Yeah to go so far away from that for so long and not look back is wild. Day one on the job, JJ says we need two way players. There's plenty of ways to build a championship team. But we've only done it one way with this core and that's waaaaay in the rear view now.
i mean, everyone wants two-way players, but as you get down the pecking order on the roster, you have to start making choices. boston is literally the only team i can think of that has good two-way players 1-6 even. can you think of any others right now? so i get that we can't just have a bunch of two-way guys. but we can have more than just vando (and gabe, in theory?) as defensive role players.
That would be insane to me and firmly push me into the "Jeannie just sell the team" camp. Franchise has to move beyond that deal. There's no telling how long it will take to get two players of the caliber of AD and LeBron again. Someone in the front office has to understand that. Build around them and make another run at a title while we still can. If we fail, AD can still be used to get back some of the picks we would give up.
i think they were done with rash trades, not with lebron and AD. the fans are pissed again this summer about it (and maybe lebron and AD aren't happy, either*), but it's the right move, imo. *felt like lebron's comments indicated he understood why we didn't do anything.
It’s totally fine if that big deal to make wasn’t there, but inexcusable to not upgrade the backup C position.
it's not great. i'd like to know how we weren't in on plumlee, at least. he signed a vet min with a competitor, so it's not like there was a complex set of dominos/irons in the fire (like what probably prevented a real valanciunas pursuit). maybe we felt like he's washed/wouldn't move the needle. maybe we felt like we could be ok and then pick up a big (like maybe valanciunas himself) on the trade market in december/february. but that is a long time to go without one, especially now that we know that jj agrees with us that the team needs a big body.
Well, I think a few important things have changed to make the 2020 blueprint less tenable. First, LeBron isn't the same guy. When he's healthy and actually trying (i.e., playing good weakside defense) I think he's still one of the 5 best players in the league. But in 2020 he was the best player in the world, finished 2nd in MVP. Very well might have won MVP in 2021 before the ankle injury. Everyone knows about AD's jumpshooting in the bubble. Basically, LeBron (and to a lesser extent AD) were younger and capable of propping up a respectable offense on their own. They need better offensive players around them now. LeBron orchestrated everything for that team all of the team. Similar to how AD didn't want to be a full-time 5, LeBron didn't want to do that anymore. Also, the 2020 team was a little more well-rounded than we remember. 3rd in DRtg in the regular season, 11th in ORtg. In the playoffs they had the 6th best net rating and the 2nd best offensive rating. They were still dominant defensively at times (that closeout game against Miami was a masterpiece), but they really took off in the bubble because the offense went to another level. And even in 2020, when the chips were down we went with AD at the 5. All that said, I'm all for having bigger, more defensive-oriented lineups at our disposal. Saying it wouldn't work at all now is definitely a bridge too far. Had we been able to get Valanciunas I would have been happy starting him and playing bully ball the first 6 minutes of every half.
i've always said you start AD at the four and close halves with him at the 5. and while i agree things are different, they're not so different that completely abandoning the formula was necessary.
After Boston i think Indy, Philly, OKC, ORL, and Minny have the most. Bucks and Nuggets were in that mix until they made the choices they've made or continue to make. Is Vando a 2-way player? Personally I don't think he is. I think he's really really good defensively and just hustle and chaos offensively. If he had offense, he'd be McDaniels. Hell, is Gabe a 2-way player? We're still gambling that we got Miami playoff Gabe.
I don’t care if they are two way or not. I watch the sport for entertainment, so I don’t need to know about their personal lives. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
I really liked what I saw with Dinwiddie, and if we replaced DLo with him, I was going to be ok with that.
vando's a one-way player, and i think gabe's a one-way player, too (if he's not a no-way player). my claim is that almost all teams have to deal with this stuff, though--except boston. indy: haliburton's not a defender, nesmith's not an offensive player. really, only siakam and turner would qualify as two-way players to me. i guess mcconnell... philly: caleb martin isn't much of an offensive player, oubre isn't much of a defender. even tyrese maxey grades out as a bad defender, actually. orlando: this one is probably the best argument, as wagner, banchero, wcj, suggs, kcp, and even mo wagner all grade out as guys who can play both ends effectively. that's six guys like boston has. they're not as talented on offense at the top end, though. but i think this is largely making my point: almost all teams--outside of their big stars--are filled with guys who have a general deficiency on one end or the other. this is part of why i thought balancing the starting unit with vando was so good for us. our two stars are two-way players (even old lebron still plays good defense for good chunks of time), and reaves and dlo are strong offensively and a bit weak defensively. adding vando helped balance things a bit, and this is why we kicked a lot of a** in those minutes. of course if vando was mcdaniels, we'd kick even more a**. but he's not. he's paid 1/3 of what mcdaniels is, too. the C Bags top players (aside from old man horford, whom they won't be able to replace when he finally falls apart) are all making 30+ million now. two-way players are expensive. hence boston (and up until this year, the clippers) is the only team that can have both two highly paid stars AND a few two-way players to support them. everybody else must choose.
I'm not sure I'd go that far, but I do think the team will miss Dinwiddie's skillset. We don't have any guards that can reliably get to the rim off the dribble. DLo and Reaves can do it some, but more through craftiness than athleticism. Gabe is more of a spot-up and secondary action kind of guy. Even if he never shoots like he did in that Miami playoff run again, he was still a tough and useful player. Hoping he gets the opportunity to show that this year.
I might have the Knicks as the team with the most two-way guys after Boston. Obviously Brunson is a target on defense, but Bridges plays both ends (he dropped off defensively last year with Brooklyn, but I think that was a classic "I'm on a s*** team" thing). Anunoby is a really good 3&D guy (he fancies himself as more than that offensively, but I don't think he is). DiVincenzo emerged last year as a really nice POA defender that also shot 40% from three. Hart has regressed a bit defensively but I'd still call him a solid two-way player. Randle has his flaws, but at his best he brings toughness and physicality on both ends. McBride plays both ends well. You could argue Robinson is a two-way player with his offensive rebounding, but he's more of a defensive specialist. I'm fascinated to see which of the Knicks or Sixers emerges as the biggest threat to the C Bags because they represent two very different team-building models under the new CBA. Sixers are sticking with the three stars and minimum or exception level players, Knicks have the one star and a bunch of rock-solid guys. I think its going to be the Knicks.
It's hard to do what Boston did and get "full" 2 way players. Denver I think did a good job getting 1.5 players - guys who aren't great on one side of the ball but they are still playable. Gordon for example even though he can't shoot (except against the Lakers: seriously that was annoying) still has to be guarded and he has gravity due to his offensive rebounding, cutting, decent handle/passing, and most importantly the lob threat. Basically you can't ignore him on offense. He's awesome on defense MPJ is not a good defender by any stretch but he's so big that his rebounding usually is much better than the opposing forward he matched up with so it mitigates the damage somewhat. He's awesome on offense Problem for the Lakers is that both Rui and Dlo just don't bring much of anything on defense AND their offense went under - that's a bad combo.
denver's about to find out what happens when you let a two-way starter walk, imo. we already learned (ironically, we lost the same guy! and others...). and i agree that our major issue is that dlo and rui became no-way players in the playoffs. if they just make shots against denver, we beat them. because denver has similar problems to us in terms of having to play complementary one-way players--but their one-way guys do their one thing pretty consistently*. well--mpj basically dlo'd the next round, so maybe they have all the same problems.
Rose and Walker were extremely fast and twitchy with the rock before all of their injuries started happening. I don’t need to explain why Kobe was a problem.
kemba was the surprise. but his quick decline (like rose's) makes you forget his peak. might be something to that--whatever quality made them unguardable made them injury prone. as an aside, what always struck me about westbrook was the violence with which he could both accelerate and pull up. those little 12ft jumpers off the dead sprint were insane and impossible to defend when you had to commit to keeping him from dunking on your grandmother's soul. but once either of those things slipped...even a bit...curtains.
