I'm very optimistic about his ability to improve in playmaking, just based on how awful his instincts on D looked last year and at Cal, and how much he's improved them. He might be a guy who is smart enough to learn things explicitly that a lot of guys do just through natural feel.
Agree: I don't think he realizes how long he is and how much space that gives, especially on 3-pointers. He also doesn't seem to realize that guys sometimes close him out short because he's such a threat to drive, whereas Jaylen has gotten quite good at shooting over short closeouts. I'm guessing that after another summer of work, Tatum will shore up that hole though.
Giannis? There's probably about a 20% chance he becomes disgruntled within the next 2 years.
He might become disgruntled, but any Antetokounmpo trade is a ways off as he just started the first year of his new extension and he’s going to be eligible for one of those skip-a-tier Designated Veteran contracts when it comes time to extend.
Sure, although exactly the same applied to Kyrie in summer 2016, in arguably a better basketball situation.
I called out that pass play by Tatum in the game thread. That’s exactly what he needs to start doing and I was so excited to see it. He gets swallowed up easily near the hoop and gets blocked, a ton. If he starts recognizing and passing off to a rolling teammate, it’ll be tremendous.
https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/BOS/2018.html has Blocked attempts ("Blkd") for both regular season and playoff games.
If I'm reading this correctly, Tatum leads the team with 60 shots blocked. Jaylen is next up.
And they all shoot and attack closeouts at very high to elite levels. There won't be any "only one ball" issues.
Well my point about that is that you won't see all five of them average 20 points and 7 assists, because there's only so many shots to go around. And so when it comes to All-Star voting, they won't all get on the team because their individual stats just won't line up with what other guys on other teams are doing. But that won't mean they aren't playing at an All-Star level; on the contrary, I think that group of five guys has the very real possibility of ALL playing at an All-Star level next year, at the same time.
I think we all agree with this. Kyrie will probably be the only all-star and that may be a reputational thing vs. pure numbers. Hayward/Brown/Tatum will all probably be in the 14-18 range. I expect Al to be around 10 or so in the Draymond mold where he does everything else that doesn’t get appreciated as much. The biggest thing is that this team will be impossible to gameplan for. It will be the NBA’s whack-a-mole where you try to shut down Kyrie but then Jaylen hangs 25-30 on you. Or Tatum. Or Hayward.
Yep, that's exactly how I see it. Cannot wait. It'll be the NBA equivalent of the fully loaded Patriots offense. Who do you game plan for?
You’ll basically have to do what the Bucks are doing now. Mug the shit out of them knowing that the refs can’t/won’t call everything.
In fairness that was caused by Cleveland’s attempt to trade Irving to Phoenix without first speaking to him. So in Irving’s mind he wasn’t ever getting the designated veteran contract because the Cavs were determined to trade him.
Yeah, to be honest, I’m not 100% sold on the last 3 guys on my list. I think we’ll be having Simmons vs. Tatum debates for a long time.
I mean don’t get me wrong, I love Simmons, but holy fuck is Tatum good. He’s a lot better than I was expecting and I had projected him as a future MVP candidate.
Agree. Not to sidetrack the thread, but Playoff Al is probably the biggest reason the Cs are overperforming this postseason. It's like having a Draymond who can shoot.
Embiid I think really really hard about because of the injuries and conditioning issues. Simmons is a hard pass: he's shown no signs that he can improve his shot at all. Towns I probably would take, just because I think Brad would fix his D and deploy him much better on offense.
I love Al like many here and think his rep is hilariously wrong. I also loved the way the announcers kept defending him on all-star weekend as deserving.
It is good watching him bully ball a lot more in these playoffs. He has really dug in and decided to create some offense for himself, not just everyone else.
Indeed. And I think it brings us back around to the Jaylen-Tatum "debate" in that we have to assume Brad and Danny are watching how people play with other people. I mean, I miss Kyrie, but one of the things I miss is his two man game with Horford which was beautiful in itself in addition to opening up other things.
Holy fuck is right. He does everything better than I expected, but most of all it's his BBIQ and great big Saturn nuts that make me believe we are watching the next Celtic Great take his first baby steps. My goodness.
Haha. No. You want to talk about losing face among players? Convincing him to come here in FA, he gets hurt, misses season, and then you deal him? You essentially took away his FA decision with him never really playing. It will not happen.
He enters the discussion once they get their 1000th postseason win this season.
His contract makes him almost untradeable anyways but there is no way the thought even enters Ainge's mind.
