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

@abeer3 i really dont understand why you need to go out your way to hate on Ingram, hes doing what he can i didnt realize he was expected to carry n win the gm by himself

 

Ingram shoots 67% and scores 25 with 9 rebounds making a few clutch shots in the fourth to help them win.
I wonder what advanced analytic people will come up with today to discredit him.
The turnovers? The anemic plus minus?
Disappearing for two quarters?
He's playing meh and scoring 25 points.
That's gotta count for something.

 

Weird, I’m reading some folks already want to trade Kuz on this forum and that’s with poor shooting, a negative net rating, but pretty good defense in 4 games.

Meanwhile you’re focusing on one game and a Pels team/coach that wasn’t all that good even with AD and Jrue.

You already know how I scrutinize our team and there were talks within our fan base that Bron is washed and AD is too soft/lean and needs to man up at the 5. So you already know what it is...

#GrassIsGreenerCuzOursStaysRed haha

 

LOL ^^^ you had a "like" again coming until the very end when you just had to tweak everyone.

 

ingram is who we thought would be.

 

Not doing for the likes bro...just discussion amongst knowledgeable fans.

But I’m sure nearly everyone here would criticize BI for a poor performance, it’s just that we saw him as the one that got away due to the potential. Especially on this team in particular. Imagine his lengf on the perimeter with AD & Dwight packing the paint...his net and defensive ratings would be insane here. Then you go to the other side of the ball, and he allows Bron not to be the primary playmaker on a majority of our possessions. His fit would be exactly what this team needs...which is why some of us here look at him as the one that got away.

 

I do too. Slender Man when he's got it going is the bomb. Just meant the AD "needing to man up at the 5". Only when it makes sense.

 

^that was a good game. my point earlier was that you can't just crow about every game. his last one was bad, and he was clearly implicated in the latest of their many losses. this one was good and he was implicated in one of their rare victories (over charlotte). both were 25-27 point outings, one came on 12 shots, the other on 25 shots. in one game he was a +4, in the other, he was a -25.

let's crow when appropriate and pipe down when appropriate.

 

The point isn't that he's playing great... the point is that he's averaged 27 points PPG for 15-20 games in a row not playing great.
Sure you can say what does it matter if you don't win, that it's easy to score on a bad team, but if that were the case players on losing teams would always dominate the points per game every year and that's generally not true.
Do you know where averaging 26 points PPG gets you in terms of NBA history?
It gets you tenth all time.
Kobe averaged 25.6 PPG for his career
Hakeem averaged 25.9
Can Ingram keep it up? Who knows.
Can he ever translate his production into wins? Who knows
My main frustration is people act like what he's doing is typical or no big deal.
It's not, it's way better than average despite his poor advanced analytics.
People used to tell me that he'll never average 20 PPG... how he only scored 30 points twice during his entire early career.
Then they'd also say he was a selfish black hole.
How can you only score 30 points twice during your college and high school, yet be a black hole?
Was it because he wasn't good enough? No, it was because he was doing what coaches asked him to do.
AD averaged 24 PPG at 22 years old. On a bad team
Ingram will never be the defensive player that AD is, but he's well on his way to being a more versatile offensive player.

 

lot to unpack there, but you basically provide all of the valid refutations of almost all of your own points.

are you saying we should favor the counting stats over the advanced stuff? should we do this in all cases?

and you're not really comparing him to 22 year old AD, are you?

btw, to average 26 for his career, he'd have to do this (actually, better than this) for like, 10-12 seasons, then retire before he declined at all. you're cherry picking pretty hard there.

count me as one who doesn't see this as a big deal. but i wasn't impressed with devin booker's 70 or his high scoring average, either.

 

AD averaged 24 PPG on a lousy team that went 30-52 when he was 22.
One could argue that Eric Gordon, Tyreke Evans, Jrue Holiday, Ryan Anderson is better than what Ingram's playing with at the moment.
My point again isn't that BI is better or as good as AD... my point is that one player has been severely undervalued by LA fans and one has been slightly overvalued.
AD is a better two way player... Ingram is okay but not dominant at defense like AD
He's not a good rebounder for his length.
However, he's a better iso scorer and has a more varied repertoire of moves and if it holds up, looks like a better outside shot.
My comments are directed at people who think Ingram is trash next to AD or Ingram plus five assets is a good deal.
So far it looks as though although we got the best player, that we may have given too much.
A lot depends on whether Lonzo can break out of his funk and stay healthy... and whether those picks amount to anything.
The fact that the answer for some of you is a foregone conclusion is what makes me comment.
If Lonzo never gets any better and all the picks we give are low first rounders then maybe it wasn't.

 

i don't think anyone "severely undervalued" ingram. we all knew he had massive potential but was simply raw

then last year he showed flashes of that potential before the blood clots. this season he just picked up where he left off. in terms of who can dominate a single game you can't even compare AD to BI. and BI has been shooting at a very high percentage this season so i'm curious to see what happens once he cools off

like i said before, if you had to give up that package to get AD you do it 10/10 times. lebron+ingram+lonzo+this current bench might be a 6th-8th seed at best. AD makes this team an automatic title contender. can't say the same for BI

 

If Lonzo doesn't get better and we keep those draft picks low then I think it was a fair deal.
If Lonzo does get better and something catastrophic happens to make the draft picks good, then it probably wasn't.
So much is contingent on whether we sign AD and whether we are able to pair a young star next to him.
If LBJ stays too long and ties up our salary cap like Kobe did during his farewell tour then it won't matter if we have AD.
And I say this with respect because right now LBJ is playing incredibly for his age.

 

how many times has kuzma gotten 25 shots in a game? my point is that it's not an impressive line. is anyone actually trying to argue it is?

almost everyone wanted to keep ingram over kuzma, as i recall, so that's a bit of a strawman argument, imo.

 

it's not "hating". i'm responding to insinuations that his play indicates the AD trade wasn't a no-brainer. it most certainly was. glad for BI that he's playing well in NO and they like him. great news. i'm just as thrilled with the situation, personally.

 

yeah, not sure what to say. talk to the guy who keeps hedging on the ways in which the AD trade might be a mistake in the BI thread. i'm responding to that noise by pointing out that what BI is doing isn't that special nor is it something we never saw while he was in la. he's got a long leash on a team that doesn't care much about winning, and he's managed to stay on the court for ten games.