[Game] Kings vs. Clippers, 12/22/2021 7pm Pacific 10pm Eastern
- Thread starter Tetsujin
- Start date
After three meetings now I'm not impressed with this year's Clippers team. We beat ourselves in the fourth quarter. Guys are backpedaling on defense when they should be holding position. Barnes needs to take open looks when he has them. Buddy gets on a hot streak and wants every shot but after a couple misses we can't just let him shoot us out of the game. Especially not when we aren't getting stops. You get a stop, fine take your heat check but if you're taking the ball out of the net you need to run the offense and keep the score close. We've seen all this before. I feel bad for Tyrese. He looked really upset at the end of the game and I don't blame him. It must have felt like he was playing 1 on 5 out there.
There were at minimum two hot steaks off the top of my head last season where Fox was simply unbelievable. Just able to get to the rim at will, blinding speed, the opponents knew it was coming and couldn’t stop it. THAT player is a legit megastar. Two weeks every season doesn’t cut it though … sadly haven’t seen that guy at all this one.
Considering what happened the last time this guy was significantly injured -- (he disappeared on the Spurs for the entire season, didn't report even after the team's medical staff cleared him and his teammates begged him to, and then demanded a trade when Coach Pop started to get salty about it in his media seasons) -- I wouldn't expect him back any time soon.
Fox's ability to simply destroy an entire team's defensive game plan isn't really up for debate at this point. You can argue pretty much every single thing about him at this point but he's one of maybe 20 or so guys in the league who is capable of just annihilating teams though sheer athletic talent.
It's the question of whether a team can truly contend with him as their first option that seems to be driving this whole discussion but as far as I'm aware absolutely no one out here, not even his staunchest defender, is arguing that so the question then becomes whether you trade him and a bunch of the pieces around him to do a full reset, do a soft reset by sitting him for the season or something like the T-Wolves did with KAT the year they tanked and got Ant-Man, or try going for it now and move future assets and miscellaneous pieces to get that top option to pair with your second/third options in Fox and Haliburton.
If we're trying to win now by trading Fox, it has to be a first option. Period. But I don't see any of those guys available at the moment so that's why i'm saying we should hold on to him UNLESS we're aiming for a rebuild.
It's the question of whether a team can truly contend with him as their first option that seems to be driving this whole discussion but as far as I'm aware absolutely no one out here, not even his staunchest defender, is arguing that so the question then becomes whether you trade him and a bunch of the pieces around him to do a full reset, do a soft reset by sitting him for the season or something like the T-Wolves did with KAT the year they tanked and got Ant-Man, or try going for it now and move future assets and miscellaneous pieces to get that top option to pair with your second/third options in Fox and Haliburton.
If we're trying to win now by trading Fox, it has to be a first option. Period. But I don't see any of those guys available at the moment so that's why i'm saying we should hold on to him UNLESS we're aiming for a rebuild.
