#hottake - but bare with me - I didn't watch much NBA in DRose's first 3 years in the league - and so I've been reviewing the evidence tonight.

Why on earth did Phil Jackson think that DRose would be a good signing?

fundamental bball or statwhoreGOATRodman?

well they traded for him, he hasn't been that bad, and he's an expiring which means the Knicks have a ****load comin off the books this offseason. If they didn't splooge on a sub replacement level center they'd be in a sweet spot for next year.

I'ld go for 1 and 3. So maybe that's the point. But 2 - no. He's a disaster afaics. Not his fault but the only thing he does is drive and that only adds value to DRose, essentially - doesn't help all of those young players on the roster one bit.

NUGGETS FREE

I love the idea of dragic on the wolves, heat are in such a tough spot right now, its unlikely they get offered fair value from anyone

His contract is pretty reasonable imo

Also: jackson reportedly talked to melo so there is still hope, I want to imagine a world where he ends up playing on the lakers and knicks have a road to redemption

Pretty bad, sloppy game all around. But Denver playing at a C level still drops 120 most nights, their offense has been eeeeeexxxplosive with Jokic as a starter.

Defense is equally explosive for the other team tho

Wolves should give Lavine the bench unit, to start a 20 min wing who can defend , so he's less exposed at all the big things he can't do

They should also play the 40 games remaining without ever giving the ball to Wiggins unless he scores an off-the-ball point (screen, cut, playing some defense, getting a rebound ...)

The bad thing when you suck, is that you give minutes to players who don't deserve them, it's hard after that to get their attention and make them play defense and away from the ball.

It's one of the thing that can **** up the Process, even though Embiid has GOAT equity, Ben Simmons will have his 35 minutes locked, and the future 2017 pick will also have his starting spot locked. If they start being careless Philly will stink despite Embiid greatness

Were you thinking of Shabazz Muhammad or Brandon Rush? Many of the Wolves problems come from the fact that the bench is godawful and they don't have a single playable bench player. Plays into Thibs' tendency to run the starters into the ground anyway.

They can also find a cheap trade, or some D-leaguer, just start a defensive wing and put pressure on Lavine on Wiggins so they don't have their 38 minutes every night without giving any effort

But anyway regarding benching Lavine, I don't think it's a good idea in almost any team to start your 5 best offensive players, a bad bench unit can lose lots of games if they get dicked and go -10 over 12 minutes every night. And if you have a good offensive player on the bench, his lack of D will be less important and he'll probably put up the same numbers by playing against turds

zlowe made a pretty good point about carmelo, even though he's clearly worse than millsap his name recognition means that you'll have to pay more for him in a trade, so yea no one is going to do that. he's untradeable imo

Lavine leaves the game early in the 1st/3rd and re-enters to play with the bench unit. He runs the bench offense (Dunn is worthless on offense).

So JTM would you say Lavine's defensive issues are more related to effort or just being young? I love his game in a normal offense, but I look at his defensive metrics and they seem really bad. In the few games I get to watch of them nothing really stands out as such though.

He's young and he legit sucks at D despite that. He can flash great defense sometimes. In general his stance is too hunched over so that robs a lot of his athleticism. He tries hard and tries to get into dude's cuts but that usually ends up with him getting backdoored a ton. Which is very bad and also very obvious (as opposed to Bjelica who loves to **** up rotations in a way where Wolves aren't sure who to be mad at).

lavine seems to have pretty low bball iq

if pjax pisses off melo enough that he's willing to tank his #brand by asking for a trade to a small group of contenders and they can't give up anything good, then it could happen. kind of feel like it would bring up ghosts of 2011 and the melo-drama.

netw3rk tweet sums it up pretty well

How and why are any good teams going to match salaries though? Even bad/middling teams, that's an awful lot of cheese to send out in order to make numbers work.

I think he's stuck there even if he wanted to leave, and imo a lot of that played into his decision not to publicly waive his NTC.

I would say getting Melo to want to bounce is Phil being good at his job. Of course he's probably just being awkward.

Melo - Ron baker - vujacic for Austin rivers and jamal crawford and all the pick they can get

Announce to Rose that he has a sore vagina, and if he plays one more game this season he won't be able to walk to his kids school

Tank is on

We get some lol Clippers in addition to lolknacks

Trading Melo seems trivially easy as long as he waves his ntc. He prob doesn't even need to waive his trade kicker.

Yeah this. Will probably always be a gifted athletic idiot, though effort and coaching can go a long way.

Melo to the Celtics for Jaylen Jae and the Nets pick

Hinkie did not vote ainge exec of the year and die for our sins for this kind of blasphemy

Melo for Gallo