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

Can only hope it’s true, hope the kid has a long NBA career and this never comes back again.

 

If we get in the top 3, I think we should try to move Kuzma instead of Ingram. I love Kuzma, but Ingram is a nice swiss army knife type player that can contribute when he's not scoring. If we land AD with Kuzma, the #2 or 3 pick, Hart and maybe a future first or two, that will mean we have AD and Lebron doing a good chunk of the scoring. If Kuzma is a third option behind the two of them, it sort of neutralizes his only above average talent: scoring. Ingram can probably give us Kuzma's scoring, but also take the ball up the floor, play defense at 4 different positions, and is a better passer. For all of Kuzma's offensive explosiveness, he's scoring 18.6 ppg on 46.3% from the field and 30.7% from three. Ingram? 18.3 ppg on 49.7% from the field and 33% from three.

Ingram is a better third option than Kuzma behind Lebron and AD. Ideally though, we get to around 7th in the draft, draft Darius Garland to be our pg of the future. Trade Lonzo for a future asset and then sign AD in 2020. Screw Lebron and what's best for his window. Garland/Ingram/Kuzma/AD should be our future.

 

Jayson Christ had 9 points in a loss to the Nets last night. He’s averaging 16/6/2 on the year. Ingram averaged 18/5/3. Doesn’t seem like a huge disparity, certainly not “wait until the summer to deal Anthony Davis to us” for one over the other.

 

But Ingram is sooooooo much older. The other day Stephen Jackson was on one of the talking head shows and he said Tatum has a chance to be a top 5 player in the NBA. WTF? I have never in all my years watching the NBA (and we're at 3 decades now ) seen a player be pumped up the way Tatum is being hyped. I admit he had an amazing playoff run last season, especially considering he was a 19 year old kid. But the dude has not come CLOSE to hitting that level of play again. It's insane. The C Bags record is only 1/2 game better than the 8th seed in the West, and that's with them playing in the Eastern conference. He has the cleanest balls in the entire world since the entire Eastern Seaboard washing them 24/7.

I have been saying that Ingram has the potential to live up to that #2 pick slot. When Boston bows out of the AD sweepstakes because Kyrie leaves them, They're gonna wish they had Ingram, Kuz and Ball. Granted, it wouldn't surprise me with this front office if they called New Orleans and offered Ingram, Hart, Kuz, Ball, our lottery pick from this season and two future firsts...before anyone even offers New Orleans something or they have a chance to call us.

 

I don’t understand the Tatum hate. Wink.

 

He does play some defense now. He moved up about 30 spots from last year in terms of DRPM. You can call him below average, but he’s greatly improved since you’ve seen him.