It seems that the ones that really want Noel haven't seen him play much and just go off of his defensive stats, height, and athleticism. The other camp that feels he's overrated understands the holes in his game by watching him closely.
This is quite a confident statement. Are u a Philly fan or something? is that why you watch the Sixers so often? Because I doubt anyone here has watched many Sixer games (they're so darn hard to watch).
I watch them because of Draft Kings. A smart approach is to go roster heavy with whoever they're playing, so I tend to watch them more than I'd like too and probably more than most on here. I don't like to form opinions based on limited number of viewings, which I think is really the case when those speak so highly of him. If I didn't have a confident opinion I wouldn't be so adamant.
If you watch him so often, why does him playing out of position not seem like a valid argument to you? I mean, unlike Dieng-Towns, the Okafor-Noel pairing has obviously not worked out. But that doesn't mean Noel will keep performing that way, unless you think that there's no way he can improve even with a new team.
Because nothing ever changes when he's playing with Okafor or not. Today for example, he came off the bench, albeit some minutes were with Okafor, and he finished with 5 pts and 8 reb in 27 minutes where he was a -16 (worst on the team).
Why is Okafor the issue? Save for a hot streak late last year, which looks like an aberration, has he really done anything at all? Is playing the center going to improve his atrocious hands? Is he going to have better footwork? A lower turnover rate? A higher overall skillset? So a team has to adjust their entire offense and rotations to make Noel not look awful offensively? Is he worth it? Is he really the defender people make him out to be? Both advanced metrics and game tape say otherwise.
The stats say differently. The Sixers have a net rating of -11.6 with a defensive rating of 104 with Noel in the game without Okafor on the season. When Okafor plays with Noel on the bench, the Sixers have a net rating of -18.3 with a defensive rating of 112. Lineups with both of them on the court have a net rating of -25.1 and a defensive rating of 112.
So the Sixers play their best when Noel is on the court without Okafor, but they play especially bad when both are in the game.
Last year Noel was responsible for the Sixers playing good defense in the second half of the year. On the year they played like the 22nd rated defense in the league without him on the court and the 5th rated defense with him on the court.
I believe if you add Noel to our young core then we have an elite defense to hang our hat on for he next 5-8 years.
But aren't we already a very good defense? I believe we are rated top 5 or top 6 or something on defense, and that it's our offense which ultimately lets us down most frequently.
If so, adding Noel sure as hell will not fix that.
I thing one thing that people often fail to recognise is that basketball is about outscoring the opponent, at the end of the day. Whether you outscore a team with good offense (by scoring lots) or by good defense (by stopping them from scoring lots) is ultimately irrelevant - the only thing that matters is that you are scoring more than they are, regardless of how that is achieved.
It's the opposite of the Isaiah Thomas argument.
Some people say Thomas hurts us because his poor defense makes him a liability when he is on the court. However, that is obvious not true since he has an RPM of +2.85 which ranks top 40 in the NBA.
The key thing is that Thomas improves our offense (+5.46 ORPM)
far more than he hurts our defense (-2.61 DRPM). This means that his defense is
not a liability, since the Celtics become a significantly better team when he is on the court.
Noel hurts your offense (-5.69 ORPM) much more than he helps your defense (+1.92 DRPM), giving you an overall RPM of -3.77 which is ranked 93rd out of 95 NBA Power Forwards. That means Noel 's poor offense
is a liability when he is on the court, since he makes his team worse when he steps on the court.
At the end of the day, this is all that matters - when Noel is on the court, he makes his team worse.
I would still be interested in trading for him purely for his potential, to develop into something special later down the road. But if you look at the player he is right now, he's probably not even good enough to earn a start on this roster.
All that considered, I would be hesitant to give Philly any assets of significant proven value. That means I probably wouldn't even contemplate including either Smart or Bradley in the deal (definitely not Thomas). The most valuable piece I'd include would probably be our own 2016 1st, or a future Brookyn 1st (other than the 2016 one).
Sully + Dallas 1st + Young is probably about as much as I would offer.
