I won’t give you IQ until lonzo realizes him taking any 3pt shot severely lowers the Lakers chances to win

here's the thing. nba teams really only need 1-2 players that can disrupt the defense at will, and generally only one at any given point in time. they also only need 1-2 who can get a reasonable shot off at any juncture (could be same person, but frequently isnt).

after that, all you want is good shooters who have secondary offensive skills - can sorta dribble, can sorta penetrate and finish, can shoot open shots, can make good basketball plays. (this is why OKC is going to vastly underperform their talent level), and who can also play defense.


a guy like DSJ or Fox being that guy means your team is capped because DSJ will always be a bad defender and Fox is a twig who cant shoot.

frank and fultz at least bring other things to the game.

frank is a great defender and will be more a patrick beverly type who plays off-ball a lot on offense but can run a decent PnR as a secondary option (main PG is sitting, tired, or the ball has shifted around the perimeter and moves gotta be made).

fultz seemed to have the potential to be an off-ball shooter and also seemed to be able to play the "we need to get a shot off right now" end of game / low shot clock type scenarios. he's also very big and at least has the potential to be a + defender.

Don’t mind Lonzo greenlit from 3. They jus spent a 2nd on him, he has to learn how to shoot given his offensive profile and winning rn isn’t that important

He hasn't really shown an ability to do anything on offense yet, other than follow instructions and play within the flow of the offense. I guess he's shown some solid PnR skills and good decision making, and Frank + STAPS have been +35/100 so far this year.

He's only 19 (2nd youngest) and during the Hornets game they had an interview with Batum(who is very familiar with him) where he was raving super hard about his scoring talents and thinks he will be an ridiculously amazing player. It's also hard to project too much from his current performance since he missed all of SL and was slow to get going due to his knee injury, coupled with his foreignness/age he's a guy you'd expect to have the slowest start

I've still got Lonzo as my #2 PG behind Fultz, but that's mainly been because the other guys also have pretty big holes as well.

Frank/Lonzo seem to have the highest ceilings but they need LOTS of work in their deficiencies.

One thing i dont Understand in general is the RWB hate. Sure he pads rebounds and probably shot too much when KD was there but the guy is a freak, can get to rim whenever he wants, is a great passer, can shoot the 3, incredible competitor.

They were a slanking KD away from knocking off the warriors and probably would have gone on to beat the Cavs a few years ago. If DSJ becomes 75% of him I’d be pretty happy as a mavs fan

My hate for RWB is that he does absolutely nothing a good portion of the time, in particular when gives the ball up. Watching him play when he doesn't have the ball is super-tilting.

Also the whole everyone and every team playing better once they leave him might be saying something, or it could just be noise.

i agree growth is an underrated aspect of rookie evaluation when stats are getting thrown around, but idk that lowry is a good example. lowry had a pretty good reputation as a back up iirc, but the grizz had just drafted conley. some advanced stats were high on him even in his time with the grizzlies-- maybe no surprise that the rockets took a chance on him-- though he was known more as a defensive player at that time. lowry certainly developed considerably to become the player he has, but i don't think it took that long for him to become a positive contributor

gary harris just seems like a huge exception. if he was a high lotto pick, i'd probably feel differently but i can't imagine there are many instances of players with his draft status and player role being that bad year 1 and panning out. good for him though

Hating RWB is silly. His season last year was incredible and he was probably a top 4 player

I'm not really sure about being high on Lonzo's ceiling even independently of how often he reaches it.

Like what prevents me to say DSJ has a higher ceiling than Lonzo? There is definitely a world in which he ends up being RWB. he's god mad athleticism, shown nice intagibles and his jumper form seemed fine when i watched. Like of course he's missing a lot of things and he probably won't get there, he may be awesome, he may be decent, he may suck who knows but what gives us the right to claim his ceiling his lower than Lonzo exactly when Lonzo has shown severe lack of athleticism, awful jumper (can't get it off vs nba players), unability to score/get to the rim/stay in front of his defender.

Like yeah sure, if Lonzo somehow becomes a sick athlete and reworks his jumper to be a 40% 3Pt shooter he'd be sweet but then a lot of people in the nba would be mega elite if they did, the point is he's not going to magically do that based on what we saw.

Technically Frank has the highest ceiling of all if he learnt how to offense but it doesn't matter, he's not going to.

For every gary Harris there’s a hundred Jordan hamiltons or whoever

I feel like it was a bit gimmicky, but there is no way I can hate on how they absolutely crushed in clutch situations. He definitely deserved the MVP due to all of his late-game heroics, however I think a lot of that was positive variance.

or the opposite of what we're seeing this year.

He's already shown a very good understanding of "how to offense". His understanding of the game has been ridiculously impressive for a rookie.

Triple doubles are a media gimmick for sure but they get cited a ton here too

I love watching Westbrook play, but I have a hard team seeing how he could win an NBA title ever. Maybe if you surrounded him with 3 Otto Porters/OG Anunobys, a Rudy Gobert, and someone that can create/score okay when he goes to the bench.

you're relatively giving a lot of the benefit of the doubt to frank here imo. i mean this moreso wrt fox than smith, i guess but it applies to both

RUSS's biggest problem this year is how deferential he's been. He's actively been trying to get PG13 and Melo involved too much when he should just be RUSS'ing with elite kick-out options.

They're trying to "take turns" too much, where they should just let RUSS take over and benefit from the fact that it's impossible to double team their play-makers.

Yeah maybe we should just take him out of any comps, there were a lot of things that led to him being so bad his rookie year, lack of sample being the biggest biggest culprit. Having 719 spot minutes of sucking isn't anything to really read into imo.

I mean a russ team was a play or two away from beating one of the best teams of all time so this seems pretty silly to say

Sorry for the homer talk but I think it's relevant to discuss this year's PGs.

What if we insert the top 10 PG picks from the last 3 years into the discussion?

Dunn
Mudiay
Murray
Russell

Leaving out Simmons >>>>

How would you rank them against the guys this year as far as expected career outcome?

No, you need to believe that the difference between Tatum and Ball/Fultz was less than the value of the additional pick acquired. If Ainge thought that Tatum was probably better but wasn't worse by much if he wasn't better, then he should pull the trigger on the trade. I think he evaluated Fultz as someone with the talent of James Harden (maybe less) and the heart and desire of Jeff Green and was willing to pass on that combination. The Celtics game plan has involved a willingness to incrementally add value instead of going for a higher variance boom-or-bust strategy.

FYP RussGOAT

i don't mind his shooting but I do wonder where the bball IQ rep has come from. He doesn't do anything extraordinary and he makes lots of bad decisions each game (namely crashing o-glass and picking up dribble too early).

In this time of Thanksgiving, it's nice to reflect on OKC drafting 3 HOF players and being left with the worst one. It's especially satisfying because of how they (and the media played along) shamed James Harden for turning down their insulting contract offer.

Sam Presti WOAT.

Melo has honestly cost the thunder like half of their losses. It's fitting in his bull**** without the PG-like defense. Really really awful and cancerous.