maybe a combination of me not watching enough suns and being somewhat bearish on him overall

thought he was overrated his last season at clips

agree that he is worth taking a risk on for many GMs, im just not fully convinced he is good enough to play at the all-star level yet



suns not offering him better than 4/48 to start also makes me feel more confident about my assessment; i wouldn't be surprised if they improve the bid but makes me think they ultimately won't max him if it comes to that


edit: also skeptical of 'no other teams offered him the max because they were confident Suns would match' reports we have seen out there - if they are willing to pay him the max there just isn't a lot of downside taking a stab

As long as I'm looking at young players I'm not sure how to evaluate who put up ~19 PER seasons last year, what's the general opinion on Terrence Jones?

I'm very high on T Jones, one of the reasons I was a little bearish on the entire Morey plan is that they would've had to ditch him nothing to free up money for Bosh

Jones got mega exposed in the Por series

except it is a big worry. 22 minutes per game while missing 1/3 of the game is not a good look. 4/48 seems fair though. has there ever been a bad 2nd contract after a decent rookie contract? jeff green was the only one i can really think of and not sure why he got paid 9/36 ever to begin with. i feel like 12m for a player who is capable of 2nd best player on a title team is always good and never wrong. even 15 is fine. its when you messed up on the 20m+ guys that will haunt you for a decade

Yeah but he's 22.

For the young guys Amin Elhassan & Ethan Strauss are also very good. Their podcats are especially excellent. Amin was a scout for the pheonix suns and i feel like ethan was a 2p2er in a past life.

Massively slow pony here, but re: watching the games vs. looking at stats and reading Zach Lowe: people should just do whatever they like. I enjoy watching NBA games a lot more than I enjoy looking up stats on b-ref, so that's what I do, even though I realize that makes me not be as informed of a fan as I could be if I paid more attention to that stuff.

NBA is the GOAT sports league, but way too many NBA fans are snobs who always seem to be trying to prove their superiority and intelligence over casual fans, and it's really off putting IMO. There's nothing wrong with being a casual fan, because this is all entertainment and none of it actually matters. Not to mention, no sports league would even survive if it weren't for casual fans.

TZ usually isn't THAT bad about this kind of snobbery -- almost all of the regular posters here are perfectly polite to anyone who's not like aggressively stupid (i.e. you guys are a bunch of parents' basement living stat nerds and I actually WATCH THE GAMES...except I haven't watched a Raptors game in years) -- but it's still annoying sometimes. Zach Lowe, as great of a sportswriter as he is, is the ****ing worst with the way he mocks casual fans in his articles and insults anyone who disagrees with him on Twitter. Like all of the Deadspin NBA writers are huge snobs too.

sorry new to the thread

can u clarify what tz is?

i coach high school ball (fresh level, vars assistant) at a big public school and it seems that the eye test is all they know around here. Great athletes in this area too, its a shame.

As someone who watched the Suns very cloesly last year, I disagree this a snap max offer. I don't even think it's a max offer with sufficient time to think.

Yes, he was efficient last year but he was 6.5 percentage points better (TS%) than he had ever been in prior years. Can he do it again. Possible, but I think it unlikely on a consistent basis. When looking at his shooting form, I'm just not buying him as a consistently good shooter. I see a league average shooter long term.

Yes, he can be an elite level defender but that was exhibited very rarely last year. Look at the decline in his defensive stats per minute in steals and blocks. I'm not sure he's the defender some think when charged with starters minutes. He also was very poor when running the offense as the sole PG. The team really struggled offensively when he played without Dragic.

The Suns are in a very difficult position if someone else makes an offer. If that happens, I'm hoping they can work a sign and trade and get something rather than nothing.

Pistons giving $13.5mm/yr to Meeks, Augustin, and Caron Butler looks even worse now.

tz = threadzilla, aka the NBA thread on here

if lolbron reached out to love, it is because when approached by management, love said LOLcleveland

The mcgary draft pick made no sense, Hes a nice player. He just does the exact same things as Steven Adams. Also, less adept defensively. Not a rim protector. Hes going to really struggle to guard. Thats a poor fit for that roster.

And um as far as a major roster shakeup, i dont think its needed. They are close. I dont know how many more chances Brooks get but its really disheartening to see them make the same mistskes year after year. They are like the anti-spurs. A complete eyesore for any basketball purist

Scott has been interviewed 3 TIMES by the Lakers this offseason and has no job offer

One thing that has become clear to me is that figuring out defensive impacts is a lot harder than checking RAPM or +/- or adjusted +/- or WAR or SWAgR or OWS vs. DWS or any other advanced stat. I'm basically parroting something that I picked up at SL from the analytics guys who were there and actually do this for a living, but they actually chart - like watch the game and chart with a pen - the defensive impact of each dude on each possession.

Did the ball get stuck when BALLER (PG) was defending POSER (PG)? Did pick n roll fail? Contested shot? How many times did the offense reset in this scenario?

Did BIG (PF) pass out of the block when HUGE (C) rotated to help on him? Travel? Reset?

Stuff like that. The end result is you can see which defenders are actually disrupting offenses without punishing them because James Harden is busy staring into the stands while the point guard picks up 4 assists for no reason.

This is all to say that I think we collectively are probably really bad at our defensive analysis, eye test or otherwise, and should make it a goal to figure out a better way to talk about and think about defense.

Just as an example, I think we mostly think Bledsoe is an excellent defender, and I think we can all point to stats that more or less say that Bledsoe is great on defense. But I doubt that many of us can explain why his impact is what it is, or prove that he's the source of the successful defense (even if that seems intuitively true).

Basically what I'm saying is let's up our game on defense.

Do the Lakers have a plan for a coach or does no one want to even try to coach that ****ty roster?

Rick Adelman would be perfect

it makes me sad how the same coaches that have failed in the league continue to get second and third and more chances. Its like a revolving carrousel of ineptitude. These guys must interview real well

dont the struggling teams notice that the smart teams already

a) have established coaches with a proven pedigree of success
b) new blood (typically analytically mind new school coaches aka stevens, blatt, etc

the lionell hollins/bscotts of the world just dont have what it takes

whens the last time someones failed at their first coaching job and bounced back to greatness. It just doesnt happen

I don't know why anyone cares who the Lakers coach is when the roster is bad and the franchise doesn't even care about developing young players. No one will "succeed" here for years.

True. I'd rather ride through with an upstart than a retread. As a bucks fan, that's why I hated the larry drew signing last year. Reason why teams remain mediocre or suck dick so long.

kobe will be player-coach

I think you have to go Mike Brown here.

Lol. :thumbup: