NBA Trade Deadline Discussion
- Thread starter Jed Zeppelin
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The mind boggles at how quickly Philly will rebuild. They could pretty easily end up with a roster next year will be Michael Carter-Williams, Gary Harris, Andrew Wiggins, Thaddeus Young, and Nerlens Noel, plus whatever else they end up with to stay over the salary floor and their bevy of 2nd round picks.
bowiac said:
They also own the rights to Arsalam Kazemi, who's playing in Iran currently. He was definitely a bit of a tweener in last year's draft, but he was a guy that advanced metrics loved.
bowiac said:
Yes, I agree fully. That's a really good young nucleus. And I like their strategy of acquiring all these second round picks in such a deep draft. Use them all, and I think they can find one or two useful players there - and who knows, maybe they get lucky and one turns out to be really good. But MCW/Wiggins/Noel is quite a triumvirate. If they manage this right, they're going to be a force in a few years.
BigSoxFan said:
I don't think anybody is implying that they're done rebuilding, just that they're off to a good start. The lineup above has talent, but won't win many games for years. It would be elite defensively though. Wiggins/Young/Noel has the potential to be a devastating defensive nucleus.
As for the Hawes/Turner thing, I don't know how much of a market there was to rent either. They're both average players at best and UFAs at the end of the season, too. The Hawes return, in particular, seems really good if it includes the Orlando pick and Cleveland's own pick. If they'd gotten the #29 pick for Hawes, everybody would consider it a coup. But somehow getting the 33rd pick isn't enough of a return.
Well, I don't think they're gonna compete for a title immediately or anything, but that's an unbelievable defensive team potentially, and they have plenty of cap space to replace Young with a post guy if they need.BigSoxFan said:
They've also got ~26M in cap space, so if they really want to go for it, they could try and sign Carmelo, LeBron, or Bosh, depending on how the various opt-outs shake out. Hell, if they can unload Thaddeus Young's contract (likely) and Jason Richardson's (more difficult), they could try to sign two of those guys.
bowiac said:
If they wait a year, Young will likely opt out to get a long-term deal, they could buy out Richardson's player option, and go after Marc Gasol, Love, Aldridge and Aaron Afflalo. Depending on how Wiggins develops as a scorer, a line-up of MCW-Afflalo-Wiggins-Noel-Gasol could grow into a contender. That's an insane defensive team, and if Wiggins can become a lead scorer with Gasol, Afflalo, and MCW as secondary options, they'd be very, very good.
Yes, the NBA is a league that often eats its young. Better to trade for or sign as a FA at least one established star. Also, the quick rebuild assumes that players like Wiggins, Harris and Noel perform as advertised.
Yeah - I'd take Embiid #1 regardless of need. Even if they think Noel is Larry Sanders, I'd take Embiid and sort out the position mismatch later.nighthob said:
The Clippers have to be waiting on a buyout big man (like Kaman or Okafor) to help shore up their back-up bigs. Ryan Hollins as your 3rd big man is not going to cut it for an NBA title contender. Also, rumors are circling that they would be the best team to bring in Jason Collins.
It's not a defensive problem, but I watch a lot of Rockets games, so I'm perpetually terrified of creating an Asik-Dwight Howard situation offensively. It obviously depends how limited Noel's offensive game is, and whether they have the perimeter shooting to make up for it. I love MCW, but he'd pose problems there.nighthob said:
Anyway, a good problem to have obviously. If the Celtics could be so lucky.
The other message of the philly thing is that fans are REALLY tolerant of being bad if there is a plan.
Rondo not tearing his knee and being healthy/available at the draft is a fun alternate history to think about.
This. No doubt in my mind ainge woulda completely blown it up along w KG and Pierce by moving Rajon this past summer too.Jed Zeppelin said:
I think Philly should worry about getting some veteran presence. I think it's tough for a very young team to develop when they re losing and they don't have some old hands aboard to steady the ship.
Nick Kaufman said:
That's where Thaddeus Young comes in. No one wants to disappoint a man named Thaddeus.
Not that I think this is wrong, but I'm asking for devil's advocate purposes here... Do we have any evidence of this?Nick Kaufman said:
bowiac said:
It's hard to quantify. People will say teams w lots of lotto picks suffer with no vet leadership, but theres not any evidence that said lotto picks just aren't very good. Those Cleveland teams with LeBron didn't have any great vet leadership and they still won 60 plus games. It's a talent league. The vet coaching up the young pups is nice fluff story line to add value to crappy older players, but i don't think it's actually a thing.
For example, the Bobcats have been in the lottery for a while now, if they had hit on one of those picks, we wouldn't be saying oh ya they need a vet presence . I guess it may have a marginal impact on off the court stuff, but I'd have a hard time believing it impacts wins what-so-ever.
Oh I think youth adversely impacts wins in the NBA. There are 19,680 minutes for players in an NBA regular season (82 x 48 x 5). I bet if you looked at the total minutes played by first, second and third year players for each team going back 20 years or so, there would be an inverse relationship between minutes played by young players and wins.
But that begs the question that Bowiac was asking. Will a predominantly young team benefit from having a few old hands around, or lose just as much without them? That's the part that's difficult to quantify.
I remember when Pitino brought in ex-Bull Randy Brown to teach his young team how to be winners. It didn't help a bit. But on the flip side, you see teams like the mid-90's Dallas Mavericks with all of that cover-of-Sports-Illustrated young talent (and very few veterans) that couldn't win 30 games a year. Who knows, with a few decent veterans around, those teams might have done better.
But that begs the question that Bowiac was asking. Will a predominantly young team benefit from having a few old hands around, or lose just as much without them? That's the part that's difficult to quantify.
I remember when Pitino brought in ex-Bull Randy Brown to teach his young team how to be winners. It didn't help a bit. But on the flip side, you see teams like the mid-90's Dallas Mavericks with all of that cover-of-Sports-Illustrated young talent (and very few veterans) that couldn't win 30 games a year. Who knows, with a few decent veterans around, those teams might have done better.
Basketball players learn more from their teammates on the floor than they do from the coaches. I've seen this at every level but every situation is different.Nick Kaufman said:
It depends on the character/maturity of the young players. In DC for example, you draft Wall with the 1st pick and give him knucklehead running mates like Nick Young, JaVale, and Blatche.....now that's a flat out recipe for disaster which wasted two years of Wall's career. We've seen his game really develop once those guys were replaced by veterans such as Nene and Ariza.
Youth has never won on its own in the NBA regardless of talent whereas at other levels of basketball we've seen talent come out on top simply because it was so overwhelming (Kentucky several years ago for example).......in the NBA it is extremely rare to overwhelm the league with young talent since execution is at the core of success at the higher levels of play.
Roster construction is a balance but since the Sixers admittedly aren't worrying about winning anytime soon they have plenty of time to assess exactly how much veteran leadership the team needs.
bowiac said:
To continue playing devil's advocate, we know coaches say it matters. Do we have any evidence that it doesn't? The 'we should only believe what we can measure' concept works both ways, if we're being honest about it.
Of course. I was genuinely asking if anyone had seen it studied. In the absence of that, it comes down to our null hypothesis of course, as with anything else.
I think the wall argument proves my pt. Its not the age of the player its the maturity and talent level. Vets are by definition better because theyve lasted in the league and not washed out, but it doesnt mean a young core cant grow together if its the correct pieces. Not having great established vets didnt hurt the pacers and okcs development as teams.
bowiac said:
I don't think you could study this. There simply isn't a functional data set out there for addressing the question and building one is impossible.
Why not look at whether young players with "veteran leadership" (needs to be defined obviously), develop better than players without? That wouldn't be perfect, but I think it would shed some light.JakeRae said:
Having watched exactly one Magic game this year, his numbers look extremely similar to his career averages.
Yep, this is true. Zach Lowe gives what sounds like a reasonable rounddown on what Big Baby should bring:
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/big-men-on-jason-collins-returning-to-the-nets-and-glen-davis-joining-the-clippers/
Also be interesting to see if Granger signs with the Clippers or the Spurs. I'm having a hard time seeing his role on either team, but again a case of barely having seen him since his return.
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/big-men-on-jason-collins-returning-to-the-nets-and-glen-davis-joining-the-clippers/
Also be interesting to see if Granger signs with the Clippers or the Spurs. I'm having a hard time seeing his role on either team, but again a case of barely having seen him since his return.