Can't post in the ''How Does My Team Look'' thread. Is it locked? Anyway, I'm posting here.
@mods
Feel free to move the post to the other thread.
Seeking for opinions about my squad, or advice on what type of players should I get to improve it.
I've never watched Dandridge, Porter and Gus Williams play. I started following the NBA in the mid/late 90s, but I was just a little kid at the time. That being said, I read your previous post carefully. Your comps for Dandridge and Porter are intriguing to say the least: Paul Pierce and Chauncey Billups. Wow!
If your comps are indicative of their skill set, then you got one of the best teams in the draft.
PG: Billups
SG: Butler
SF: Pierce
PF: Draymond
C: Gobert
I'm with Rody regarding Draymond's shooting. Sure, he shot 38.8% from 3 on 3.2 attempts per game that season, but that's just 1 season. His career average is 31.9% from 3 on 2.8 attempts per game. Can't take the 38.8 number at face value, much less given that he was playing next to Steph and Klay. He got tons of wide open looks next to them.
All in all, I believe you have built a very balanced team. Best defensive team in the draft, no doubt about that.
I disagree regarding Draymond, I'll just paste my post defending his shooting ability here:
I suggest you take a closer look at Draymond's work in 2016 - he was a legitimate three point threat who burnt teams when they sagged off of him (he shot 38.8% from 3 on 3.2 attempts per game and came up huge in the playoffs against non-OKC teams when he didn't need to bang with 2-3 bigs all by himself: he averaged 38.9 on 3.6 attempts in 5 games against Houston, 43.3% on 6 attempts in 5 games against Portland and 40.6% on 5.3 attempts in 7 games against Cleveland). It wasn't like it was a one-season wonder as well - he shot 34.4% from 3 on 3.6 attempts per game from 2015-2017 in the RS and averaged the same percentage on 4.4 attempts per game in the same span in the playoffs. This is clearly at least a slightly above league average shooter on high volume (remember that bigs weren't shooting 5, 6, 7+ threes until the last season or two) and he really has the look of a strong big man floor spacer in 2016. The claim that he was shooting them with no one around him is simply false: a quick look at the tape would show that he was used as a pop big and was a real target for kickouts before his decline. Teams respected his jumpshot well enough that some would have a big stuck onto him and close out on him quickly in defensive rotations, giving Draymond the spacing effect that stretch bigs had on offence
But it is a one year fluke in otherwise poor to mediocre shooting career. That is like someone claiming Magic Johnson was a really good shooter because he had that one year late in his career where he shot 38.4% on 3.5 attempts even though the two surrounding seasons were 31.4 and 32.0 and he never really showed shooting touch earlier.
People aren't just going to look at Draymond and call him anything other than a poor shooter, because that is what he was. And I get that we are using only one season, but that doesn't mean people aren't going to think about the other seasons when they think of who the player was.
The spirit of the game is that the season picked is important because players have up and down years and years with injury. Take a guy like Grant Hill. Which year you select makes a massive difference. Most remember the player he was most of his career because he was pretty good, but he was special before the injury.
Magic and Draymond had a season or two where they shot the three at a good rate. You select that year and though they weren't noted to be good outside shooters, they were in those seasons and that should be how they are judged.
Of course, you can't force people to not consider a player's entire career, but the original concept of choosing one year was that the way the player performed in that season mattered. And so, if they had a career year in shooting, or rebounding, or scoring that is how the player should be perceived.
You can't make people judge things in that manner, but that is the way the game was designed. And if people aren't going to judge it that way, what's the sense of picking a year.
It isn't that the season picked doesn't matter, id absolutely does, but for me it is more that the season picked isn't going to fundamentally change how I view a player, especially if that season seems out of place for the totality of the career. I mean Rodman had a season where he shot 31.7% from 3 on 1.2 attempts a game (and teams only averaged 7.6 attempts and 33.1% that year so Rodman wasn't much below average). You will never be able to convince me that Rodman will keep anyone honest from deep, even if you picked that season where he wasn't terrible.
Then there is no sense in picking seasons. If you pick a season and that player shot well in that season, then that good shooting version of that player is who you get. That's the entire point of picking the season. If that doesn't count for anything, then let's just get rid of picking seasons because it means nothing.
In all honesty, it means pretty much nothing to me in this draft. It made perfect sense in the 21st century draft, cause we had to select players who had at least 1 decent season in the 21st century. For instance, Barkley played a few games in the 1999/00 season. If we weren't supposed to pick a single season, he would have been considered one of the best players in the draft. Obviously, Barkley is an all-time great, but he was a nonfactor in the 21st century.
This ain't the case in our current draft. Given that we can select whichever season we want from a player's career, I don't see the point in singling out a specific season. We can just assume that all players are in their prime.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Since that's what we have decided, I'm perfectly happy with it.
edit: I guess it makes sense for players who developed a specific skill past their prime. For instance, Jason Kidd became a good 3pt shooter. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a player from our draft that fits into this category, but chances are there are plenty of them.