Thabeet

  • Thread starter Thread starter jdbraver
  • Start date Start date
beb0p said:
Agreed. There was indeed chatter that GP wanted Noah and settled for Hawes.

Thabeet is not a good defensive player, but I think the hope is that he can grow into that player. Again, the evidence is here, if GP doesn't like defensive big (or at least one who has the potential) why bother to request Thabeet come in for a workout?

Indeed a good defensive big is very hard to get. One needs luck as well as will. It's important to remember that the last time we had one, Keon Clark, took a pay cut to come here. And before him, Pollard came after he was mistakenly cut by his team without being evaluated.
Click to expand...

Well, they could just invite Thabeet for a workout to induce somebody to trade up to #4 to get him.
 
fnordius said:
Keon had substance abuse problems at UNLV, and after he left the NBA. While in the NBA, he never failed a drug test. He was unloaded, along with much of the bench mob, as a cost cutting measure.
Click to expand...

Keon Clark is an alcohplic and claims he drank before and during every NBA game he played in. That's probly a stretch, but its still got some truth to it. He only played in two games after he left the Kings. So however much cost was in the mix, his personal problems were definitely a major factor.
 
SacKings7 said:
Thabeet may not want to play in Memphis

I'm willing to bet Memphis trades this pick, and Rubio and Thabeet go 2 and 3.
Click to expand...

Yeah I just read the same article on ESPN and I kind of figured this when he wasn't able to participate because of injury. Ford thinks they still take Thabeet, but if he doesn't want to play there, as is the case as everyone else - then he probably won't succeed there.

And if they do end up trading the pick, the question becomes who is going trade up for it?

EDIT:

Here's a blip from an article from The Memphis Edge:

Turns out the Grizzlies weren't snubbed by Hasheem Thabeet after all. After learning late Friday that Thabeet canceled his visit to Memphis because of a "shoulder injury," the Grizzlies dispatched executives and coaches to Los Angeles for a meeting with the 7-3 center out of Connecticut. Griz general manager Chris Wallace, scouting boss Tony Barone Sr., head coach Lionel Hollins and assistant coach Johnny Davis hopped an afternoon flight on Saturday and headed for Hollywood. They spent about three hours in Los Angeles and returned to Memphis late Saturday night. Is this the strongest signal yet that the Griz want to take Thabeet with the No. 2 overall pick? Well, I'm told the purpose of the meeting - the Grizzlies' third with Thabeet - was twofold. Hollins wanted to meet Thabeet and the Grizzlies had specific areas of concern they wanted Thabeet to address after studying him over the past month.
Click to expand...

So apparently, they are very willing to invest alot of their time into Thabeet, even if the love is not mutual.
 
Last edited:
fnordius said:
Oh, come on. Incorrect does not equal right.
Click to expand...


See, here's what frustrates me. People read one thing and comprehend another. He wasn't talking about what was the right outcome. He was talking about intent. Which is what the conservation was about. The implication was that Petrie's intent was to draft the BPA, whether he be tall or small. Whether he achieved that is another story.
 
Kingster said:
Well, they could just invite Thabeet for a workout to induce somebody to trade up to #4 to get him.
Click to expand...

Its my understanding that the Kings have tried to get Thabeet to come in for a workout and so far he has refused. I wish I could remember where I read that, but it was just a throw away line in an article.

I read another article today that said the reason Thabeet has refused to workout for some teams is that the workouts aren't set up to showcase his skills. Which is shotblocking. His agent went so far as to say, what are they going to have him do? Stand out there and shoot three's?

My opinion is that Thabeet doesn't want to show teams what his weaknesses are. I believe that his agent is afraid if teams are able to see all the flaws in Thabeets game he'll start to slide down the draft board.

I'll try and find the article again, and if I do I'll post the link..
 
bajaden said:
I read another article today that said the reason Thabeet has refused to workout for some teams is that the workouts aren't set up to showcase his skills. Which is shotblocking. His agent went so far as to say, what are they going to have him do? Stand out there and shoot three's?

My opinion is that Thabeet doesn't want to show teams what his weaknesses are. I believe that his agent is afraid if teams are able to see all the flaws in Thabeets game he'll start to slide down the draft board.

I'll try and find the article again, and if I do I'll post the link..
Click to expand...

http://www.draftexpress.com/blog/Jonathan-Givony/
 
fnordius said:
Keon had substance abuse problems at UNLV, and after he left the NBA. While in the NBA, he never failed a drug test. He was unloaded, along with much of the bench mob, as a cost cutting measure.

How is trading him away with 3 years left on his contract keeping him as long as you can?

Oh, come on. Incorrect does not equal right.
Click to expand...

Keon missed the entire season after he was traded to Utah and then he was out of the NBA. He was offered a contract at least once but he failed to show up to sign the contract or he told the team he wanted to chill out instead of work or something to that effect. The point being, Keon had issues off the court and one cannot dismiss that as the reason he was traded. He clashed with Vince Carter in Toronto. He critized his coach in Sacramento. This does not sound like a guy you want to keep in the locker room.

Pollard was traded for, what many thought at the time, the final piece of the championship (Brad Miller). At that time, Miller was regarded as a blue-collar type who can replace Pollard's defense plus score. Of course, that turns out to be not the case, but it's not as if Pollard was shipped for Malik Allen.

There must have been over fifty big men in draft history that GP could have picked. A GM can only draft the best available, especially with a lower pick. To draft only big men would turn us into the Supersonics all they drafted are big centers who busted (Swift, Petro, Sene, etc). Hindsight is 20/20 but I can tell that I for one, never thought David Lee, Dalembert, Pollard, Millsap, Maxiell, and many other bigs would have turned out as good as they did. They were high risk picks that turned out well. You can fault Petrie for not taking risk with drafting a raw big, but there is no evidence that he purposely shys away from a good defensive big man.
 
Kingster said:
Well, they could just invite Thabeet for a workout to induce somebody to trade up to #4 to get him.
Click to expand...

This may make sense if Thabeet is projected to go lower than #4 and the Kings is trying to put some hype into him. But this guy could go as high as #2 and most likely will be gone by the time GP make his choice.

Bottom line is, either Thabeet is there at #4 or he isn't. If he is then all the Kings has to do is make known that the pick is available, if they indeed want to trade the pick. They don't have to work him out to accomplish that.

The Pacers didn't have to workout Bayless to induce the Blazers to trade up for him. The Nuggets didn't have to workout Ajinca to induce the Bobcats to make a move for him.
 
Btw, speaking of Keon Clark. He was in trouble with the law and last I heard, was trying to overturn a 2.5 yrs prison sentence against him. He admitted under oath that he is a long time substance abuser and while in the NBA, he "Never played a game sober."

http://nba.fanhouse.com/2007/12/16/keon-clark-i-never-played-a-game-sober/

Back to the main point, I believe his personal issue is the reason he was traded, not because of GP's fear of having a shotblocker.

And if Thabeet is availabe at #4, I hope we take him.

Btw, hope Keon gets his life back in check. He does sound like a man trying to clean up his act.
 
nbadraft.net sure does have alot of jokes. I think we need to get Thabeet in here for a physical and stuff. Dude could fall to us, and if Rubio is gone... BAM! instant intimidating front line. (6'10'', 7'0'', 7'3'', and none of them scrubs?! How awesome is that?)

Anyway, Me and Brick are pretty much his two biggest fans here so I'm really just reiterating.
 
Geoff Petrie has been here 15 years now -- the longest tenure of any GM. In his 15 years do you know how many times a King has finished Top 10 in shotblocking on the season? Once -- the fluke year by Michael Stewart. That is tied for dead last of any NBA team over that period with Phoenix, Seattle and Boston. You basically have two options in the face of such a career long failure -- either a) Geoff has little interest in interior defenders, or spending any assets of note to get a good one; or b) Geoff is a lousy judge of talent when it comes to big man defense. NOBODY just accidentally fails for that long a period of time. Especially not anybody of Geoff's alleged prowess.
 
bajaden said:
The implication was that Petrie's intent was to draft the BPA, whether he be tall or small. Whether he achieved that is another story.
Click to expand...

I never tried to suggest that Geoff avoided the BPA. All I was saying was that, just as you and I might disagree about which kind of cervesa tasted best, or whether one woman or another was more attractive, so might reasonable people differ about who is BPA. When you look at a draft choice, or a trade, or who to cut when payroll's high, you're going to be introducing your personal biases to things, just as surely as an editor biases a newspaper by deciding which stories get run and which get left out. Its inevitable that things be that way, because there's no objective measure for BPA, any more than there is for most important news story.

The question is really whether Petrie's vision of BPA sometimes precludes defensive players, and bigs in particular, from playing a major, long-term role on the team. Since Duane Causwell, the only King who might be called a defensive big that lasted over two years was Brian Grant, who was around for three. He was also the last person drafted by the Kings who made over 100 blocks in a year. But that was back in the mid-'90s. The last year ANY King had over 100 blocks was when Vlade and Keon both managed it, again, a long time ago.

When we were winning, and had about the best defense in the NBA, a lot of us reacted to the cutting of the best defenders on our bench (Clark, Pollard, J. Jackson) by saying "In Petrie We Trust." He'd led us from weakness to strength, right? So why question him? And those changes brought us some (apparently needed) payroll relief. But they also marked the beginning of the defensive decline that continued until we became the very worst defensive team in the NBA. Within a couple of years, fans would start blaming Adelman for poor defense, when the decline made perfect sense if you contrast Keon and Scot with Darius and Brad. We just didn't have the players for it anymore.

The Maloofs then tried to fix the situation by swapping out Peja for RonRon, but the hole in the middle remained. Salmons, who I gather was Muss' idea, was more of the same. Geoff did get a couple of defenders in Dahntay and Justin, but only briefly, and at the cheapest possible terms. As usual, when a roster cut was needed, the defensive players were the first to go. They were bottom pay and bottom priority, so that outcome was kind of inevitable.

Now we're rebuilding, and our start is two bigs who will probably never be thought of as defensive. One could argue that fate forced our hand, that those guys were the BPA when we picked, but the return of Coachie, combined with talk out of the FO about reviving the Princeton, makes me think it might not have been so simple as that. Maybe we're getting a do-over with a slightly different Brad, and a very improved Darius.

Since our lack of D is now as severe as it can get, I guess we'll get more clues in a few days. Will it be defenders, or yet more shooters?
 
Bricklayer said:
Geoff Petrie has been here 15 years now -- the longest tenure of any GM. In his 15 years do you know how many times a King has finished Top 10 in shotblocking on the season? Once -- the fluke year by Michael Stewart. That is tied for dead last of any NBA team over that period with Phoenix, Seattle and Boston. You basically have two options in the face of such a career long failure -- either a) Geoff has little interest in interior defenders, or spending any assets of note to get a good one; or b) Geoff is a lousy judge of talent when it comes to big man defense. NOBODY just accidentally fails for that long a period of time. Especially not anybody of Geoff's alleged prowess.
Click to expand...

Shot-blocking is not the be-all-end-all of interior defense. If that's the case then P.J. Brown would be a horrible defender and Tyrus Thomas http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?playerId=1727one of the best.

You have to look at the whole body of work. Not just at one statistic that happens to coincide with your theory.

During the same 15-year period that you cited, no King player finished in the top 10 in assists. Using your logic, it means Petrie hates players who can pass?! - which would have been dead wrong.

The fact is, there were far, far more defensive type bigs that came through our franchise than offensive bigs. But for one reason or another, most of them didn't pan out.
 
beb0p said:
During the same 15-year period that you cited, no King player finished in the top 10 in assists. Using your logic, it means Petrie hates players who can pass?! - which would have been dead wrong.
Click to expand...

That is EXACTLY what I would suggest -- these things are not accidents. Petrie still loves his college system. His college system does not require or favor ball dominating passing PGs nor defensive interior players who lack offensive skills.

Over the same period of time we've had 11 guys finish in the Top 10 in 3pts shots made. These things are not accidents. They are conscious choices. Petrie has been the GM for 1/4 of the history of the franchise (and the NBA for that matter). This has long since gone way beyond fluke or circumstance. If you value certain traits in your players, they WILL make it onto your team sooner or later. You don't get to sit around decade after decade acquiring the same sorts of characters and then claim it was all just a misunderstanding. Its like arguing that Don Nelson does not like smallball, or that Phoenix has not always been a smallball/run n gun team, or Pat Riley does not love his big centers. People who have been around for a long time develop definitive track records.
 
Anyone else read Thabeet is basically faking his shoulder injury because he doesn't want to play in Memphis either? What's the list up to now... Rubio, Thabeet, Curry, Harden who don't want to play there? It's kind of getting rediculous!
 
Bricklayer said:
That is EXACTLY what I would suggest -- these things are not accidents. Petrie still loves his college system. His college system does not require or favor ball dominating passing PGs nor defensive interior players who lack offensive skills.

Over the same period of time we've had 11 guys finish in the Top 10 in 3pts shots made. These things are not accidents. They are conscious choices. Petrie has been the GM for 1/4 of the history of the franchise (and the NBA for that matter). This has long since gone way beyond fluke or circumstance. If you value certain traits in your players, they WILL make it onto your team sooner or later. You don't get to sit around decade after decade acquiring the same sorts of characters and then claim it was all just a misunderstanding. Its like arguing that Don Nelson does not like smallball, or that Phoenix has not always been a smallball/run n gun team, or Pat Riley does not love his big centers. People who have been around for a long time develop definitive track records.
Click to expand...


What it does suggests is that Petrie does not place a special emphasis on shot-blocking. That I agree. But we're talking about interior defense as a whole, not just shot-blocking right? Interior defense includes a range of things including rebounding - and for many years a King player finished in top 10 in rebounding.

Stats can be misleading. Just as the Princeton does not need great passing PGs, GP nonetheless likes PGs who can pass. The stats is a result of circumstance that does not always reflect the intend of the GM. That's why if one looks at the whole body of work, one sees that even though the PG doesn't get a lot of assists, passing is still valued in GP's players.

Similarly, even though there were few shot-blockers, interior defense is nonetheless valued. I agree that GP doesn't get enough shot-blockers, but I disagree that he only looks for offense in a big. There are a lot of bigs who can shoot midrange jumpers but can't rebound or defend worth a lick. And time and again, GP passed them over for guys who are more rugged and physical. And yes, I agree that he doesn't alway make the wisiest choice (Mikki, Ostertag, etc), but I believe he did tried to get that defensive big.
 
Nighthawk1 said:
Anyone else read Thabeet is basically faking his shoulder injury because he doesn't want to play in Memphis either? What's the list up to now... Rubio, Thabeet, Curry, Harden who don't want to play there? It's kind of getting rediculous!
Click to expand...

Good. Serve them well for handing a championship to the Lakers. :cool:
 
Nighthawk1 said:
Anyone else read Thabeet is basically faking his shoulder injury because he doesn't want to play in Memphis either? What's the list up to now... Rubio, Thabeet, Curry, Harden who don't want to play there? It's kind of getting rediculous!
Click to expand...


Yeah that is getting ridiculous.

With Thabeet I could see his agent steering him clear because of Gasol. Question is would the agent try to do the same thing to us because of Spencer? Or is one advanatge of having a long time respected GM like Petrie that the agents won't try to screw wiht him the way they will a Chris Wallace?
 
No, his agent I believe pretty much said Memphis isn't committed to winning and he(Thabeet) doesn't want to be in that environment..

I think his agent would love for him to play in Sac Town, but last rumor I read was Thabeet actually met with Presti or OKC Managment in LA again today to try to convince them to draft him at 3... Which I think would be the best fit for him anyways
 
Memphis has some pretty good talent, but I understand the concerns if they aren't willing to spend to get FA's or even keep their current talent. Hopefully this resistence to Memphis doesn't make them fixed on trading their pick, which would definitely set their sights on Rubio, who would likely have the most trade value.
 
Last edited:
Vlade4GM said:
Memphis has some pretty good talent, but I understand the concerns if they aren't willing to spend to get FA's or even keep their current talent. Hopefully this resistence to Memphis doesn't make them fixed on trading their pick, which would definitely set their sights on Rubio, who would likely have the most trade value.
Click to expand...

I personally don't think Rubio slides anymore with Thabeet not wanting to be in Memphis either.... The list keeps growing of those whom don't want to play there (not that players really have the choice and I think memphis should call Harden/Thabeet/Curry's bluff). But just looking at it from that point of view they will draft the best talent to trade which will be rubio (instead of reaching for a tyreke). In which case we can easily draft and trade tyreke for rubio... Of course we have to sweeten but I don't think it'll be nearly as expensive as many Memphis fans seem to think their pick will fetch...
 
Nighthawk1 said:
I personally don't think Rubio slides anymore with Thabeet not wanting to be in Memphis either.... The list keeps growing of those whom don't want to play there (not that players really have the choice and I think memphis should call Harden/Thabeet/Curry's bluff). But just looking at it from that point of view they will draft the best talent to trade which will be rubio (instead of reaching for a tyreke). In which case we can easily draft and trade tyreke for rubio... Of course we have to sweeten but I don't think it'll be nearly as expensive as many Memphis fans seem to think their pick will fetch...
Click to expand...

what is really interesting is that if all these stories about players intentionally snubbing memphis are true is what it says about the team as much as the players perception of it. if memphis called agents and players and told them they were going to draft them whether they liked it or not, these incidents would not be happening so frequently. but it is likely that memphis has done no such thing, which shouldn't be surprising given their recent history of total capitulation to everyone. at this point i wouldnt be surprised if they ended up giving the pick to the knicks for jerome james or some other garbage. that franchise needs to be sold (or taken over by the NBA) or contracted ASAP.
 
Nighthawk1 said:
I personally don't think Rubio slides anymore with Thabeet not wanting to be in Memphis either.... The list keeps growing of those whom don't want to play there (not that players really have the choice and I think memphis should call Harden/Thabeet/Curry's bluff). But just looking at it from that point of view they will draft the best talent to trade which will be rubio (instead of reaching for a tyreke). In which case we can easily draft and trade tyreke for rubio... Of course we have to sweeten but I don't think it'll be nearly as expensive as many Memphis fans seem to think their pick will fetch...
Click to expand...

I just can't see Memphis liking Evans, he simply doesn't fit their roster.
 
Thabeet reminds me somewhat of a former Sacramento Kings legend, the great Duane Causwell! :)


Great size, good but not great athleticism, excellent shot blocker, very limited offensive skills.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

S
[Trade] New Blockbuster Three-Team Trade Proposal Sends Domantas Sabonis to Portland, Hawks Add 3&D Wing
Replies
2
Views
226
Capt. Factorial
Capt. Factorial
S
[Rumor] Kings Predicted to Take 7-foot-1 Phenom in 2025 NBA Draft
Replies
5
Views
621
Tetsujin
Tetsujin
twslam07
Potential Free Agent/Trade/Sign Tracker, '25-'26 Season
47 48 49
Replies
1K
Views
44K
Joshyjosh31
J
twslam07
  • Poll Poll
“THE” Trade Deadline Move to Make…
2 3 4
Replies
110
Views
9K
The_Jamal
T
S
Top NBA Free Agent Reveals Five Potential Landing Spots
Replies
3
Views
292
Tetsujin
Tetsujin
Back
Top