Why are people acting like the Heat deal was so enormous? It was literally the rumored package plus Jakuckonis.
What Milwaukee was asking for from us was enormous, but that?s mostly because they apparently valued Jaylen and Herro very similarly.
That is my biggest concern moving forward. If we do keep Jaylen, we absolutely cannot give him that extension. He is already overpaid and that will be compounded by making him a $70M/yr player.
Looks like last year really was a waste. Winning 56 games, getting #27 in the draft, and losing in the 1st round. At least if we were able to sell high on Jaylen and buy low on Giannis, it would have all been worth it.
Agree. This team feels totally handcuffed now. They are being forced to pretty much run it back after overachieving last season with a roster that just is not very good with a terrible play style and a coach that doesn't seem to know what to do.
This team has so many holes and so little assets to fix them that it just doesn't feel like Brad can fill them with quality.
A roster that without Tatum isn't very good and overachieved.
A roster with Tatum is very good and a 55-60 win season would not be overachieving.
The problem is, even with Tatum the team has underachieved in the playoffs 3 of the past 4 seasons.
If Joe had been able to use Vuc effectively I'd actually feel pretty good right now, because we'd have our center rotation in place (as Vuc would come back), and we'd have the MLE to add an effective scorer like Simons, Sexton or even Powell.
But, because of the failure to properly use Vucevic, we need to find a competent center, meaning it's less likely we can add to the team elsewhere.
I have a different opinion on Vuc. His defense is pretty bad, and has been for a while, that it makes him hard to play in the playoffs. He won?t get better in that area at age 35. He?s fine as a depth piece, but I?m fine with moving on from him.
He's a below average defender, but his positive offensive contributions (including being an excellent passer that a team can run its offense through at times) and rebounding make him a net positive.
But, in the playoffs, our defensive scheme looked terrible, and we literally made no adjustments. Queta and Garza were frequently out of position and were fouling constantly (a combined 14+ personal fouls per 36 minutes).
We took an excellent offensive player, and put him in a position to fail. Rather than playing in the high post, the team parked him on the perimeter as a spot-up shooter. He wasn't asked to make passes, except around the outside. He didn't get post touches. He couldn't contribute on the offensive boards, because he was 23 feet away.
So, we negated the offensive skills of an offense-first player, and put him into a terrible scheme on defense where even our seemingly good defensive center (Queta) was getting routinely exploited.