 would kill two birds with one stone.
They would have to extend Noel the year after anyway. Having the ability to go an extra year on a big contract would give them a hand up in retaining Teague as well.
Actually same time for Noel and Teague free agencies. Noel redshirted his first year which is why people forget that this is his 4th season coming up not 3rd.
To be fair Teague is a borderline All-Star who iirc was selected 18 months ago to participate in the game. While he certainly isn't a top tier guy which Noel doesn't ever figure to be either this isn't Ish Smith we are talking about here. He was the best player on the floor in more than one playoff game this spring. I can't imagine Noel bringing back more than a very good starting PG in the prime of his career. Maybe Okafor's value is slightly higher however it's close enough to really be based on the eye of the beholder.
Sure but you are trading Noel who also is under contract for only one year. There are a lot of "ifs" with a project like Philly hear but adding a quality PG, acquiring another quality young veteran for Okafor, a quick Simmons transition, and a healthy Embiid (obv the biggest ? here) suddenly changed the landscape by the All-Star break. They were 3-4 years away however I expect a full retool on the fly and if the moves click this has the potential to be a decent team very soon while still having the upside of future picks plus the Simmons/Embiid development. There is a scenario for a fast and furious leap here if Colangelo makes the right moves and gets a little lucky (Embiid) is all I'm saying. It's very interesting to me now and Colangelo has done this in the past.
I feel the opposite and opine strongly that both healthy bigs will be moved by the draft later this month. Embiid's saving grace is that he hasn't yet established his value due to injury while Noel and Okafor have. Saric could be another one if the price is right.....he certainly has no ties or loyalty to him while Simmons will be playing his position for the foreseeable future.
Sure, but he's also not very good at basketball right now, and they have 3 players who pretty clearly need to play C to be effective. Rotating Noel/Embiid/Okafor is going to be tough, because it means either someone gets too few minutes or has to play out of position or both.
You may want to take another look around the NBA. Center is not a position of scarcity anymore and making deals involving them isn't easy unless they're potential superstars. Which Noel is not.
Ugh. Isn't the idea to move these guys for better players? What are the chances that Clarkson ever becomes as good an NBA player as Teague......if he does hit on that 5-10%(?) you still could have already had this player and all the immediate positives it creates in Teague.
Why would Clarkson want to play in Philly? That's the problem, the FA class is weak and everyone has money, so a team like Philly which is a tire fire in a non-appealing market has little chance.
He is not a good player today. He's a defense only backup at this point, his offensive game is near unplayable as a starter. It's also not at all clear he's improving, his offense might have taken a slight step forward this year, I guess? TOV went up, and his percentages look better, but it's mostly just that he got more dunks, his shooting of jumpshots and FTs actually regressed if anything. His defense also backslid some from terrific to just very good.
You are correct and I apologize. I shouldn't have typed what I was thinking even though what I was thinking wasn't meant to sound like it did.
All good. I get we're all passionate on this board, which is good. I just don't see this as a cut-and-dry decision. But I don't think we're that far off. Teague is a nice player and Philly desperately needs to become more credible, especially since everybody and their aunt has money in FA. I just think that I would exhaust non-trade options first for a PG.
This really understates Noel's ability now. Look at the per 36 numbers for Biyombo.
| Season | Age | MP | FG | FGA | FG% | 3P | 3PA | 3P% | 2P | 2PA | 2P% | FT | FTA | FT% | ORB | DRB | TRB | AST | STL | BLK | TOV | PF | PTS |
| 2012-13 | 20 | 2186 | 2.6 | 5.7 | .451 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0 | 2.6 | 5.7 | .451 | 1.2 | 2.3 | .521 | 3.2 | 6.4 | 9.6 | 0.6 | 0.5 | 2.4 | 1.4 | 3.2 | 6.4 |
| 2013-14 | 21 | 1072 | 3.0 | 4.8 | .611 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0 | 3.0 | 4.8 | .611 | 1.5 | 3.0 | .517 | 3.5 | 8.8 | 12.3 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 2.9 | 1.3 | 4.2 | 7.5 |
| Season | Age | MP | FG | FGA | FG% | 3P | 3PA | 3P% | 2P | 2PA | 2P% | FT | FTA | FT% | ORB | DRB | TRB | AST | STL | BLK | TOV | PF | PTS |
| 2014-15 | 20 | 2311 | 4.7 | 10.2 | .462 | 0.0 | 0.0 | .000 | 4.7 | 10.2 | .462 | 2.2 | 3.6 | .609 | 2.9 | 6.6 | 9.5 | 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 3.2 | 11.6 |
| 2015-16 | 21 | 1965 | 5.6 | 10.8 | .521 | 0.0 | 0.0 | .500 | 5.6 | 10.7 | .521 | 2.5 | 4.2 | .590 | 2.8 | 7.1 | 9.9 | 2.2 | 2.2 | 1.8 | 2.9 | 3.5 | 13.7 |
Not sure why you think that shows him as much better?
What is Noel's contract situation, and why is it impacting his trade value? He has two seasons of his rookie contract left at 4.3 and 5.8 million, and then becomes a restricted free agent. Do you think somebody's going to offer him the max or something? I suspect that's unlikely, barring a major step forward in the next two years. Either way, the idea of 2 years of cheap control and the right to match what the market offers isn't driving his price down.
He has one year at $4.4M, that $5.8M is the qualifying offer for his RFA year not a salary. So yes they have the right to match which is nice, but he only has 1 year left, and then he's going to get a big contract from someone based on potential. I think RFA control is overrated for non-max players, since you pretty much only get to match the top of the market, it only helps you keep a guy who really wants to leave.
