Bagley will start soon
- Thread starter sauce-26
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Bjelica is scoring 4pts a game and 3 rebounds a game over the last 10. I mean, do we just need a guy to stand outside the 3pt line to create space? Anyone will do.
I'm not bashing Bjelica. We need to win games to stay in the playoff hunt. If a guy isn't performing, what are we holding on to? I don't think it's a slump either. Teams are forcing him to drive to the basket rather than give him that open shot. They're up so tight on him because he's no threat to drive past. If he does to drive, it's a win for the defense, because it's not his game.
Marvin has shown he can hit a contested 18 ft shot, face up and drive past his man, or play with his back to the basket. Marvin adds versatility and we're better off trying to figure out how to use it, rather than let other teams force into playing essentially 4 on 5.
Edit: I realize you were not pushing for Bjelica. Just that a shooter is needed. I went off on my own tangent because that's what was on my mind. If we don't have another shooter, it may force the team back into the fan hated double high post. I get it.
I'm not bashing Bjelica. We need to win games to stay in the playoff hunt. If a guy isn't performing, what are we holding on to? I don't think it's a slump either. Teams are forcing him to drive to the basket rather than give him that open shot. They're up so tight on him because he's no threat to drive past. If he does to drive, it's a win for the defense, because it's not his game.
Marvin has shown he can hit a contested 18 ft shot, face up and drive past his man, or play with his back to the basket. Marvin adds versatility and we're better off trying to figure out how to use it, rather than let other teams force into playing essentially 4 on 5.
Edit: I realize you were not pushing for Bjelica. Just that a shooter is needed. I went off on my own tangent because that's what was on my mind. If we don't have another shooter, it may force the team back into the fan hated double high post. I get it.
most important thing in basketball is to have balance between frontcourt and backcourt, so teams have harder time defend you.. if you have good shooters, defense must strech and you can exploit that with your inside game, also the other way around if you have good inside game, your backcourt will have more space.
as for Davis, Pelicans just can not build anything to help him.. their backcourt is terible and they do not even try to make it better, so he is helpless.. but when he gets to a team with better options they will instantly make them contenders..
at this moment basketball is pick and roll game, so primarly handlers, can impact team more and get better stats.. this is why Harden can get team further than Davis, but at the end they both have same number of titles..
no in my view of sports is just did you win the title or not, players stats, individual awards, did a team have more than .500, did they made a playoffs it is not important, so in that view I will write some things about Bagley..
first I did not watched him on Duke, so I had no idea about him except videos.. but what I saw so far I believe he is perfect fit for championship team and player of the future..
first thing, why fit for championship team.. because he can be a star, without team needing to adapt to him.. he doesn't need ball, he can be great defender, basically you can just get more from him in terms of energy and offensive rebounds, and never less, as he will never have 6-7 TO or 1-10 shooting.. he will not be player that drives you alone there, but he is perfect fit..
second thing is why I believe he is player built for future.. I think in future basketball most important thing will be how many positions you can defend, and can you run.. if you have a big that can defend 3 or more positions he can have huge mismatch on offense.. now if Bagley stays just inside scoring and rebounding guy he will have this 24-10, but since basketball science went so far, if you have desire, shooting and ball handling skills can be learned, I really expect him to be 3-4 player in couple of years.. he has all the tools, we will just see how hard he practices..
and just one more player I want to mention.. LeBron is best player of a last decade, one of best players ever.. and he has 3 titles, out of those 3, one is when Pop decided not to make foul and other one is after Green got suspended.. So you have one of best players in history winning just 3 titles, which could easily be just one.. what does this tell you? when you adapt whole team and organisation towards one player, you are easy to read, and all other players can not reach their potential.. it is not strange that every player that played with LeBron did not get better than he was before him..
and this is why it is good that in this learning phase of Kings team, you have different players taking last shoots..
as for Davis, Pelicans just can not build anything to help him.. their backcourt is terible and they do not even try to make it better, so he is helpless.. but when he gets to a team with better options they will instantly make them contenders..
at this moment basketball is pick and roll game, so primarly handlers, can impact team more and get better stats.. this is why Harden can get team further than Davis, but at the end they both have same number of titles..
no in my view of sports is just did you win the title or not, players stats, individual awards, did a team have more than .500, did they made a playoffs it is not important, so in that view I will write some things about Bagley..
first I did not watched him on Duke, so I had no idea about him except videos.. but what I saw so far I believe he is perfect fit for championship team and player of the future..
first thing, why fit for championship team.. because he can be a star, without team needing to adapt to him.. he doesn't need ball, he can be great defender, basically you can just get more from him in terms of energy and offensive rebounds, and never less, as he will never have 6-7 TO or 1-10 shooting.. he will not be player that drives you alone there, but he is perfect fit..
second thing is why I believe he is player built for future.. I think in future basketball most important thing will be how many positions you can defend, and can you run.. if you have a big that can defend 3 or more positions he can have huge mismatch on offense.. now if Bagley stays just inside scoring and rebounding guy he will have this 24-10, but since basketball science went so far, if you have desire, shooting and ball handling skills can be learned, I really expect him to be 3-4 player in couple of years.. he has all the tools, we will just see how hard he practices..
and just one more player I want to mention.. LeBron is best player of a last decade, one of best players ever.. and he has 3 titles, out of those 3, one is when Pop decided not to make foul and other one is after Green got suspended.. So you have one of best players in history winning just 3 titles, which could easily be just one.. what does this tell you? when you adapt whole team and organisation towards one player, you are easy to read, and all other players can not reach their potential.. it is not strange that every player that played with LeBron did not get better than he was before him..
and this is why it is good that in this learning phase of Kings team, you have different players taking last shoots..
I think the conventional wisdom about basketball being about the inside/outside game used to be true. Even after the Warriors won their first title I was still making the argument you're making now: that it wasn't sustainable. Their shooters got hot, every team they faced was limited by an injury to a key player. Basically that a team winning with run and gun was a fluke and defense-first was still the right way to build a dynasty. Look at the Spurs, look at the Kobe/Shaq Lakers. Teams win multiple titles with fundamental basketball and a dominating post presence. Or so the argument goes. So believe me, I understand your point of view because it used to be mine. But that version of basketball is over. The Warriors ditched Bogut, added another shooter, plugged in journeymen at C (JaVale McGee, Zaza Pachulia, Damian Jones) and got even better. I can't emphasize this point enough. Even if/when the Warriors start losing key pieces the Genie is already out of the bottle. And here's why:
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!
). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.
But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!
). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
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I think the conventional wisdom about basketball being about the inside/outside game used to be true. Even after the Warriors won their first title I was still making the argument you're making now: that it wasn't sustainable. Their shooters got hot, every team they faced was limited by an injury to a key player. Basically that a team winning with run and gun was a fluke and defense-first was still the right way to build a dynasty. Look at the Spurs, look at the Kobe/Shaq Lakers. Teams win multiple titles with fundamental basketball and a dominating post presence. Or so the argument goes. So believe me, I understand your point of view because it used to be mine. But that version of basketball is over. The Warriors ditched Bogut, added another shooter, plugged in journeymen at C (JaVale McGee, Zaza Pachulia, Damian Jones) and got even better. I can't emphasize this point enough. Even if/when the Warriors start losing key pieces the Genie is already out of the bottle. And here's why:
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.
But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!
). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
I think the conventional wisdom about basketball being about the inside/outside game used to be true. Even after the Warriors won their first title I was still making the argument you're making now: that it wasn't sustainable. Their shooters got hot, every team they faced was limited by an injury to a key player. Basically that a team winning with run and gun was a fluke and defense-first was still the right way to build a dynasty. Look at the Spurs, look at the Kobe/Shaq Lakers. Teams win multiple titles with fundamental basketball and a dominating post presence. Or so the argument goes. So believe me, I understand your point of view because it used to be mine. But that version of basketball is over. The Warriors ditched Bogut, added another shooter, plugged in journeymen at C (JaVale McGee, Zaza Pachulia, Damian Jones) and got even better. I can't emphasize this point enough. Even if/when the Warriors start losing key pieces the Genie is already out of the bottle. And here's why:
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.
But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!
). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
WTG, HB!
@hrdboild
Wow, a great post!... yes, the game has evolved more around the perimeter, but big men being totally irrelevant?... I'm not so sure, I'm one of those who still believes as a centerpiece AD or Boogie still could content for a title with right pieces around. Nowadays big men hardly can be called traditional big men, they have evolved as well adding long range shots to their repertoire. Dirk is the one who revolutionized the game, although his inside game is not as good as the above two. I would love to know your opinion about his game.
Wow, a great post!... yes, the game has evolved more around the perimeter, but big men being totally irrelevant?... I'm not so sure, I'm one of those who still believes as a centerpiece AD or Boogie still could content for a title with right pieces around. Nowadays big men hardly can be called traditional big men, they have evolved as well adding long range shots to their repertoire. Dirk is the one who revolutionized the game, although his inside game is not as good as the above two. I would love to know your opinion about his game.
I think the conventional wisdom about basketball being about the inside/outside game used to be true. Even after the Warriors won their first title I was still making the argument you're making now: that it wasn't sustainable. Their shooters got hot, every team they faced was limited by an injury to a key player. Basically that a team winning with run and gun was a fluke and defense-first was still the right way to build a dynasty. Look at the Spurs, look at the Kobe/Shaq Lakers. Teams win multiple titles with fundamental basketball and a dominating post presence. Or so the argument goes. So believe me, I understand your point of view because it used to be mine. But that version of basketball is over. The Warriors ditched Bogut, added another shooter, plugged in journeymen at C (JaVale McGee, Zaza Pachulia, Damian Jones) and got even better. I can't emphasize this point enough. Even if/when the Warriors start losing key pieces the Genie is already out of the bottle. And here's why:
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.
But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!
). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
But a low post player that demands a double team and can pass surrounded by 3 point shooters is a challenge defensively. For the Kings it means Giles or Bagley have to extend to the 3.
You may be right about AD and Cousins, but as you rightly say it's precisely because they are not traditional big men. They can shoot and dribble and pass. I.e., they are big guards and ultimately you're still winning via what is typically considered to be perimeter play. What you won't have is the "dump it down in the post and go 1-on-1". And therein lies what Ive been advocating since Cousins latter days with us and throughout some drafts. If perimeter plays win in today's NBA, I think you're better off going with a star guard than with a star big who plays like a guard. Glad that is the direction that Vlade chose to take!
I’m with Houdini in regards to the posts above. Go look at the 3 pointers made list and 2 pointers made list. It’s populated by some of the best players on winning teams and also on avg teams as well as some poor performing. And that is both lists. If you just look at the Warriors as the standard.....going to be really hard replicating that for any team. Saying 20 and 12 is not enough anymore....it’s not enough by itself as you have to pair it with your 3 point shooters and visa versa......unless your the Warriors apparently.
20 and 12 in the paint with good defense is still relevant.
20 and 12 in the paint with good defense is still relevant.
I think the conventional wisdom about basketball being about the inside/outside game used to be true. Even after the Warriors won their first title I was still making the argument you're making now: that it wasn't sustainable. Their shooters got hot, every team they faced was limited by an injury to a key player. Basically that a team winning with run and gun was a fluke and defense-first was still the right way to build a dynasty. Look at the Spurs, look at the Kobe/Shaq Lakers. Teams win multiple titles with fundamental basketball and a dominating post presence. Or so the argument goes. So believe me, I understand your point of view because it used to be mine. But that version of basketball is over. The Warriors ditched Bogut, added another shooter, plugged in journeymen at C (JaVale McGee, Zaza Pachulia, Damian Jones) and got even better. I can't emphasize this point enough. Even if/when the Warriors start losing key pieces the Genie is already out of the bottle. And here's why:
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.
But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
I also watched the new wave of bigmen come in to the league who were supposed to swing the pendulum back to interior scoring. Joel Embiid with has Dream Shake. Mr do-it-alls Anthony Davis and Karl Anthony Towns. Even our own Boogie Cousins who is so big and skilled he's basically unguardable in the post. Doesn't matter. Minnesota cratered, New Orleans spins their wheels (more on that later), Philly built their offense around Ben Simmons pick and roles. We all know what happened with Boogie. To reinforce the point... the only bigman in the MVP conversation right now is a 7 footer who plays like a super-sized guard up in Milwaukee. It's over for post play. The other team is hoping you throw it into the post because a dunk is better for them than a three pointer. Unless you've got a big guy who can score every time down the floor in 5 seconds or less you're not beating an all-out perimeter assault with the inside out game. It's possible this version of the NBA is in the process of evolving into something else but it's not going back to what it was, ever. Not unless there are significant rule changes made to slow down the pace or mitigate the value of a three point shot. No amount of crowing from the stands is going to change that.
You made a point about Anthony Davis being held back by his team but let's examine that further. My thesis is that New Orleans has failed AD in the same way that we failed Boogie... they tried to build a traditional team around him without accounting for the way the game has changed. They traded a lotto pick to get Jrue Holiday, an All-Star PG best known for being pretty good at everything but not great at anything. He averages 1 to 1.5 threes per game at 35%, he can score but he's not great in iso situations, and he's one of the better defenders at his position. Conventional wisdom says to run pick and rolls and get the ball to your bigman. Put a shooter or two on the wing for kickouts. They had Eric Gordon and now they have ETwaun Moore. Solomon Hill was supposed to be their 3 and D wing but he didn't pan out. Then they matched Davis up with a second big man. Even when that second big was DeMarcus freakin Cousins they were just a .500 team. This parallels the strategies our front office employed to build a team around Cousins. Fingers have been pointed at coaching, front office dysfunction, poor drafting, and of course DeMarcus himself. In retrospect the answer was always much simpler...
We're not in the midst of a three pointing shooting fad, the entire focus of the game has shifted out to the perimeter. At this point even third graders could tell you that trading 2s for 3s is an untenable strategy. Well they probably would use a different word. A word like dumb. It's just plain dumb. And in that regard, trading DeMarcus for an elite shooter like Buddy Hield has proven to be Vlade's masterstroke. So many of us shook our heads and mocked him for it. We were wrong! Buddy Hield is the second best shooter in the entire league this season and he's already led us further as the team's leading scorer than Boogie could. That's not Boogie's fault, and to his credit he's made the adjustment to take his game out to the perimeter. It's just an unfortunate bit of bad timing that we landed a franchise big men in the first era where the big man is literally irrelevant. You just don't need them anymore.
The last statement I want to address is the matter of Bagley being a star. This is a thorny issue for a lot of reasons but I just want to explain why I had Bagley ranked 10th* in the draft this year instead 1st or 2nd. When he reclassified and joined Duke right before the start of last season I had him ranked #2 right after Ayton. I saw all the same things you saw in his high school videos. He's big, fast, smooth with the ball, and a super-athlete. Seems pretty can't miss. But over the course of the season I saw some things I didn't like. Almost all of his offense came from rolling to the basket, cleaning up offensive boards, facing up from midrange and driving to the basket, or the occasional midrange jumper. He didn't dominate games with passing or defense or high degree of difficulty shots (all of which Ayton showed in flashes at Arizona) he simply overwhelmed them with volume. I also saw that his awareness of team defense was hurting his team. You could make the argument that what Bagley had going was already working so well, why would he need to diversify his skillset as an offensive player? Coach K kept feeding him the ball and he kept finding ways to put it in the basket. That's what you want right? Guaranteed star? All-Star, yes. That's primarily a matter of having big numbers and he will get those (his Dad demands it!
). But there's still the issue of trading 2s for 3s. That's dumb, remember? Bagley might score 25 a game but unless he's making more than a handful of threes, the points per possession will still be low enough to prevent him from being a #1 guy on a championship team in today's NBA.But wait, it worked for Shaq you say. Yes well the reason it worked for Shaq is because teams had 2 shooters in the floor then. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller were Hall of Famers because they averaged 2 to 3 made threes a game. So far this season there are 56 players averaging 2 or more threes a game and you can add another 30 names if you round up. There will never be another player like Shaq because if he still played today he would have to become either a three point threat or a screening and passing maestro like Jokic or he would be ignored on offense. He couldn't even make his free throws! The stats guys in every front office would go nuts if he got the ball 30 times a game!
So what I'm saying is that Bagley being a sure thing 20 and 10 guy with decent defense is simply not enough anymore. Yeah, lifes not fair. That doesn't mean he can't be the right kind of star for today's NBA but it does mean that the 'sure thing ' next to his name should probably be written in pencil not pen. He has yet to show a reliable long-range jumper or an advanced aptitude for making smart passes and those are the benchmarks now of a franchise player. He could carve out a niche instead as a deluxe garbage guy, the fleet-footed high flying compliment to DeAaron Fox's "always on 11" speed game and that's what we all hope is going to happen but don't we kindof have that already in Cauley-Stein? Is that a guy you need to use a top 5 pick on? Couldn't we have Bamba or Jackson instead if the primary offensive role is merely to finish off lobs while benefiting from their stifling defensive presence?
That's just me thinking out loud. I don't know. My point is that I don't see a clear path to stardom, that is franchise player level stardom, for Bagley that doesn't require him to develop some nascent ancillary parts of his game into his bread and butter. Otherwise he tops out as a third option to Buddy and Fox. Or maybe complimenting a dominant backcourt is the best we can hope for anyway in the era of irrelevant big men.
*EDIT: Actually, I think I had him 8th in the draft. I can't remember where I had Sexton and Young ranked. I probably had him too low regardless.
Bagley will easily average 20 points in his prime. He’s at 12-13 this season as a rookie that gets hardly any plays called for him plus has no respect from the refs. You guys are selling him short big time. He’s gonna wreak havoc down low and will command a double team all the time. This will obviously open up driving lanes and shooters.
Great big men are still relevant in today’s NBA but they have to be surrounded by appropriate talent. Look at Embid and the Sixers and then look at the Pelicans who failed to provide a solid supporting cast for Davis. One did it right and the other didn’t. Their records prove it.
There’s nothing wrong with having a good to great big man along with great guard play. Fox, Buddy, Bagley and maybe Bogdan if he stays is a hell of a core. Two shooters, two playmakers, a great defensive PG and a 20-10 guy in his sleep down low. What’s not to like?
Divac didn’t design this team to focus on one guy having the ball all the time. Listen to what he says. He got these guys together to play basketball the right way and that’s with team ball. His old Kings team didn’t win it all and now he came back for some unfinished business. What he’s done is remarkable.
Fox = Doug Christie and Bibby hybrid. Leader on both ends of the court with killer instinct
Buddy = Peja role. Always going hard.
Bogdan = Christie role minus defense but better offense
Bagley = Webber role minus the passing
Giles = the real X factor here. Is he our Divac/Webber passing big?
When you think that Peja, Bobby, Vlade, and Doug are all working for the Kings does it not make you think they are here to finish what they started? What the NBA prevented them from having by cheating? And then you look at our main guys today and it becomes clear as day. They are trying to build exactly the type of team they had before. It gives me the chills just thinking about it.
We may be struggling today a bit as a team, but we are on our way up and we are going to come with a vengeance. Our GM has not forgotten and neither have all the other former players who have to come to watch the new guys attempt to do what they were not able to do. Win it all. What a story.
Great big men are still relevant in today’s NBA but they have to be surrounded by appropriate talent. Look at Embid and the Sixers and then look at the Pelicans who failed to provide a solid supporting cast for Davis. One did it right and the other didn’t. Their records prove it.
There’s nothing wrong with having a good to great big man along with great guard play. Fox, Buddy, Bagley and maybe Bogdan if he stays is a hell of a core. Two shooters, two playmakers, a great defensive PG and a 20-10 guy in his sleep down low. What’s not to like?
Divac didn’t design this team to focus on one guy having the ball all the time. Listen to what he says. He got these guys together to play basketball the right way and that’s with team ball. His old Kings team didn’t win it all and now he came back for some unfinished business. What he’s done is remarkable.
Fox = Doug Christie and Bibby hybrid. Leader on both ends of the court with killer instinct
Buddy = Peja role. Always going hard.
Bogdan = Christie role minus defense but better offense
Bagley = Webber role minus the passing
Giles = the real X factor here. Is he our Divac/Webber passing big?
When you think that Peja, Bobby, Vlade, and Doug are all working for the Kings does it not make you think they are here to finish what they started? What the NBA prevented them from having by cheating? And then you look at our main guys today and it becomes clear as day. They are trying to build exactly the type of team they had before. It gives me the chills just thinking about it.
We may be struggling today a bit as a team, but we are on our way up and we are going to come with a vengeance. Our GM has not forgotten and neither have all the other former players who have to come to watch the new guys attempt to do what they were not able to do. Win it all. What a story.
Steve Kerr is utilizing Boogie more at the perimeter than in low post or paint; letting him set up screens and make plays as a big guard. Occasionally he goes 1 on 1 when timing is right, no matter if his defender is small/big or he just dishes out the ball making plays. It's just another weapon the Warriors lacked ever since they've became a contender.
Boogie's inside game will be more appreciated, when the pace gets slower and he can be the go to guy in some certain match-ups in the playoffs.
What would be our odds to make the playoffs or even contend in near future, if WCS is replaced by Boogie or AD in our current roster?
Boogie's inside game will be more appreciated, when the pace gets slower and he can be the go to guy in some certain match-ups in the playoffs.
What would be our odds to make the playoffs or even contend in near future, if WCS is replaced by Boogie or AD in our current roster?
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As of right now, the overwhelming majority of the successful teams out there are led by wings. KAT, Cousins, Embiid and AD only have 4 playoff appearances out of a combined 20 years. KAT only made it because Butler showed up. AD has 2 playoff appearances. Cousins none, but that will change this year and that's only because he's riding the Warriors coat tails. Embiid will probably be in the playoffs for a while but I'd be curious to see if he could make the playoffs if say, Eric Bledsoe was his PG instead of Simmons.
Until I see actual proof that big men have a real impact on the game anymore, I can't get in line with you guys that still think they are relevant. I haven't seen proof of it in years.
Until I see actual proof that big men have a real impact on the game anymore, I can't get in line with you guys that still think they are relevant. I haven't seen proof of it in years.
Well that's sort of the equivalent of asking what our odds would be if we replaced JJ/Shump with Giannis or even Paul George.
I do not question the value of stars, whether bigs or guards. What I think the point is is that if you were building a team from scratch today, you'd be best off first picking a guard/wing as your cornerstone (which is what the Kings have done with Fox), rather than picking a big and then trying to build around him.
I do not question the value of stars, whether bigs or guards. What I think the point is is that if you were building a team from scratch today, you'd be best off first picking a guard/wing as your cornerstone (which is what the Kings have done with Fox), rather than picking a big and then trying to build around him.
I'm curious to see how all the contradictions in what people say is trending works itself out. The game is strictly perimeter oriented and the metrics say take 3s all the time. But also, have a defensive big man that protects the paint. But have a big man that can guard the perimeter because the other teams big men all shoot from 3 and nobody plays in the paint anymore.
I'm being a bit facetious, which may turn some of you off, but the logic doesn't jive. Big men are a lot more mobile than they used to be and that trend won't change. But neither will the advantage of being able to score at will down low when those outside shots aren't dropping.
It takes a team to win a title with players playing different roles. What constitutes what a star is is probably in the eye of the beholder I guess.
I'm being a bit facetious, which may turn some of you off, but the logic doesn't jive. Big men are a lot more mobile than they used to be and that trend won't change. But neither will the advantage of being able to score at will down low when those outside shots aren't dropping.
It takes a team to win a title with players playing different roles. What constitutes what a star is is probably in the eye of the beholder I guess.
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Kevin Love, Capela, Horford, Embiid, Gobert, Aldridge, Green ( in a less traditional sense ) Bosh ( a bit antiquated) and many more have made large impacts on their teams over the last 5 years. I’m not certain bigs are the clearcut stars of the past but they are in no way non factors at this point in the NBA. Moreover KAT and AD have mediocre coaches and ok supporting casts. Bagley may be fortunate enough to be the Robin to Fox’s Batman in the future.
I still think a dominant low post man can win championships if he is on the same superstar level as the elite guards. AND they have to love getting dirty and banging inside to truly punish opponents. Game in game out. A Kobe Bryant personality with an elite big man body. Also needs to be in peak shape to keep it up for the season. And defensively needs to be dominate.
If I could "create" the ideal center it would be Rudy Gobert body with the elite scoring game. And HOW you score is equally important. All the bigs today dont punish teams, i.e. consistently foul out opponents bigs and wear out opponents.
Cousins under Malone is the only time I've seen the approach done right in last 10 years or so. BUT cousins had major flaws. Terrible defender. Horrible conditioning. He couldn't maintain the attack for more than a few stretches.
Offensively speaking, it all comes down to percentages AND how often a 3pt conversion is called (which part of issue is refs need to whistle fouls like they do for the gaurds and not allow the abuse we witnessed Cuz get).
Say elite gaurd shoots 40% on 10battempts, that's 12 points on 10 shots.
To equal that, the big needs to convert 60%. But where it gets squirrelly is if he can clean his misses and his often he gets to the line. Also, every And 1 is equivalent to a 3.
The problem is though finding a bug who can do that. Much easier to get a gaurd hitting at 40% from 3
If I could "create" the ideal center it would be Rudy Gobert body with the elite scoring game. And HOW you score is equally important. All the bigs today dont punish teams, i.e. consistently foul out opponents bigs and wear out opponents.
Cousins under Malone is the only time I've seen the approach done right in last 10 years or so. BUT cousins had major flaws. Terrible defender. Horrible conditioning. He couldn't maintain the attack for more than a few stretches.
Offensively speaking, it all comes down to percentages AND how often a 3pt conversion is called (which part of issue is refs need to whistle fouls like they do for the gaurds and not allow the abuse we witnessed Cuz get).
Say elite gaurd shoots 40% on 10battempts, that's 12 points on 10 shots.
To equal that, the big needs to convert 60%. But where it gets squirrelly is if he can clean his misses and his often he gets to the line. Also, every And 1 is equivalent to a 3.
The problem is though finding a bug who can do that. Much easier to get a gaurd hitting at 40% from 3
It's rough sometimes seeing the changes before everyone else. My apologies because I'm sure I was one of the people arguing that you were wrong. I hated George Karl as the coach of this team while he was here... but his offensive strategy was working. And his "switch everything " defense is pretty much the norm now. The guy could have had a winning record here if he just had better diplomacy skills.
It's not exactly that big men as a group are irrelevant, it's more that the idea of The Big Man as a guy you build your team around has become irrelevant. In much the same way that saber-metrics have completely changed baseball over the last 15 years, the idea of Points Per Possession has swept through basketball and knocked the Low-Post scorer off their pedestal for good. The reason I say it's never going back is because the issue is simple mathematics. An elite big man like Shaq shoots 60% from the field and takes almost all of his shots near the basket. Elite three point shooters shoot 40% from three. If both players take the same number of shots, it's a wash. 2 points per basket at .600 is 1.2 PPP. 3 points per basket at a rate of .400 is the same 1.2 PPP. So that's your magic number, 40%. All things being equal, your three point shooter needs to knock down only 40% of their shots to equal the scoring output of a Hall of Fame big man.
Then you need to look at number of possessions in a game because the two situations are not equal. Shaq is putting the ball in the basket more often than not but it usually takes him half a shot clock to do it. First you need to run a play to get him the ball in the post. That's 5 or 6 seconds off the clock. Then he's going to initiate a move, draw the defender off balance, and power through for the dunk. That's another 5 or 6 seconds. In that same amount of time you're getting 2 good looks at a three, especially if you have multiple shooters on the floor. Maybe even three. So the team shooting only threes is scoring twice as many points as Shaq in the same amount of time. It takes Shaq 10 shots and 2 minutes of possession to get his 12 points. Your three point shooters need the same 10 shots but they only need 1 minute of possession to get them. No matter how you fudge the numbers to account for different situations, that's not a gap that the low post scorer can make up. Especially not when the entire league has already committed to the three point strategy.
It's crazy to think now that this is such a new idea when it should have been obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of arithmetic since the three point shot was invented. This is where we get back to conventional wisdom though. Coaches like seeing the ball go through the basket. Shaq is damn near automatic down there, let's get him the ball! And if it takes him a whole shot clock to get one basket, that's great too because you're giving the other team less time to score. Get a stop of some kind then get the ball back to Shaq and have him score again. Every once in a while one of those dainty shooters will knock down a three and that's a fun novelty but those guys are barely even basketball players. In Shaq's heydey there were only a handful of 40% shooters and most of them were specialists who couldn't do anything else and only attempted 2-4 a game. Now that's almost 1/4 of the league's starters and the volume of shots is astronomical! That's game over man! The winner used to be the team who made a higher percentage of their shots. Teams win now just by taking more shots.
But you're right that big men can still be important, just not in the way that they used to be. Dirk is almost the Platonic ideal of what a modern big man should be. I say almost only because he didn't shoot the three enough throughout his career, though that had more to do with coaching strategies than ability. You still need someone setting picks to free up shooters and you still need someone to finish off defensive possessions with a rebound but neither of those skills are the exclusive domain of the big man. High percentage two point shots still matter provided you get them fast enough (like on the fast-break) and a big guy who can get out and run helps you there. Actually, the more I think about it... we're in great shape already in the frontcourt with Cauley-Stein, Bagley, Giles, and Bjelica. We'd be in better shape if Bjelica wasn't the only outside shooter in the group, but as long we stick to the run and gun act all we really need to do to elevate this group from pretty good to very good is add another reliable shooter on the wing.
My apologies because I'm sure I was one of the people arguing that you were wrong. I hated George Karl as the coach of this team while he was here... but his offensive strategy was working. And his "switch everything " defense is pretty much the norm now. The guy could have had a winning record here if he just had better diplomacy skills.It's not exactly that big men as a group are irrelevant, it's more that the idea of The Big Man as a guy you build your team around has become irrelevant. In much the same way that saber-metrics have completely changed baseball over the last 15 years, the idea of Points Per Possession has swept through basketball and knocked the Low-Post scorer off their pedestal for good. The reason I say it's never going back is because the issue is simple mathematics. An elite big man like Shaq shoots 60% from the field and takes almost all of his shots near the basket. Elite three point shooters shoot 40% from three. If both players take the same number of shots, it's a wash. 2 points per basket at .600 is 1.2 PPP. 3 points per basket at a rate of .400 is the same 1.2 PPP. So that's your magic number, 40%. All things being equal, your three point shooter needs to knock down only 40% of their shots to equal the scoring output of a Hall of Fame big man.
Then you need to look at number of possessions in a game because the two situations are not equal. Shaq is putting the ball in the basket more often than not but it usually takes him half a shot clock to do it. First you need to run a play to get him the ball in the post. That's 5 or 6 seconds off the clock. Then he's going to initiate a move, draw the defender off balance, and power through for the dunk. That's another 5 or 6 seconds. In that same amount of time you're getting 2 good looks at a three, especially if you have multiple shooters on the floor. Maybe even three. So the team shooting only threes is scoring twice as many points as Shaq in the same amount of time. It takes Shaq 10 shots and 2 minutes of possession to get his 12 points. Your three point shooters need the same 10 shots but they only need 1 minute of possession to get them. No matter how you fudge the numbers to account for different situations, that's not a gap that the low post scorer can make up. Especially not when the entire league has already committed to the three point strategy.
It's crazy to think now that this is such a new idea when it should have been obvious to anyone with a basic knowledge of arithmetic since the three point shot was invented. This is where we get back to conventional wisdom though. Coaches like seeing the ball go through the basket. Shaq is damn near automatic down there, let's get him the ball! And if it takes him a whole shot clock to get one basket, that's great too because you're giving the other team less time to score. Get a stop of some kind then get the ball back to Shaq and have him score again. Every once in a while one of those dainty shooters will knock down a three and that's a fun novelty but those guys are barely even basketball players. In Shaq's heydey there were only a handful of 40% shooters and most of them were specialists who couldn't do anything else and only attempted 2-4 a game. Now that's almost 1/4 of the league's starters and the volume of shots is astronomical! That's game over man! The winner used to be the team who made a higher percentage of their shots. Teams win now just by taking more shots.
But you're right that big men can still be important, just not in the way that they used to be. Dirk is almost the Platonic ideal of what a modern big man should be. I say almost only because he didn't shoot the three enough throughout his career, though that had more to do with coaching strategies than ability. You still need someone setting picks to free up shooters and you still need someone to finish off defensive possessions with a rebound but neither of those skills are the exclusive domain of the big man. High percentage two point shots still matter provided you get them fast enough (like on the fast-break) and a big guy who can get out and run helps you there. Actually, the more I think about it... we're in great shape already in the frontcourt with Cauley-Stein, Bagley, Giles, and Bjelica. We'd be in better shape if Bjelica wasn't the only outside shooter in the group, but as long we stick to the run and gun act all we really need to do to elevate this group from pretty good to very good is add another reliable shooter on the wing.
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I think the fatal flaw in this strategy is that the refs don't call fouls on big guys at nearly the same rate they call them on guards and wings right now. Cousins was more than capable of punishing opposing bigs as you describe and he knew it too but every third or fourth game he couldn't get a call and then it was just a slow simmer (or sometimes not so slow) until he blew his top and got himself ejected or benched and we had no Plan B at that point. The league has more or less decided that run and gun is what we want to see and that's the way the game is called now.
I'm sure you remember the posts Bricklayer made comparing Cousins to Hall of Fame big men. The numbers didn't lie, it's just that it's not the same league that those guys played in. The rules are different, the player composition is different, the coaching strategies are different. I think maybe the ideal Center at this point is either no Center at all, a stretch big like Dirk, or someone who quietly does the dirty work of setting screens and pulling down rebounds and otherwise stays out of the way.
I'm sure you remember the posts Bricklayer made comparing Cousins to Hall of Fame big men. The numbers didn't lie, it's just that it's not the same league that those guys played in. The rules are different, the player composition is different, the coaching strategies are different. I think maybe the ideal Center at this point is either no Center at all, a stretch big like Dirk, or someone who quietly does the dirty work of setting screens and pulling down rebounds and otherwise stays out of the way.
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I'm curious to see how all the contradictions in what people say is trending works itself out. The game is strictly perimeter oriented and the metrics say take 3s all the time. But also, have a defensive big man that protects the paint. But have a big man that can guard the perimeter because the other teams big men all shoot from 3 and nobody plays in the paint anymore.
I'm being a bit facetious, which may turn some of you off, but the logic doesn't jive. Big men are a lot more mobile than they used to be and that trend won't change. But neither will the advantage of being able to score at will down low when those outside shots aren't dropping.
It takes a team to win a title with players playing different roles. What constitutes what a star is is probably in the eye of the beholder I guess.
I'm being a bit facetious, which may turn some of you off, but the logic doesn't jive. Big men are a lot more mobile than they used to be and that trend won't change. But neither will the advantage of being able to score at will down low when those outside shots aren't dropping.
It takes a team to win a title with players playing different roles. What constitutes what a star is is probably in the eye of the beholder I guess.
I would change your bolded statement though to say that the advantage goes to the team whose players have a proven ability to score at will from somewhere, it doesn't matter if it's from down low or not. The Bearded One knows the answer... if your perimeter players can't hit a three they need to put the ball on the floor and get to the line. That's the inside/outside game now. But let's not stop there because The Bearded One knows another secret that turns my whole universe inside-out. It just might be the case now that Defense Doesn't Matter.
Now excuse me while I take a moment to rebuild my basketball soul...
I agree, no team has built a good team around a big man lately, perhaps last two decades.
I’m not a huge stat guy, can’t argue with the PPP and PPG facts you brought up. Only AD and Boogie are hybrid between big and guard so their respective PPP/PPG are a bit different than Shaq’s.
Well, I’m out of my depth now; unless someone backs me up, till then I concede defeat to you both.
I’m not a huge stat guy, can’t argue with the PPP and PPG facts you brought up. Only AD and Boogie are hybrid between big and guard so their respective PPP/PPG are a bit different than Shaq’s.
Well, I’m out of my depth now; unless someone backs me up, till then I concede defeat
to you both.I posted a response in the wrong thread then deleted it. Anyway - here are some thoughts...
In general:
- While I don't disagree with prior comments, I don't support the notion that there is a single way to win. For example, each of the top eight teams in the western conference play a distinct style of basketball. Come playoff time, talent and circumstance will play as much of a role in determining the winner as employing the correct style. If San Antonio had a durable Anthony Davis instead of LaMarcus Aldridge, they would not need to change their mid range/ post up style that much to be contenders.
- New Orleans inability to win with Anthony Davis is evidence that, in the NBA, talent on its own is not enough to win. But their inability win with him is not an indication no one will ever win with a team constructed around a big man again.
- I'm too young to have been aware of any detail. But if I were to develop a formula for winning based on the small window of time that MJ and Pippen dominated (at the time - the 'new' NBA), I would conclude that you need great wings, not big men. Then Tim Duncan would come and win 5 rings. Shaq would win four. What was once new is now old and the post GS era is not far away. It's unclear how the next super power will be constructed.
Specific to Kings:
- That Boogie and the Kings were not competitive was not a forgone conclusion based on the new reality of basketball. The Kings were going through a difficult period with ownership uncertainty and transition, the trauma of which did linger and manifest on and off court. And Boogie is/ was a headcase.
- Phoenix were pretty close to being a championship team when they had a healthy Amare Stoudemire. Despite his relatively poor rebounding and defense. No reason MBIII can't play a similar-ish role.
I'm not sure what the original point was? That MBIII will have good stats but not necessarily win anything (an accusation that could be delivered to most All-Star players - as well as a good number of hall of famers?) Honestly, I don't know what I think of him. Talented basketball player. Hopefully he is happy enough in Sacramento that we can support him for some time. Also hope that his tennis parent does not steal too much of his youth - but his problem more than mine.
In general:
- While I don't disagree with prior comments, I don't support the notion that there is a single way to win. For example, each of the top eight teams in the western conference play a distinct style of basketball. Come playoff time, talent and circumstance will play as much of a role in determining the winner as employing the correct style. If San Antonio had a durable Anthony Davis instead of LaMarcus Aldridge, they would not need to change their mid range/ post up style that much to be contenders.
- New Orleans inability to win with Anthony Davis is evidence that, in the NBA, talent on its own is not enough to win. But their inability win with him is not an indication no one will ever win with a team constructed around a big man again.
- I'm too young to have been aware of any detail. But if I were to develop a formula for winning based on the small window of time that MJ and Pippen dominated (at the time - the 'new' NBA), I would conclude that you need great wings, not big men. Then Tim Duncan would come and win 5 rings. Shaq would win four. What was once new is now old and the post GS era is not far away. It's unclear how the next super power will be constructed.
Specific to Kings:
- That Boogie and the Kings were not competitive was not a forgone conclusion based on the new reality of basketball. The Kings were going through a difficult period with ownership uncertainty and transition, the trauma of which did linger and manifest on and off court. And Boogie is/ was a headcase.
- Phoenix were pretty close to being a championship team when they had a healthy Amare Stoudemire. Despite his relatively poor rebounding and defense. No reason MBIII can't play a similar-ish role.
I'm not sure what the original point was? That MBIII will have good stats but not necessarily win anything (an accusation that could be delivered to most All-Star players - as well as a good number of hall of famers?) Honestly, I don't know what I think of him. Talented basketball player. Hopefully he is happy enough in Sacramento that we can support him for some time. Also hope that his tennis parent does not steal too much of his youth - but his problem more than mine.
Bagley was #2 on my board. Behind Doncic, before Ayton...
In a redraft, I would still take him #2.
He's a 20/10 guy right now. And he's doing it based on just one hand and a motor. He's not a finished product. He's going to hit 2 to 3 threes per game. He's going to be able to face up and drive. Or shoot over players. And he'll be an average (at worse) passer. Those things are given for a 19 year old, who has always played levels above his age, who loves the game, has grandparents/parents warning of fast women and early fame, and ain't afraid to compete (see him competing against Blake?). And that's just his offense.
Hoops is a two way game. Defense matters. Like Fox, Bagley always had the highest ceiling of any player in his draft class (even greater than Ayton), because of his two way impact. He has the feet and bounce and motor that is going to allow him to guard wings and bigs. Draft reports that questioned his defensive abilities were always faulty. Folks point to wingspan, which matters. But, on defense, what matters more is a players feet. Fox has it. Bags has it. Papa/Skal doesn't/didn't. (Side note: WCS has it too, but lacks the motor).
AD is a game altering presence. I would take him over any player in the NBA outside of Giannis, KD, or Lebron--assuming all three were the same age. Put him next to any of those guys or Harden or the Steph/Klay/Draymond combo and he wins a championship.
Ultimately, long winded way of saying, stop lamenting over Bags. We got a beast. And I'm willing to wager that this time next year, his development is going to accelerate (like Fox did).
In a redraft, I would still take him #2.
He's a 20/10 guy right now. And he's doing it based on just one hand and a motor. He's not a finished product. He's going to hit 2 to 3 threes per game. He's going to be able to face up and drive. Or shoot over players. And he'll be an average (at worse) passer. Those things are given for a 19 year old, who has always played levels above his age, who loves the game, has grandparents/parents warning of fast women and early fame, and ain't afraid to compete (see him competing against Blake?). And that's just his offense.
Hoops is a two way game. Defense matters. Like Fox, Bagley always had the highest ceiling of any player in his draft class (even greater than Ayton), because of his two way impact. He has the feet and bounce and motor that is going to allow him to guard wings and bigs. Draft reports that questioned his defensive abilities were always faulty. Folks point to wingspan, which matters. But, on defense, what matters more is a players feet. Fox has it. Bags has it. Papa/Skal doesn't/didn't. (Side note: WCS has it too, but lacks the motor).
AD is a game altering presence. I would take him over any player in the NBA outside of Giannis, KD, or Lebron--assuming all three were the same age. Put him next to any of those guys or Harden or the Steph/Klay/Draymond combo and he wins a championship.
Ultimately, long winded way of saying, stop lamenting over Bags. We got a beast. And I'm willing to wager that this time next year, his development is going to accelerate (like Fox did).