Skal Labissiere revisited

[The Hammer]

Phoenix calls and offers Chriss for Skal & Bogdan. What does Vlade say?

So Paps is a free-roll

Vlade wouldn't have a chance to respond because I'd rip the phone out of his hand and hang up immediately.

 

[allrightythen]

Chriss looks like he's going to be a good player and he does a lot of things well and he's a really great athlete. I don't feel the need to knock him at all to say that I like Skal more. Skal is looking like a steal of a draft pick and the trade looks like a really good one for Vlade at this point. Things can always change I think I'd rather have Skal, Papagiannis, and Bogdan's rights than just Chriss.

 

[upinsmoke]

Phoenix calls and offers Chriss for Skal & Bogdan. What does Vlade say?

So Paps is a free-roll

Vlade calls Phoenix and offers the latest of his picks for Chriss...

 

[KingsFanGER]

Chriss looks like he's going to be a good player and he does a lot of things well and he's a really great athlete. I don't feel the need to knock him at all to say that I like Skal more. Skal is looking like a steal of a draft pick and the trade looks like a really good one for Vlade at this point. Things can always change I think I'd rather have Skal, Papagiannis, and Bogdan's rights than just Chriss.

It's really early, but from my point of view Chriss moves a lot more fluent than Skal. But even if it doesn't look like it, Skal actually is under control and gets where he wants.
I don't know. From an aesthetic standpoint I would go with Chriss and when he develops even further he might turn into a very good and very athletic stretch-4, but who cares about aesthetics in basketball? Skal seems to be able to get the job done and hopefully will also get better. I like his jumpshot technique a lot more than Chriss's.

 

[lwc]

Nah, you still need Tolliver on this team and getting action. He and Temple are exactly the sort of veterans you want your young guys to be learning from. The last time we tried a full-on from-zero rebuild, our team vets were Kenny Thomas and Cisco.

You keep Tolliver and Temple as long as you can. You keep Kosta until Papa can be an adequate replacement (as much as we like ragging on him, Kosta is still a really really good roleplaying big). Reke I'm super on the fence about simply because, although there's a very good chance we take one in the draft, we currently only have one SF on the roster and Reke can give us serviceable time there (the team is going to be WAYYYYYY under the cap next year as well so we need somebody). Do agree we don't need Spellcheck anymore though.

Temple for sure, Tolliver should only play when at least one or two really good defenders are in with him.

 

[bajaden]

It's really early, but from my point of view Chriss moves a lot more fluent than Skal. But even if it doesn't look like it, Skal actually is under control and gets where he wants.
I don't know. From an aesthetic standpoint I would go with Chriss and when he develops even further he might turn into a very good and very athletic stretch-4, but who cares about aesthetics in basketball? Skal seems to be able to get the job done and hopefully will also get better. I like his jumpshot technique a lot more than Chriss's.

The major difference between Chriss jumpshot and Skal's, is that Skals goes in. Skal handles the ball better. Skal has more offensive moves than Chriss, and I will predict right now that Skal will be a far better player than Chriss. Write it down. His feel for the game is light years ahead of Chriss. That doesn't mean that Chriss won't turn out to be a good player, but I wouldn't trade Skal for him straight up, much less throw in another player.

There are a couple of guys in this coming draft that might turn out to be better players than Chriss. Robert Williams, or Zach Collins if he declares, are both players with similar potential.

 

[ParniValjak]

The major difference between Chriss jumpshot and Skal's, is that Skals goes in. Skal handles the ball better. Skal has more offensive moves than Chriss, and I will predict right now that Skal will be a far better player than Chriss. Write it down. His feel for the game is light years ahead of Chriss. That doesn't mean that Chriss won't turn out to be a good player, but I wouldn't trade Skal for him straight up, much less throw in another player.

There are a couple of guys in this coming draft that might turn out to be better players than Chriss. Robert Williams, or Zach Collins if he declares, are both players with similar potential.

I tend to agree on the Skal vs Chriss comparison hence why I asked the question a few days ago.

Skal obviously has a pretty impressive offensive arsenal. I think the next step for him, other than getting stronger, is to work a bit more on creating off and creating for others/passing out of double teams.

Double teams will not come his way this season. I do think that if he continues improving at this rate, he will start facing them next season which will be a very good learning experience for him which will determine how good a player he will be in the long run.

 

[ESP47]

Skal's footwork in the post is better than 90% of the players in the NBA already. Most players dream of having that kind of footwork in lane and most go their entire careers without ever being able to do it.

With that said, his lateral quickness is very slow. He does not move side to side very well and he doesn't have a quick first step on defense. He is going to need to develop strong fundamentals on defense because his athleticism doesn't quite transfer to guarding the opposition. I don't see him being able to guard SF's in any way, shape or form.

Chriss will wind up being able to guard smaller, faster players better than Skal will but he has a long ways to go before you can feed him the rock at the elbow and tell him to go to work the way Skal does.

 

[PHXSUNSFAN]

Chriss will wind up being able to guard smaller, faster players better than Skal will but he has a long ways to go before you can feed him the rock at the elbow and tell him to go to work the way Skal does.

Chriss is more of a defensive player than Skal is. But like I mentioned earlier, not sure where that post went since Chriss is actually being discussed in this thread in comparison to Skal, but anyway yeah like I said earlier, Chriss has had an amazing March is really starting to put it all together.

I hope Skal works out too and this can be a great PF rivalry like we used to have between Amare and LMA when he was in Portland.

 

[hrdboild]

There are a couple of guys in this coming draft that might turn out to be better players than Chriss. Robert Williams, or Zach Collins if he declares, are both players with similar potential.

Unfortunately Robert Williams announced that he will not enter the draft this year. And next year's crop of bigmen gets even better. As deep as this year is in elite PGs, next year could be even deeper in elite PF/C prospects.

All I'm going to say about the Chriss/Labissiere comparisons is that there isn't really one. They're linked only because of draft circumstances. Otherwise they're completely different types of players who happen to play the same position. And I really hope we don't let Skal become another victim of high expectation backlash. Kings fans are notorious for falling all over young guys and hyping them up to be future stars and then sniping at them when they don't progress at the rapid rate we expected. The reality is that this team will most likely still be terrible next season as the young guys work through the growing pains of facing well-prepared defenses every night that are keyed into stopping exactly what they do well. It's a long haul to get back to respectability from here, there will be a lot of bumps along the way.

 

[M_Barragan]

Unfortunately Robert Williams announced that he will not enter the draft this year. And next year's crop of bigmen gets even better. As deep as this year is in elite PGs, next year could be even deeper in elite PF/C prospects.

All I'm going to say about the Chriss/Labissiere comparisons is that there isn't really one. They're linked only because of draft circumstances. Otherwise they're completely different types of players who happen to play the same position. And I really hope we don't let Skal become another victim of high expectation backlash. Kings fans are notorious for falling all over young guys and hyping them up to be future stars and then sniping at them when they don't progress at the rapid rate we expected. The reality is that this team will most likely still be terrible next season as the young guys work through the growing pains of facing well-prepared defenses every night that are keyed into stopping exactly what they do well. It's a long haul to get back to respectability from here, there will be a lot of bumps along the way.

Definitely! Skal still needs a ton of work. He is really far behind in competitive basketball experience. He already has elite level touch. Now he needs to catch up the rest of his game to that touch. Particularly his handle and his defensive fundamentals closing out on the perimeter.

 

[Cecil]

Chriss is more of a defensive player than Skal is.

Granted I don't watch a lot of Suns games ... Chriss played horrible defense against the Kings. Our bigs (two rookies, one year two player, and one vet) had their way with him all game. Sure he had a couple blocks, but most of the shots went in that he guarded.

 

[M_Barragan]

Granted I don't watch a lot of Suns games ... Chriss played horrible defense against the Kings. Our bigs (two rookies, one year two player, and one vet) had their way with him all game. Sure he had a couple blocks, but most of the shots went in that he guarded.

He should be a good defender in time. Defense is the hardest adjustment to make in the pros. Just look at Skal and his struggles.

 

[ParniValjak]

Definitely! Skal still needs a ton of work. He is really far behind in competitive basketball experience. He already has elite level touch. Now he needs to catch up the rest of his game to that touch. Particularly his handle and his defensive fundamentals closing out on the perimeter.

Skal still has a long way to go. The intriguing thing for me at least is that he is coming along pretty quickly and the fact that he hasn't played competitive basketball for that long, it indicates that there is some real upside and potential there.

I like his offensive game a lot. He has the post game, a mid range game and will extend that range to 3. Apparently he has been hitting 3s regularly in practice with ease so it is only a matter of time before that translates into a game setting.

He absolutely must get stronger in order to fully utilize his offensive talent. The post game while its there, it's not as effective because he gets pushed off the block easily. I think this will come in time. Generally speaking, players have their breakout years in their 3rd NBA season so Skal has the rest of this year and the whole of next season to work on reaching his potential.

if he keeps improving at this pace for the next couple of season, he will eventually get to the stage where he will face double teams and team defenses that hone in on him to make him less effective. How he handles that will determine how good of a player he will be. If he can start recognizing those things early and creating for his team mates from those situations, then he really could reach that All-Star level. I think the talent could be there but there is still a LOT of work to do for him to get them. A LOT of work.

 

[ockingsfan]

Skal really needs to add on 10-15lbs of muscle to play power forward effectively in the NBA.

He was getting man handled by Blake Griffin in the Clippers game.

 

[ESP47]

That was to be expected. I hoped he would be able to score better than he did but I think we all knew Blake was going to dominate him. Oh well, it's a learning experience. Hopefully he can remember the moves Blake pulled on him and defend him better the next time. Even though he got dominated, he should be able to make a mental note there and apply it the next time we play those punchable faces again.

 

[The_Jamal]

Skal really needs to add on 10-15lbs of muscle to play power forward effectively in the NBA.

He was getting man handled by Blake Griffin in the Clippers game.

The good news is there are very few PF's left who play bully ball like Blake does. Probably just him, ZBO and Love at this point. And even Love has transitioned to more of an outside game rather than the post beast he was in Minny.

That's not to say that Skal doesn't need to add size, but guarding the PF spot is much more about quickness and length now rather than being able to bang with guys down-low.