done limited research now. highlights consist of dunks and blocks, some decent ballhandling considering he's really a 4/5. didn't see playmaking or him take a shot outside the paint, but on his career, he's 21-57 from three and something near 70% from the line, so not completely unable to shoot? listed as light coming out of college but doesn't look that light to me on film. not huge, but not twiggy. guessing the plan is to use him as a backup smallball 5? worth a look, i think. we should be doing these things.
This is our defacto 2022 first round draft pick. Has huge upside. He’s the type of player we should have went after from the start. Too little too late for this current season.
That's surprising. Curious to see a small ball lineup with he and Stanley up front. For a stint the energy, hustle, and youth could give a boost. Ultimately I think it means we're going to see less Ariza. We'll rotate the two of them in with Bron or Melo lineups.. or Dwight if we're going traditional.
interesting that vogel cited our successful lineups as being young and athletic. feel like that's an obvious shot at the front office. deserved, too.
It never made sense to me to surround an aging Lebron and injury prone AD with more aging players. They need youth, energy and athleticism. As for Gabriel, he’s exactly the prototype big that needs to be paired with Lebron and AD (6’8-6’10 and athletic enough to defend 3–5). Funny thing is we had that guy in Kuz, but Frank was never committed to making him a starter. Hopefully Vogel will play Gabriel, but I’m losing confidence in his rotations by the day.
i bet he plays him, tbh. frank's done with all this stuff and seems to be sort of enjoying watching it burn, imo. i think all the vets were because our stars knew who they were and they could be had for the minimum. it would have been a tough sell to stock the team with literal g-leaguers to start the season. but at the halfway point, we should have already cut ties with ariza/ellington/baze/dj in favor of rolling tryouts. and yes, we got some of that anyway due to injuries, covid, etc., but we could have used more. i don't know, the counter argument is that no one could have known the cycle would never end. for basically every other team in the league, it did. we had terrible luck on top of some poor choices. that doesn't make the choices less poor, but i think with a moderately healthy team, we're in 4th right now.
