Bagley not in opening night rotation

JT was a prime example of no talent but extreme availability. He got a 2nd contract while Bagley is inactive.
A marginal player that plays everyday is more valuable than a superior talented player that isn’t consistently available.

Your example of JT is good one. Because Bagley is clearly more talented than JT in nearly every respect. But Bags has missed 1/2 the teams games during his short career whereas Thompson only played less than 75 games one time during his first 7 seasons.

One got a second contract and played meaningful minutes while the other won’t get a sizable 2nd contract from the team that drafted him and is bench ridden.

If Bagley’s health and availability remains status quo with whatever team(s) he winds up with, his talent will continue to mean jack $#!t.

Hopefully for his sake he gets it figured out. It’d par for the course for our KINGS for Bagley to suddenly become an iron man and star elsewhere. But I digress.

Ask Greg Oden about availability and 2nd contracts. But an all-worldly talented 7-footer he was. Didn’t matter.
 
JT was a prime example of no talent but extreme availability. He got a 2nd contract while Bagley is inactive.
I thought of another good example on our current team.

Who is more talented between Bagley and Harrison Barnes? When both are healthy, which is more likely to be a 20/10 guy??

But HB is available most the time thus has been much more valuable than Bagley ever has been. Same goes for Buddy Hield. Both Buddy and HB receive a lot of hate from fans for various reasons. But both have more value to the team and around the league than MB3.

That’s why availability comes before talent and skill. A player can’t showcase or develop their talent and skill to differentiate themselves from others without the former.
 
I thought of another good example on our current team.

Who is more talented between Bagley and Harrison Barnes? When both are healthy, which is more likely to be a 20/10 guy??

But HB is available most the time thus has been much more valuable than Bagley ever has been. Same goes for Buddy Hield. Both Buddy and HB receive a lot of hate from fans for various reasons. But both have more value to the team and around the league than MB3.

That’s why availability comes before talent and skill. A player can’t showcase or develop their talent and skill to differentiate themselves from others without the former.
Anfernee Hardaway, Brandon Roy...would've been hall of famer's had they not been injured. It's a real variable for any sport.

But Bagley is not out of the rotation, because of his lack of availability in the past. He's out, because he hasn't developed during the summers in between seasons, which is usually what elite players do--they use the summers to jump levels each year. Look no further than Fox's jump each season. While Bagley has effectively been the same player each year.
 
Bagley was the wrong pick the second we made that pick. Its not about that we missed on Luka or that we didnt choose Luka. It was about picking a player that clearly isnt suitable for todays game. A horrible pick the second we made it and I dont care about if some mock drafts had him top 3 or 5. Anyone that had him top 3-5 in their big board should not make any player evaluations for an Nba franchise.

The problem isnt Bagleys availabilty or injuries or anything like that. Not at all. He just was never going to be the type of player that elevates your franchise. Whenever hes played in the nba hes been a net negative. This stuff has been mentioned here pre draft and all the years since and its also been argued why this is the case that has been proven correct year after year. It was a bad pick and imo it was very clear then when the pick happened and its still as stupid of a pick now. If last season there were any reasonable offers and our FO didnt take it for whatever reason (ownership saving face, thinking his value will increase) then its just stupid.

I dont want to go in the detail on why Bagley didnt become a productive starter on a good team as predicted because it has been done so many times in here by me and many others. It was very predictable since the pick happened and for surpise to few it happend as it should've been predicted. As I said pre draft, I dont care if he puts up 18/8. He still most likely shouldnt play any meaningful minutes on a good team. Also the way he and his entourage have done things plus the fact that there seems to be very little improvement, only further proves the point.

Trade him if you can get rid of his salary and get even something in return. I wanted to trade him long ago when we could have gotten something even slightly meaninful in return. We wont now but just move on and stack your team with players that provide something to winning basketball and build from there.
 
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Nah my friend, you got it completely backwards. Talent means nothing if you aren’t available to play most days.

I already gave you two prime examples of elite talented players whose primary gatekeeper according to you wasn’t enough because they could never play enough to show off the secondary gatekeepers.

Gotta first be on the floor to show out on it. Deny it all you want, but it’s a hard fact.
Facts. the best trait you can have as a professional is availability
 
Anfernee Hardaway, Brandon Roy...would've been hall of famer's had they not been injured. It's a real variable for any sport.

But Bagley is not out of the rotation, because of his lack of availability in the past. He's out, because he hasn't developed during the summers in between seasons, which is usually what elite players do--they use the summers to jump levels each year. Look no further than Fox's jump each season. While Bagley has effectively been the same player each year.
Agree with your point about development also contributing. But when a player only plays 1/2 the time over 3 seasons, that’s the larger issue. And also ties into the lack of his development because he’s not gaining experience in games.
 
Bagley was the wrong pick the second we made that pick. Its not about that we missed on Luka or that we didnt choose Luka. It was about picking a player that clearly isnt suitable for todays game. A horrible pick the second we made it and I dont care about if some mock drafts had him top 3 or 5. Anyone that had him top 3-5 in their big board should not make any player evaluations for an Nba franchise.

The problem isnt Bagleys availabilty or injuries or anything like that. Not at all. He just was never going to be the type of player that elevates your franchise. Whenever hes played in the nba hes been a net negative. This stuff has been mentioned here pre draft and all the years since and its also been argued why this is the case that has been proven correct year after year. It was a bad pick and imo it was very clear then when the pick happened and its still as stupid of a pick now. If last season there were any reasonable offers and our FO didnt take it for whatever reason (ownership saving face, thinking his value will increase) then its just stupid.

I dont want to go in the detail on why Bagley didnt become a productive starter on a good team as predicted because it has been done so many times in here by me and many others. It was very predictable since the pick happened and for surpise to few it happend as it should've been predicted. As I said pre draft, I dont care if he puts up 18/8. He still most likely shouldnt play any meaningful minutes on a good team. Also the way he and his entourage have done things plus the fact that there seems to be very little improvement, only further proves the point.

Trade him if you can get rid of his salary and get even something in return. I wanted to trade him long ago when we could have gotten something even slightly meaninful in return. We wont now but just move on and stack your team with players that provide something to winning basketball and build from there.
Going in, I personally thought he'd be a big numbers guy that doesn't play winning basketball - maybe numbers marginally better than Shareef Abdur-Rahim who put up near 20/10 at the peak of his career but I think only spent one season on a winning basketball club.

Apparently that was optimistic.
 
Bagley was the wrong pick the second we made that pick. Its not about that we missed on Luka or that we didnt choose Luka. It was about picking a player that clearly isnt suitable for todays game. A horrible pick the second we made it and I dont care about if some mock drafts had him top 3 or 5. Anyone that had him top 3-5 in their big board should not make any player evaluations for an Nba franchise.

The problem isnt Bagleys availabilty or injuries or anything like that. Not at all. He just was never going to be the type of player that elevates your franchise. Whenever hes played in the nba hes been a net negative. This stuff has been mentioned here pre draft and all the years since and its also been argued why this is the case that has been proven correct year after year. It was a bad pick and imo it was very clear then when the pick happened and its still as stupid of a pick now. If last season there were any reasonable offers and our FO didnt take it for whatever reason (ownership saving face, thinking his value will increase) then its just stupid.

I dont want to go in the detail on why Bagley didnt become a productive starter on a good team as predicted because it has been done so many times in here by me and many others. It was very predictable since the pick happened and for surpise to few it happend as it should've been predicted. As I said pre draft, I dont care if he puts up 18/8. He still most likely shouldnt play any meaningful minutes on a good team. Also the way he and his entourage have done things plus the fact that there seems to be very little improvement, only further proves the point.

Trade him if you can get rid of his salary and get even something in return. I wanted to trade him long ago when we could have gotten something even slightly meaninful in return. We wont now but just move on and stack your team with players that provide something to winning basketball and build from there.
The sad thing is that 2018 was like 5 years into the "Warriors-era" where they shifted basketball to the spacing/ball-handler necessity it is today. So it's not like Vlade just got unlucky or something that basketball shifted away from Bagleys skill-set...it had been prevalent for a long time.
 
The sad thing is that 2018 was like 5 years into the "Warriors-era" where they shifted basketball to the spacing/ball-handler necessity it is today. So it's not like Vlade just got unlucky or something that basketball shifted away from Bagleys skill-set...it had been prevalent for a long time.
While true - almost everyone went into 2018 saying this class was going to be the resurgence of the big man. When we got #2 and all set our sites on Luka, most mocks had all the bigs going 1-4 (Bamba!!!) and Trae was supposed to be a bust if you listened to the draft gurus. "Winning" that lotto was maybe the worst thing that could happen to us since if we were out of the top 5 we certainly would have drafted MPJ.

It seems that the lessons weren't entirely learned from the 2018's class failings either, but it is one thing I did like about the Queta pick in getting value out of a second rounder.
 
I thought of another good example on our current team.

Who is more talented between Bagley and Harrison Barnes? When both are healthy, which is more likely to be a 20/10 guy??

But HB is available most the time thus has been much more valuable than Bagley ever has been. Same goes for Buddy Hield. Both Buddy and HB receive a lot of hate from fans for various reasons. But both have more value to the team and around the league than MB3.

That’s why availability comes before talent and skill. A player can’t showcase or develop their talent and skill to differentiate themselves from others without the former.
"Talent" seems like the wrong metric with Bags. Honestly, I'm not even sure what it means. Certainly, he has physical gifts and a nice touch around the rim. But the 20/10 thing certainly misses the point. Yes, Bags is more likely than HB to get 20/10 in X minutes; that clearly doesn't make him a better player than even on that hypothetical night than or one more likely to contribute to winning basketball.

All this talk about availability and talent misses the key point that, in the opinion of many, even when available he's just not a very good basketball player, his 20/10 potential any given night notwithstanding. And while his many games missed have certainly hurt, count me among those who think he's had PLENTY of time to develop into a much better player than he is.
 
All this talk about availability and talent misses the key point that, in the opinion of many, even when available he's just not a very good basketball player.
He’s a worse basketball player when he doesn’t show up or play at all. That’s the key point you and others are missing.

We can debate exactly how talented Bagley or any other player is. We can compare players all we want. We can even debate what “talent” really means.

But the fact still remains. No matter how talented, skilled, or awesome a player may be, they aren’t any of that if they aren’t available to play on a consistent basis or at all.

Showing up for work is the first requisite. Performance comes next. Can’t have the 2nd w/o the 1st.

That doesn’t mean anybody that merely shows up is also good at their job (and I agree that Bags hasn’t been especially good). But they at least have to be available to then show that they are good at their job and, most of all, to help the team.

I don’t understand how anyone continues to try debate this.
 
He’s a worse basketball player when he doesn’t show up or play at all. That’s the key point you and others are missing.

We can debate exactly how talented Bagley or any other player is. We can compare players all we want. We can even debate what “talent” really means.

But the fact still remains. No matter how talented, skilled, or awesome a player may be, they aren’t any of that if they aren’t available to play on a consistent basis or at all.

Showing up for work is the first requisite. Performance comes next. Can’t have the 2nd w/o the 1st.

That doesn’t mean anybody that merely shows up is also good at their job (and I agree that Bags hasn’t been especially good). But they at least have to be available to then show that they are good at their job and, most of all, to help the team.

I don’t understand how anyone continues to try debate this.
If a player is a net negative year after year then his availability doesent even matter. Any team wants a big net positive player load managed, playing 50-60 games a year so that hes ready for playoffs rather than a player thats a net negative or a net neutral playing every game. Saying that availability is the best ability is false or at least a broad generalization. Skill and being able to contribute to winning is the most valuable ability at least in a sport where there are playoffs to determine the winner.

Then if you want to argue about this subject its about how much should that player play in regular season to bring real positive value, what if he is injured in the playoffs ect. When it comes to Bagley he has been a net negative and thats it. Thats his biggest negative, not his availability. One could argue that him not being available has contributed to him not being a net positive, well maybe a little but these same exact fundamental flaws that were there pre draft are still there in his fourth year and those are the type of flaws that rarely correct themselves in the Nba.

Availability being the best ability is correct if you compare players with roughly the same ability. Otherwise its an outdated phrase.
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
Showing up for work is the first requisite. Performance comes next. Can’t have the 2nd w/o the 1st.

I don’t understand how anyone continues to try debate this.
Given that you've dug in your heels to defend a bon mot, I don't either, but here's my bottom line:

There are about 7.9 billion people on the planet. Of those 7.9 billion people, approximately 7.9 billion have been excluded from getting an NBA contract because, regardless of their availability, they do not have the talent and/or athleticism to play in the NBA.

That leaves about, say, a couple of thousand people left with the talent and athleticism requisite to play in the NBA. (30 NBA teams * 15 man roster ~= 450 players, but we should assume that there are international players and G-Leaguers who have the chops and miss the cut due to max roster considerations but could replace other bottom-tier NBA players in a pinch.) Of those couple of thousand people, some of them (like Greg Oden, and perhaps like Marvin Bagley, though the jury is still out on the latter) are unable to play due to chronic or repeated injuries or other non-injury reasons ("unavailable"), and end up out of the NBA. The number of players who fit this description at any given time is small, but we can be generous and say it's maybe 100 out of that few thousand.

So, we have the following:
7.9 billion people not in the NBA due to lack of talent and athleticism
100 people with sufficient talent and athleticism not in the NBA due to lack of availability

I can tell you which of these traits I think is the most important, and it's not the one accounting for 0.0000013% of people not being in the NBA.

Availability is certainly important, but in the context of the NBA, availability is only important if you already have the talent and athleticism to cut it. There are literally billions of people who would be willing and able at an NBA league minimum salary to "show up for work" at a higher rate of availability than Marvin Bagley but are not remotely under consideration for an NBA contract. Marvin Bagley, as unavailable as he has been, is certainly under consideration for another NBA contract, and will very likely get one of some sort. A clever, cutesy phrase does not make this not so.
 
He’s a worse basketball player when he doesn’t show up or play at all. That’s the key point you and others are missing.

We can debate exactly how talented Bagley or any other player is. We can compare players all we want. We can even debate what “talent” really means.

But the fact still remains. No matter how talented, skilled, or awesome a player may be, they aren’t any of that if they aren’t available to play on a consistent basis or at all.

Showing up for work is the first requisite. Performance comes next. Can’t have the 2nd w/o the 1st.

That doesn’t mean anybody that merely shows up is also good at their job (and I agree that Bags hasn’t been especially good). But they at least have to be available to then show that they are good at their job and, most of all, to help the team.

I don’t understand how anyone continues to try debate this.
You're one to make mountains out of molehills, aren't you? Unnecessarily prickly, methinks.

Honestly, the availability vs. talent/skill/whatever *debate* isn't all that interesting to me.

I'm simply offering my opinion that, in the case of Bags, his biggest problem is the widely shared view that he isn't very good, not that he hasn't been available half the time. As many have said, his injury problems have been such that GMs across the league could reasonably hope that he might become much more available in the future.

There's an alternate universe in which Marvin Bagley has missed as much time as he has in our universe, but absolutely kicked a$$ when he played. *That* Bags is in his team's lineup right now and played a huge role in the Kings' blowout victory last night. The hot debate among Kings' fans is whether to max him out or trade him for the sweet package some other GM is rumors to have offered. In contrast, the Kings' coaches in our universe think so little of him that, though available and having put in lots of quality time w/Rico and DC, bringing the positivity, etc., he's sitting.

When a former #2 overall can't crack a 9-man rotation for a team desperate to make the playoffs, though available, maybe "availability" isn't his biggest problem.
 
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Availability is certainly important, but in the context of the NBA, availability is only important if you already have the talent and athleticism to cut it. There are literally billions of people who would be willing and able at an NBA league minimum salary to "show up for work" at a higher rate of availability than Marvin Bagley but are not remotely under consideration for an NBA contract.
And 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of those billions wouldn't be available after the first practice.
 
If a player is a net negative year after year then his availability doesent even matter.
Agreed.

If you know the player has a positive impact on the whole, not having him is worst case. If the player has a negative impact on the whole, of course his absence doesn’t hurt. But that player shouldn’t be on your roster in the first place.

The point about availability with regard to Bagley is that we really don’t know the limits of his impact, positive or negative, or the potential of his development since he’s missed 1/2 the games he could have played the past 3 seasons. He’s never been able to get into a rhythm or groove with playing time because as soon as he seems to make a stride or two, he missed a lot of time.

Perhaps he was doomed from the start, even if he’d been healthy and available for every single game. But we have no way to know. The guy simply missed too much workout/practice time, let alone actual playing time in real games.
 
Given that you've dug in your heels to defend a bon mot, I don't either, but here's my bottom line:

There are about 7.9 billion people on the planet. Of those 7.9 billion people, approximately 7.9 billion have been excluded from getting an NBA contract because, regardless of their availability, they do not have the talent and/or athleticism to play in the NBA.

That leaves about, say, a couple of thousand people left with the talent and athleticism requisite to play in the NBA. (30 NBA teams * 15 man roster ~= 450 players, but we should assume that there are international players and G-Leaguers who have the chops and miss the cut due to max roster considerations but could replace other bottom-tier NBA players in a pinch.) Of those couple of thousand people, some of them (like Greg Oden, and perhaps like Marvin Bagley, though the jury is still out on the latter) are unable to play due to chronic or repeated injuries or other non-injury reasons ("unavailable"), and end up out of the NBA. The number of players who fit this description at any given time is small, but we can be generous and say it's maybe 100 out of that few thousand.

So, we have the following:
7.9 billion people not in the NBA due to lack of talent and athleticism
100 people with sufficient talent and athleticism not in the NBA due to lack of availability

I can tell you which of these traits I think is the most important, and it's not the one accounting for 0.0000013% of people not being in the NBA.

Availability is certainly important, but in the context of the NBA, availability is only important if you already have the talent and athleticism to cut it. There are literally billions of people who would be willing and able at an NBA league minimum salary to "show up for work" at a higher rate of availability than Marvin Bagley but are not remotely under consideration for an NBA contract. Marvin Bagley, as unavailable as he has been, is certainly under consideration for another NBA contract, and will very likely get one of some sort. A clever, cutesy phrase does not make this not so.
You make simple things much more complicated than they need to be sometimes. This being one of them.

Everything I stated is true. No need to for all the mumbo jumbo spin job.

As for “clever, cutesy phrases“, you know all about those. Indicated by the one beginning his rebuttal with “bon mot”.

I’ll rest my case by pointing out the availability of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson the past couple seasons. Their elite shooting meant nothing when it wasn’t on the floor. Having Klay out there now, even if not 100% effective would change everything for that team.

Being present is the #1 requisite, period end of story. My apology that you just don’t care for the clever, cutesy phrasing.
 
Bagley was the wrong pick the second we made that pick. Its not about that we missed on Luka or that we didnt choose Luka. It was about picking a player that clearly isnt suitable for todays game. A horrible pick the second we made it and I dont care about if some mock drafts had him top 3 or 5. Anyone that had him top 3-5 in their big board should not make any player evaluations for an Nba franchise.

The problem isnt Bagleys availabilty or injuries or anything like that. Not at all. He just was never going to be the type of player that elevates your franchise. Whenever hes played in the nba hes been a net negative. This stuff has been mentioned here pre draft and all the years since and its also been argued why this is the case that has been proven correct year after year. It was a bad pick and imo it was very clear then when the pick happened and its still as stupid of a pick now. If last season there were any reasonable offers and our FO didnt take it for whatever reason (ownership saving face, thinking his value will increase) then its just stupid.

I dont want to go in the detail on why Bagley didnt become a productive starter on a good team as predicted because it has been done so many times in here by me and many others. It was very predictable since the pick happened and for surpise to few it happend as it should've been predicted. As I said pre draft, I dont care if he puts up 18/8. He still most likely shouldnt play any meaningful minutes on a good team. Also the way he and his entourage have done things plus the fact that there seems to be very little improvement, only further proves the point.

Trade him if you can get rid of his salary and get even something in return. I wanted to trade him long ago when we could have gotten something even slightly meaninful in return. We wont now but just move on and stack your team with players that provide something to winning basketball and build from there.
Makes you wonder who we would have drafted had we not been lucky in the lottery and stayed at #7.

If we go off Vlade's infamous draft board picture, it would have been Porter, and if he got scared of his injury history like many others did on draft day, then it would have been Bridges (although not sure if his draft board meant Mikal or Miles).
 
Given that you've dug in your heels to defend a bon mot, I don't either, but here's my bottom line:

There are about 7.9 billion people on the planet. Of those 7.9 billion people, approximately 7.9 billion have been excluded from getting an NBA contract because, regardless of their availability, they do not have the talent and/or athleticism to play in the NBA.

That leaves about, say, a couple of thousand people left with the talent and athleticism requisite to play in the NBA. (30 NBA teams * 15 man roster ~= 450 players, but we should assume that there are international players and G-Leaguers who have the chops and miss the cut due to max roster considerations but could replace other bottom-tier NBA players in a pinch.) Of those couple of thousand people, some of them (like Greg Oden, and perhaps like Marvin Bagley, though the jury is still out on the latter) are unable to play due to chronic or repeated injuries or other non-injury reasons ("unavailable"), and end up out of the NBA. The number of players who fit this description at any given time is small, but we can be generous and say it's maybe 100 out of that few thousand.

So, we have the following:
7.9 billion people not in the NBA due to lack of talent and athleticism
100 people with sufficient talent and athleticism not in the NBA due to lack of availability

I can tell you which of these traits I think is the most important, and it's not the one accounting for 0.0000013% of people not being in the NBA.

Availability is certainly important, but in the context of the NBA, availability is only important if you already have the talent and athleticism to cut it. There are literally billions of people who would be willing and able at an NBA league minimum salary to "show up for work" at a higher rate of availability than Marvin Bagley but are not remotely under consideration for an NBA contract. Marvin Bagley, as unavailable as he has been, is certainly under consideration for another NBA contract, and will very likely get one of some sort. A clever, cutesy phrase does not make this not so.
One could argue that on the flip side, talent and athleticism is only important on the condition that the player is available. If say a player Michael Jerden existed who was the GOAT from July-Sep but without fail with a 100% certainty every year goes and intentionally breaks an arm and a leg on the first of September. Does he get consideration for an NBA contract?

The definition of availability in the context of the NBA also assumes the ability to produce a certain output. In that sense, it is already a function of talent. If Fox has the flu, he might sit out the game - he's unavailable. Did his talent change? No. But his ability to produce for that one game might have, even though he could still theoretically be available to participate in the game.

By definition, there hasn't been an NBA Player who has been played while being unavailable. There have been players who played despite being relatively less talented and athletic than other NBA players.

You may argue about the word "best", which I concede. Perhaps a more accurate saying is that availability is the Fundamental ability.
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
The definition of availability in the context of the NBA also assumes the ability to produce a certain output. In that sense, it is already a function of talent.
Basically I think this is my point of contention. If one assumes all of the other things that I consider more important than availability, then, sure availability it the most important thing. But to me that's just taking the more important things and saying they're less important because they're a given. Why isn't availability also a given? Because the proposition to be proven is that availability is the most important.
 
Basically I think this is my point of contention. If one assumes all of the other things that I consider more important than availability, then, sure availability it the most important thing. But to me that's just taking the more important things and saying they're less important because they're a given. Why isn't availability also a given? Because the proposition to be proven is that availability is the most important.
Because there are no players in the NBA who aren't talented, while there may be players who aren't available. It is implied because that's how the language is being used in that context. It's like saying DeAaron Fox is a poor 3 point shooter, when in reality he would probably outshoot 99% of the world's population in a 3 point contest. Within the context of the discussion and speech of the sports world, a minimum level of talent is assumed, and comparisons are made relative to the rest of the sports world rather than to the world in general. So the actual proposition being made is that availability is the most important, given some baseline level of talent. Conversely, I don't think that implied assumption proves the reverse is true, that talent is the most important, because talent is also useless if there is no availability.

So with that in mind, I think the former (availability is fundamental/most important) is the more relevant statement to be made in the NBA, because it is already conditional on the talent being there, i.e. Given that (on condition of) an NBA player is talented, it matters first and foremost that he is available to play more than it does how talented he is.
 

kingsboi

Hall of Famer
Marvin needs to get traded to a team that is blatantly tanking like the Magic or Thunder and be free to get 30+ minutes, make mistakes and put up empty stats on the way to the most ping pong balls come May
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
Bagley is in for four minutes in the second half, commits one turnover and can't stop a guard from hitting a three and gets crucified, with folks pleading for TT to enter instead. TT enters instead, immediately misses a wide open layup and then does literally nothing in an equivalent four-minute stint...complete silence. No comments. Shocking.
 
Bagley is in for four minutes in the second half, commits one turnover and can't stop a guard from hitting a three and gets crucified, with folks pleading for TT to enter instead. TT enters instead, immediately misses a wide open layup and then does literally nothing in an equivalent four-minute stint...complete silence. No comments. Shocking.
TT, in his limited time, provided more of an interior defensive presence then Bags, but, yea, that missed shot was frustrating. Zoom out a bit and the reality is Bags and Thompson are, at best, bench bigs in the NBA. As are Holmes and Len.

The good news is, NBA teams don’t need an elite big to win in today’s game. The Kings do need, however, players with more size. Running Barnes with 4 guards ain’t going to cut it. The Kings aren’t efficient enough to make that work. Maybe having Harkless fixes that or maybe Buddy, Bags, and two protected firsts gets Simmons. Yes. two firsts, because while Buddy’s value has likely ticked up a bit, Bag’s value has tanked from late first/early second to salary filler.