[NBA] Comments that don't warrant a thread (OCT)
- Thread starter Tetsujin
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Joshyjosh31
Starter
Goddamn we should’ve traded for Kuminga all of a sudden he’s a Gilbert good versatile defender
kingsboi
Hall of Famer
Philly had a great opportunity to sell high two seasons ago, instead, teams will be getting 20 mpg out of him now with that knee on its last couple of strands
Towns had 8 points tonight, one field goal in the second half.
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
It’s NBA fandom, hot takes only! NO rational thoughts allowed FFS!
Joshyjosh31
Starter
At least we can say we don't have Joe Dumars running the ship. That's a positive for us
Tetsujin
The Game Thread Dude
We did come dangerously close to it though before Vivek “graciously” allows the man to take a job with the league office lol
I sorta forgot about the "shadow GM" time period of this team and the coup attempt to take over the team lol
Being a Kings fan is not for the weak.
This is why folks should be careful about basing their takes on Youtube videos. Kuminga has never been a consistently strong defender in the NBA, but he showed enough flashes against good players to project him capable of improvement on that end. And he is still very young, having bypassed college to play one year with the (now defunct) G-League Ignite.
Joshyjosh31
Starter
Isn’t Perry close to Dumars
Not until he utterly destroys our future, like Dumars did for the Pels.
Just insane run-out, trading the Pacers pick for no reason at that time of the season and then trading your own unprotected FRP to move up to get a late lotto selection. Just insanity.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
I think he means literally. They both come from that exact FO system. There seems to be a trend in Viveks world of listening to the wrong people.
Are we witnessing Reaves' "Linsanity" moment?
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
The youth length and athleticism in Orlando has the same record as the Kangz. What’s goin’ on there?
ShastaKingsFan
All-Star
They're off to a slow start, but are still developing a younger team? Lets see where they are after 25 games or so
iowamcnabb
Hall of Famer
I’m sure they will turn it around but this team was projected to win more than 50 games. Likely they don’t have great chemistry yet given Suggs injury history and Bane being new.
Joshyjosh31
Starter
lol they actually have two young players with star potential although they might need to get rid of Paulo. We suck and have zero players under 25 with potential have the third oldest roster
Eh I disagree here. I think we have 3 high level starter potential guys (Nique/Keon/Keegan) one potential in Carter. Just don't have the franchise guy in house, but I absolutely love the "surrounding" pieces if we get in a position to draft one.
Paolo/Franz/Bane has looked clunky so far and I think Paolo has severely underperformed his expectation.
28.5% USG
51.5% TS
13.4% AST
Frankly, just horrible efficiency from him and I think really has to be concerning that he's never actually be a super efficient #1 in his career yet. He's an exceptional wing passer, but he's extremely far from the top of the league in terms of scoring the ball.
I think they were really relying on Bane to fix their shooting and he's off to a rough start too.
I feel this may be a bit rosy on the projections for these guys.
In terms of a championship roster, Keegan is probably your third-best starter with two All-Star level guys in front of him. If you want Keegan to be your second-best player, you're probably not going anywhere.
Keon...sorry, guys...Keon is probably 5th-best starter at best, but more likely a rotation guy off the bench. I don't want to diss Keon, but I think he's a guy who can hope to have the same type/value of contribution as say a Bobby Jackson. You need to have guys like that, and you like to keep the ones you have, but they're not irreplaceable.
Nique is a complete question mark at this point. He's played one NBA game! And it's not like he's a top-three draft pick where you expect to have this huge level of growth and want to project him to being a future All-Star, he's a mid-20s pick, and his athletic profile doesn't exactly scream "superstar". Yes, there are diamonds in the rough, and hey, maybe we found one, but I would bet that fans of 29 NBA teams have thought about Nique for zero seconds cumulative in the last five months. So, not saying "no" on Nique, but way, way, premature, and the probability that he pans out as a high-level starter is pretty low.
In terms of what we're looking at now: LaVine could be a starter on a championship team (ceiling: #2). DDR could be a starter on a championship team (ceiling: #3-#4). Monk could be a starter on a championship team (ceiling #4). So trying to make that work with Domas (ceiling #1-#2) and Keegan (ceiling #3) was at least worth a try, though from the start the fit looked very bad.
The fit turns out to be worse than very bad. It's not going to work.
So I suspect our easiest course forward is to build a roster that eventually looks like this:
#1: ????
#2: Domas
#3/#4: Keegan + ???? (If things magically fall into place LaVine could hold this slot)
#5: ???? (Maybe Nique can slide in here someday)
Bench: Keon, maybe Monk, maybe Carter, maybe Raynaud, fill the rest in
So yeah, with respect to your "no franchise guy in house", yep, agree totally. Don't know how we're going to get that guy. I guess that's the draft. The problem with tanking is that ultimately you lose LaVine (who could have been a #3/#4 in ideal circumstances), you lose Monk, you probably lose Carter (which might not be a huge loss), you might well lose Keon, and you're playing with absolute fire in terms of losing Domas. Losing Domas would *hurt*. So it's really hard for me to blame the franchise for trying to build around him rather than just ditching an obvious #2 guy and playing the lottery. I guess that's where we are now...but there's a real good shot that if we take that path, that nobody on the current roster outside of Keegan (if that) will be around for the next playoff game. We just got out of a record drought and boy howdy are we setting ourselves up for another one. It's no surprise that some fans want to just get to the playoffs and roll the dice, maybe find a way to build from there. The tank, as we can all remember, has not been kind to us at all.
Just strongly disagree on Keon. Indiana and OKC had like 7 versions of him playing crucial roles in the NBA finals. He's the archetype that wins around your star players in the NBA now. Eye-test and analytics back that up strongly.
We're gonna small sample it again, but just basic on/off numbers:
Keon on:
98 minutes
111.3 ORtg
110.8 DRtg
+0.4 Net
Keon off:
142 minutes
109.7 ORtg
121.7 DRtg (lol)
-12.0 Net
With Keon on, we're be 17th in the NBA in Net rating. With Keon off we're 28th.
With Keon on, we're 9th in DRtg. With Keon off we're 29th.
And the deeper you dive in the super nerdy analytics, all have a very favorable view of Keon's impact. Honestly, you just have to watch him play to see it too, which generally when you marry the numbers and watching a guy look good, he's good.
Or I'll phrase it like this. Would the Kings be better or worse if we committed 34 MPG to Keon every single game?
This feels predicated on the concept that scoring is always the priority. That's what you mean with your #1-#5 roles isn't it? But what about using a different team-building concept. What about building a top 10 defense and then making sure that you have enough offense within that framework to outpace the other team?
Keon Ellis isn't what we think of as a top level starter -- historically players who fill that 3 and D role are supplementary role-players but one thing we know Keon Ellis is elite at is Point of Attack defense. We saw him lock up Steph Curry in a play-in game for one thing. And we've seen the models which rank him amongst the top 10 POA defenders over the course of a season.
Clifford is mostly unknown, on both ends, so quite a lot of projection is involved there but he's shown talent as a playmaker and as a shot creator in the half court and he's certainly a better option defensively at SG than either Monk or LaVine.
Keegan may not be elite as a wing defender, but he's just one notch below that which is still pretty damn good and he's looked effective against PGs, SGs, SFs, and PFs so his versatility alone already makes his defense a major asset. What I really like about Keegan offensively is that he doesn't turn the ball over. He may never come close to reaching his college scoring output in the NBA (personally I think he is capable of exactly that and it is roster composition holding him back but that is speculation not fact) but even as a 20ppg guy who we might think of as a third option, he doesn't come with the drawbacks that most high level scorers have. The only knock on him right now is his inability to draw fouls at a rate expected of a first or second option scorer. If he solves that, I have no problem writing him in as a solid #2.
Where we come to a road block is with Sabonis. If the goal is to build a top 10 defense, can you do that with Sabonis as your anchoring C? To me he's always been more of a PF except against certain matchups. But mobility wise he matches up better at C which puts him in Tweener territory. His rebounding is a bit of an X factor which leaves open a window of hope. If we get a truly exceptional defender who plays either C or PF and then Sabonis is just there to cut off the roll guy and clean up the boards I can be talked into keeping him as the weakest link in the defense. But options for finding that defensive anchor are pretty limited.
This is what I've got penciled in now as our projectable depth:
PG: Nique Clifford (Bench: Devin Carter)
SG: Keon Ellis
SF: Keegan Murray
PF: ??
C: ?? (Bench: Dylan Cardwell, Maxime Reynaud)
Clifford and Ellis swap assignments on defense with Ellis taking the other team's primary ballhandler. If we get lucky enough to land a starting PG in the draft who is also a standout defender, then I push Ellis into a bench role. Maybe we draft a PF or C who slots into a starting spot. Domas could maybe still fit but he's several years older than everyone else on this depth chart and we're several years away from making any meaningful noise in the playoffs so I would try to deal him this season and I'm trying to get a defensive big in return.
On Offense, I can see Clifford and Murray both being solid #2 / #3 guys in tandem because Murray has looked very good when he doesn't need to be the shot creator and Clifford's ability to collapse the defense and then kick the ball out can be the basis of an effective offense when paired up with reliable catch and shoot threats. Ellis is a guy most would think of as a #5 option on offense but he took 321 three point shots last season and made 43.3% of them. We're two years removed from Keegan's rookie season when he took 501 three point shots and made 41.1% of them but he has shown himself capable of elite shooting for a full season so it's not impossible to see him regaining that level of efficiency with a more stable team structure.
So yes, we do probably still need a true #1 guy but I don't think we're locked in to building around Sabonis or tanking for a superstar. If we can trade into one solid two-way starter and draft another one we'd already have a lineup which can make a run and they're all young with room to grow into something better. Boston won 64 games and a championship two years ago with a core group of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, and Kristaps Porzingis. Everybody can shoot, everybody is a strong defender. That was good enough for the #1 rated offense and #3 rated defense. Tatum and Brown are the absolute ceiling of what we hope to get from Murray and Clifford but even if we get 70% of those guys we're at least a young and exciting team that competes hard and could win a playoff series. Frankly, that would be good enough to keep me happy at this point.
I'm not gonna argue the stats. I'm not at all saying Keon is a bad player, and it's not terribly surprising to me that he has a positive influence on a bad team. Makes sense.
But again, I think we as a fanbase are overestimating how unique he is, and how difficult it would be to replace him. "Indiana and OKC had like 7 versions of him" - well great, there's a lot of Keons out there in different guises with different names. They fit around your star players - well great, they're not stars. They're kind of fungible pieces. You need them, sure. If you have a Keon, you don't want to throw him away, sure. But that's just not a guy to hang your hat on.
Yes, the team would probably be better if it committed more minutes to Keon. Keon is not part of the problem here. But he's only a small part of the solution.
KainLear
Starter
A solid comparison for Keon Ellis would be Alex Caruso. Both undrafted high-energy wing with strong defensive instincts and hustle, Ellis shot above 40% from 3 last season.
With more time and development, he could settle into a Caruso-type role: not necessarily gonna carry you through thick and thin, but a key piece of a team's rotation.
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