This would actually be a solid rotation with dare I say, hope, headed into the season. I’m not sure Hartenstein would come to Sac being we already have Sabo starting at the 5. There’s thought to be a lot of interest in him to start somewhere. And he would be our MLE, we wouldn’t be able to offer anything more. But as you said, his defense would be a big lift amongst the bigs.
I screamed this all last off-season with Vanderbilt... throw the full MLE at him. He's a young player that's ready to breakout as an above average starter and shouldn't be available as a UFA. Even better than Vandy, the Clips are basically waving Hartenstein out the door with them likely using at least a chunk of their tax-payer MLE. I'm just a big dumb dumb with a basic understanding of how some of these metrics work and it's so easy to spot some of these guys when they're ready to explode with an increase in minutes.
I said this in my first post during this thread; I think him and Sabonis can work and especially if Brown wants to run the Princeton? Hartenstein and his 17.5% AST rate along with his elite rim protection say hello. So even if Hartenstein isn't a consistent spacer (yet... he started chucking at the end of the year for a really good rate.), he still commands defenses to play up on him or you give him free passing lanes. And the Clips were very happy to run all sorts of sets through him as a playmaker. It wasn't "cheese" type assists, it was actual great passing/creation plays from him.
I like GPII, I like the Martin twins, I like Porter and Boucher, but Hartenstein is the real prize that's attainable for us this off-season. 23 year olds with his offensive tools (finishing, passing, offensive feel) rebounding, bball IQ and rim protection should never be attainable on the market.
