re: Outlook for Fears and Queen this season

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Replace Herb with another +38% SG taking 8+ 3's a game and boom.

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It so much more difficult than that because that player also needs to be your best perimeter defender because Fears, Trey, and Queen won’t be. Now you’re looking for a unicorn. OG would be perfect but he’s not available and there.

I would see if we can get Myles Turner for Poole’s expiring without sacrificing much draft capital. He’s a bad rebounder but provides shot blocking and shooting at the 5 which would probably allow you to start Herb.


Fears/herb/trey/queen/turner would be a fun lineup.

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Funny enough Murray has every quality needed other than the 3pt shot... Facilitating, defense, rebounding, etcc.

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I agree, and he's also a guy who can get his own shot off in the clutch. I'd really like to see it work with him and Fears.
I just think both of them kind of need the ball in their hand to be effective, and they aren't nearly as effective off the ball. Murray didn't seem to work well with Trae, but he shot well from 3 both years he played with Trae, and that second year was probably the best 3 point shooting year of his career taking 7 a game at 36% (4 of which were C&S at 39%). If he can find that role off the ball, and pick and choose when to take control then he really should be the perfect guy to pair with Fears.

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Amen Thomson is the perfect player to add but he's not available or would cost us just about everything.

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In no world can you have Zion and Amen Thompson playing together. He is an extremely difficult player to fit into a roster b/c of his inability to shoot, just like Zion. Amen works on Houston b/c they don't have a PG. Its why Ben Simmons worked for a little while as well. They have to be the PG and use their athleticism to create opportunities for others while trying to get to the rim. Both of them are/were worthless off the ball, but at least they were a lot more active off the ball than Zion is, who just sits in the short corner doing nothing then jogs back down the court when a shot goes up instead of crashing the boards.

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The reality is that we have Herb and have lost many games.

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Well it ain't his fault, and he didn't do that.
Herb led the team last year in +/- (Murray actually did but he only played 14 games). He also led the team the previous year in +/-.
When Herb plays, regardless of who else is on the court, we're a better team. That is a very clear truth that has been shown over time. He is a high IQ player who finds ways to make a difference on the court, on both sides of the court despite his limitations on offense. He can knock down enough open 3's to be effective, and his IQ allows him to make the right cuts at the right time instead of just standing around doing nothing.

There aren't a ton of guys in the league like that, and i think it would be stupid to let him go. The only way i'd consider giving up Herb is if it meant we were getting back an all-star wing player.


Fears/Herb/Trey/DQ should be the core group of what we want to build around. Trey just turned 26 and Herb is almost 28. They both still have at least 5 years left of being elite at what they do. What those 4 are missing is a wing player who can be a closer. Can Murray be that guy? maybe. we'll see. We've seen enough to know Zion isn't that guy. That's where the upgrade needs to happen. You could replace Zion with Derrick White and we'd be a much better team. I think the guy i'd really like is Desmond Bane.
And i say all that and go back to why can't Murray be that guy?

You can't have a lineup where everyone is a 20 ppg scorer.

Fears is going to be a 20ppg guy.
Trey is right there already.
Murray is going to be near that as well.
If DQ takes a step and gets minutes he'll be close to that as well.
You add Zion to that and someone has to take a backseat in the scoring department b/c there's not enough shots to go around.

You need role players. Herb is the perfect one. He doesn't need the ball, ever, and it's important to have a guy on the court like that.

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You can't have a lineup where everyone is a 20 ppg scorer.

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Not everyone being 20 ppg scorers, everyone being efficient scorers.

BOS 3PA for their top 5 are 8/8/7/5/3.

Trey- 8
(SG)-8
Bey-7
Murray-5
Fears-3

Really not crazy, we just don't have another +7 3PA player who can shoot the 3 well.

If we are doing that then you can have Z/ Center/ Queen putting up 10-18 pts on 60-80% from 2. Don't even need the 3's. And Herb doesn't even have to shoot.

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Adding a true SG to pair with these guys would also decrease the 3pt need. We don't necessarily need Fears to shoot more 3's if he avg 5+ assist to a guy putting up 20-30ppg at a high clip.

Add a 3pt shooter, get Queen to perfect his mid range, and turn Fears into a Kyrie type playmaker even if his 3pt isn't as polished.

We need a C and a SG.

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Would love to see Fears become a great playmaker. However, he tends to play with a mentality more like a shooting guard than a facilitator. He needs to become more of an assist guy.

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We don't want Herb taking 4 3's a game, we want him to play defense and pass to a guy who will actually make a 3.

If Herb is taking 4 3's a game then we regressed.

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In todays NBA, you can't be out there and pass up open 3's. You just can't. If you're not going to shoot it, then you can't play b/c when someone kicks it out to you and you pass up a wide open look, it makes getting a decent shot after that extremely hard b/c you're basically starting the offense over again with much less time left on the shot clock. You have to shoot when your open, doesn't matter who you are, especially if there's under 10 seconds left on the shot clock.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with Herb taking 4 3's a game.
This past year he took 1 pull up a game and was 27% at that. He was only 32% on his almost 4 C&S threes.
That 1 pull up 3 is a big increase from his previous 4 years playing where he rarely ever took that shot. He needs to go back to only taking C&S 3's. Being smarter about the 3's he takes will lead to a decent 35% on them, and that's good enough for everything else he does.

I noticed last summer in the preseason Herb taking 3's that weren't C&S, and most of you on here were happy he and the team were shooting more, and i would argue that you don't just shoot more 3's just to shoot more 3's. IF they aren't good shots, then you're making your team even worse b/c bad 3's are almost like turnovers in that they lead to easy fastbreak points a lot of the time.

Herb had a bad year this past year, and i would attribute that solely to having to play without BI and CJ. It's also why Trey has been less efficient the last 2 years as opposed to the 2 years prior. and no, i'm not saying we are better with BI, but our role players certainly were, and it's obvious that this team simply needed the upgrade of BI to be a really good team. Hopefully Fears and Murray can take the brunt of that responsibility this year and make life easier for Trey, Herb, and Bey. Asking Trey to create more and fill BI's shoes was stupid, and i said that from the get go. That's not who Trey is, nor will he ever be. He's an elite role player, and he needs to stay that way.
We've got two guys on our team that literally every single team in the NBA would love to have in their starting lineup in Trey and Herb, and we are wasting our time with them not surrounding them with the right player.