I had scored the trades pretty high relative to the norm, conceding that it seemed like we were giving up a lot for White. I could understand people being down on the White part of the deadline trades as he was only shooting 23% from 3 or whatever it was but I was surprised at how many people had just written off Theis. I think the comment I heard a lot was, "this trade is for next year". That made no sense. Theis is a good player for the role that we needed. We were very thin at big depth. He got off to a slow start also but settled in and came on.
Looking at 5 man line ups, we all know that the core starting 5 (Smart, Brown, Tatum, Horford, Rwill) was off the charts good. In 443 minutes, this group was +218 (34.6 per 100 Poss). But Theis with this group was +44 in 59 minutes (23.9 per 100 Poss). GWilliams with the starters was -13 in 61 minutes (-9.4 per 100 Poss), for comparison.
I don't think the plan was for Theis to have to start but he was going to help the team in any case. He is better than Grant Williams in general and especially better than Grant for filling in as a starter for RWill. Theis is much closer to RWill than to GWill. It was a good trade to get Theis. Having White and Pritchard made Schroder entirely expendable.
Additional line ups with the starters and someone in for RWill (all per 100 Poss):
Schroder -16.7
White -4.4
Pritchard +2.2
One big lines ups with Horford did not do very well. 1 big line ups with RWill did much better. There are not any 1 big lines ups for starters with Theis which may reveal the principle thing that RWill can give the team that Theis can't. RWill is the guy that can play well as the lone big in the one big line ups. Theis and GWill are never used that way and the results for Horford aren't good.