2022-23 Team Developments: News / Trades / Free Agents / Rumors

lol. not a chance

this roster as it is currently is no better than an 8th seed, and that's being generous

 

A healthy Lebron and AD are top 3 in the West period. There seems to be this assumption that these guys won't be healthy or something. I disagree and have no clue why Denver, Clippers, Phx, Dallas should not be expected to have any injury issues. But it's some kind of given for us.

 

Name the 7 teams better and why. SMH..You guys seriously think Lebron James and Anthony Davis are some kind of OK players or something.

 

We went from the lottery to a Championship in 1 season. Unless there are some injuries that haven't been reported yet, I expect every team to be healthy and ready to go next month. That being the case, there aren't 4 teams in the West that have a better duo than Lebron and AD. There aren't 3 IMO either. Golden State and Memphis are deeper but an injury to Steph or Ja knocks them back to the middle of the pack.

 

The problem is not Lebron and AD, its players 3-15

 

The 3-15 weren't heralded at all prior to the Chip season either.

 

Lebron, Rondo,Javale, KCP, Kuz and Caruso were all on the team that finished out of the playoffs in the season prior. Folks thought Avery Bradley was shot, ditto with Dwight. We picked up Kief as a buy out. Danny Green was subpar all season. That Lebron and AD duo is special bro...we just haven't been fortunate enough to see it in action for most of the last two sessions.

 

We don't need a "pure scorer" like Clarkson. LeBron just lead the league in scoring and even in his down years AD is 20+ppg. In this scenario we'd also have Bojan, Nunn and Walker, that's plenty of guys whose primary goal is to put the ball in the basket. Monk is a pure scorer, having him was fun but ultimately he didn't help the team much if at all. Plus Monk is a significantly better shooter than Clarkson. Clarkson is basically the new Jamal Crawford, who never moved the needle for any of his teams. The "instant offense off the bench" guy always sounds good, but that guy is almost never a winning player. Lou Williams, Montrezl Harrell, Tyler Herro, Cam Payne, all of these guys are bad defenders who ultimately aren't in the best lineups for winning teams. Clarkson is no different.

 

You seem to be anchoring on Conley. You’re starting to sound like I did about TJ Warren

 

Conley has about as much career playoffs success as Clarkson. It's a bit of a push isn't it? Hero and Cam played key roles on teams that got to the Finals.

Rondo and Kuzma weren't great defenders either.

 

Exactly, we had depth. Thats what is prevalent in the NBA right now and we don't have the depth other teams do. Theres a huge gap between Lebron/AD to Westbrook and an even bigger gap to the rest. Who's the 4-5th best player, Bev and Reaves? Compare those to the 4-5th best of the top teams

 

We have depth now. Like I said nobody was high rating that supporting cast we had prior to the chip season. I think folks overrate what everyone else has..how many of those teams have actually accomplished something? This is a tough league, all these guys can play or they wouldn't be here. This team reminds me of the chip team...Bunch of guys with an opportunity to step up and fill in the blanks around two great players. We are right there with the perceived favorites in the West.

 

Slick is making some really good points. I mean take golden state last year for example;

Is Steph better than Lebron or AD? I’m not so sure, probably not anymore.

But I can tell you a healthy AD and Lebron are far superior to Green, Klay, Wiggins and Poole.

I think Nunn, Westbrook and Beverley round out the top 10 between the two teams. So it’s not like we are that far apart from the champions.

We just need to gel, some good coaching and a bit of luck with health.

 

he's my latest last best hope. which is pretty sad because he's super injury prone and it would involve dealing with trader ainge.

we have two vet min centers who would be 3rd string a lot of places (and i like them fine! just sayin...)
we have no real starting quality sg (again, i love reaves, but he's not there yet, nor is lonnie, nor is nunn).
we have no starting quality pg (lol, only half joking--westbrook was so, so bad last year)

title year we had kuz, green, and kcp as legit starting quality wings.
we had solid versions of mcgee and dwight at center
and we had caruso and bradley as ball caretakers/defenders at pg (we currently have just beverley there).

and lebron was two years younger and AD not coming off two years of injury.

this is why people expected that team to be good and this one to not be as good.

 

Javale and Howard were not considered some kind of great duo by anyone prior to that season. Folks were worried about losing Boogie.

Kcp,Rondo and Caruso were not considered some top guard rotation either. Rondo looked about done, KCP " Manna from heaven!" Wasn't considered to be some kind of big time impact player either. Caruso barely played and Kyle was coming off a decent rookie campaign. Avery Bradley was considered to be injury prone and had lost a step. You are experiencing a case of revisionist history here about that squad prior to that season my guy.

Lebron avg 30 pts a game and is aging like a bottle of 100 year old Dom Perignon.
AD hasn't suffered an ACL or Achilles injury. I expect him to be outstanding this season. If he isn't..it wasn't going to work no matter who we traded for.

 

Without a doubt AD is the wild card. If he stays healthy and returns back to form, we "could" be a contender....but not with Westbrook and few if any shooters on this team.

A Bogdanovich/Conley/Gay trade for Westbrook gives us shooting and "shouldn't" cost us more than one of the picks since it would be shaving 20-30 million off their books for next season.

Clarkson doesn't fit and makes us eating even more into our 2023 cap, assuming Conley has to be part of the deal (which I would assume he would because of his contract and it is the only way we "might" get to keep one of our 1st rounders).

Ham and some on this board need to stop with the "fixing Westbrook" stuff- IT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN, PERIOD.

 

Ham has it right. Westbrook is a lot better than most of you guys seem to think. It's rather asinine to try and judge a "fit", when the trio played 21 games together out of 82. Topped off with the MLE signing never suiting up, and a roster of complete utter garbage mostly.

You will learn this season.

 

From the championship team we saw that you need to surround Lebron and AD with defense and shooting. Thats the best way to maximize the both of them.

Now they are both older and a bunch of injuries later, our 3rd best player can’t shoot and won’t defend. The rest of the team are decent young players and I like them but they don’t excel at shooting and defending. Its one or the other and even then I wouldn’t put them near the top of any league wide lists.

You’re right that if AD or Lebron are injured then it doesn’t matter who we trade for but if AD and Lebron are healthy you want to put the best fitting pieces around them as possible.

 

The championship team won a championship, because Lebron and AD played like two top 5 players in the NBA. It wasn't the supporting cast. Nobody thought our role players were anything special prior to that season. AFTER that season, the narrative of what it takes to surround Lebron and AD was born.

This group we have right now can provide shooting and defense. I'm not going to dismiss them without seeing them actually play. Nobody wins anything on paper.

 

yeah, no. i expected that team to contend before the season (and plenty of others did, too, btw), and they did.

i do not expect this team to contend (nor does anyone else).

there are good reasons in both cases. i'm done leading you to the water here.