No way I'm trading Tatum for JJJ, much less Tatum plus other assets.
And at some point it will occur to Celtics fans that Ainge and CBS don't value big men nearly as much as the board does.
Agree.
BS probably loves what he has and plans to use only one big per lineup regardless what we all think. With Hayward and Tatum he probably feels they can both cover PFs at a decent enough level that their offense more than makes up the difference.
Well, there's a difference between being forced to play small and doing it intentionally. If they're being totally truthful, I doubt Ainge or Stevens would say the current lineup is ideal. If they had a versatile 6'9'' to 7'0'' type guy it's not like they wouldn't play him. It's just Horford's departure has left them without an immediate replacement.
You can't play small all the time. Even GS only used their Hampton's lineup as a trump card. Long term, SFs do not want to be playing the 4 all the time, especially during the regular season.
I feel like some C's fans just throw our five best dudes in the lineup and are a little overly optimistic about how it's going to play out. Just because Tatum and Hayward have some height doesn't mean you can simply pencil them in at 4 and say "done, and done!" Honestly, if they had to play 4 for most of the season they're going to want out. You have to have a guy who is willing to do all the grunt work on D. It's not easy to find somebody who is willing to do all that thankless stuff if they're a player who has any worth on offense. It's got to be somebody with a dogged, defensive mentality and selfless attitude. Tatum is trying to be an offensive superstar and he's only what, 21 years old? He's not going to do that. Even if he wanted to, he doesn't have the body to.
This team is a work-in-progress and their identity is not going to be defense. They simply don't have the personnel.
Yep, and I think there is a way you can get close to maximizing their skills without playing one of them at the 4 close to full time.
It could look something like this.
PG Walker 32 MPG Smart 16 MPG
SG Brown 32 MPG Smart 16 MPG
SF Tatum 32 MPG Hayward 16 MPG
PF Hayward 16 MPG, bigs 32 MPG
C bigs 48 minutes
In this scenario you have all our very important wings and ball handlers playing 32 minutes per game, and only require 16 of those minutes to be at PF. You could even say split 8 and 8 between Tatum and Hayward at PF to share the burden at PF.
Depending on matchups you can go to it a little more or a little less of small ball without being overly reliant on it.
Of course this also leaves 80 minutes for our bigs where they would need to come through. Something like 25 minutes for Kanter, 15 minutes for each of the Williams, 15 for Poirier, 10 for Theis. Maybe Semi gets some minutes at the 4.
I’d rather see how this plays out, and you can look into a trade later in the season if you want.