Brandon Ingram Discussion: He Is Who We Thought He Could Be

They made some strategic errors in how they handled Iggy's injury. Losing one of their 3/D players who is also a good facilitator forced them to play Jordan Bell, who was awful in that series. They probably should have stuck with McGee instead, but I'm guessing he may have not had the stamina to keep up. When their offense stymied, they kept going to Durant in the post, but he wasn't able to take advantage of even mismatches and score consistently. That then created tension for the other Warriors players who wanted to see the ball move more. Bell not being able to shoot well hurt them more, forcing them to go to Livingston at times who could at least create something.

I'm ignoring Boogie right now because he will probably not be healthy for a while, and Kerr does not like to play big guys when the other team goes small anyways. We should put our focus into beating the Hampton 5 type lineups.

Brandon Ingram can definitely be valuable for this type of a strategy. But we need to see borderline all star and borderline All NBA defensive play from him. If he can reliably create offense and play elite defense for stretches, that will be wonderful. I personally do not see him making this type of jump in one summer, or possibly ever. I may be wrong, but the risk is high given LeBron's limited prime left, and all the pressure that comes with us having star players in Hollywood (remember 2013).

 

My feelings exactly.

 

Kevin Love is an all star and elite 3 point shooter (on high volume). We don't have anybody who can do either of those 2 things right now, much less both.

We also don't want to play like the Cavs did last year. They relied too heavily on LeBron to create for everyone, that tired him out at his current age, and they ran out of gas competing with better teams. He reportedly wants to play off ball, which is why we brought in facilitators like Rondo and are keeping Ball. But we need a bit more for him to play that way. As right now we need someone to guard the other team's best wing, and create offense on their own. Leonard fulfills both of those. Ingram hopefully will, but I am skeptical given what I saw last season.

 

41% on over 5 attempts per game playing 28 minutes is very, very good. On top of that he was an elite rebounder and can create his own shot. That's what earned him an all star appearance this year. I don't think anybody else on our team right now will make the all star team, much less with elite 3 pt shooting to go along with it.

Love's D is awful, yes. And that's the angle we need to take. Along with finding another offensive creator.

 

There’s been some valid points made amongst the last several pages. I’m still of the opinion that trading Ingram would be a colossal mistake down the road. If Lebron is reportedly okay with biding his time and letting Magic and Rob build this the right way and not making a panic move, then I’m good too.

 

If Ingram becomes an all star when he's 23, putting up 24/6/6, are you willing to wait for that? LeBron will be 37 and out of his prime, possibly even opting out of his contract to go play with his son. Even if Kuzma and Ball are borderline all stars as well, I'm not sure that's ideal.

Meanwhile Leonard can give you 25/6/3 as a primary option with elite perimeter defense. Why risk missing out on that for Ingram's hopeful development.

Again, what if we decided to roll with the young core in '96? We already had multiple young all stars at that point, compared to 0 today. That core was more proven, but it was obvious Shaq and Kobe had the much higher ceiling, and needed veteran talent to win now.

Remember, BEST CASE, Ingram becomes Leonard. Why not just get the sure thing?

 

Remember worst case is losing one or more of our best young talent and then finding out Kawhi is no longer MVP capable Leonard. That article yesterday abeer posted said this problem has been re-occuring since 2012. Without seeing him play in the league again after missing virtually a whole year, you can't be certain from physicals. You can't even get in prime shape without playing in the league.

 

Because I simply don’t think that’s best course of action.

 

What's the best course of action, and why?

 

Seeing all 4 of Leonard, Ingram, Kuzma and Ball play for at least a half this coming season to evaluate the talent of all of them fresh.

 

I've had the same issue as Leonard (quad tendinitis). It's a weird problem and can take a long time to heal. Tendons get inflamed for unknown reasons, but there's often not a structural element associated with the pain, like there is in a broken bone. Pain is a protective mechanism from the brain to prevent you from moving through what your brain perceives to be a dangerous ROM. You have to incrementally load the tendon slowly and "convince" your brain that it is okay to be in those painful positions.

Rehab can be time consuming. It took 7 months to get rid of mine, so I'm not surprised he had to take the year off. Trying to get back into things too quickly can also cause flare ups, so again, not surprised he came back for a bit and had to sit out. He's getting the top care in the world. It's tendinitis, not a degenerative knee like Bynum.

 

If you see Leonard play this season, it will be on another team. He won't come to training camp, so the Spurs will be forced to trade him, like the Magic did with Dwight in 2012.

 

I’ve explained on here countless times that we should either 1) wait and pick up Kawhi next summer and give up nothing, or 2) see if Kawhi is truly healthy before pawning off our best young assets.

 

If he really wants to be here then we sign him as a free agent. Ingram and Kuzma with one more year of growth may very well be worth collectively Kawhi by himself. We don't f****** know what he's coming back as after the weirdest year ever with the most vague prognosis of what is going on with the injury and in his head.

 

1) Very risky, given what happened with George. Also you waste another year of LeBron's limited prime.
2) Would happen in a routine physical and medical evaluation associated with any trade of an NBA player.

 

There's a big risk with that. Paul George, who openly said he wanted to be a Laker multiple times, flaked on us. You also waste another year of LeBron's very limited prime in the process.