re: The case for keeping Jaxson Hayes

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How can we have a deep team when we don’t even have a SG?

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Brandon Ingram.

We have three legitimate stats and Val is pretty damn good. I suspect we are going to win a lot of games by keeping at least two of those guys on the court as much as possible so we win when subs start coming into the game.

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The 2nd unit is not great and is mostly an unknown.

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The 2nd unit is not the guys you listed, it's the guys you listed plus Zion. That makes a huge difference. We saw it in the back half of the SVG season. 2nd units can't handle Zion which makes everyone else's lives easier.

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As fans we are allowed to assume good injury luck and hope we are right. What pleasure is there in assuming otherwise?

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You can hope for what you want. I am basing it off historical data and trends. We have had a different 12+ guys start multiple games for us every year of existence. So has almost every team in the league. Guys are going to get hurt, be held out, go through slumps, need personal time away and sometimes the coach is going to want to shake things up and experiment with the starting line up. Maybe someone like Hayes or Murphy or anybody goes on a hot streak and he wants to reward them. It's all fluid and we don't really know how that specific group is going to play together. They never have before and the focus is about to change all together.

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like every other team in the league they are deep assuming availability, and like every other team they are thin without it

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I classify quality depth as players that could start for other teams or have an elite skill in short bursts. We don't have much of that on the bench at this point. I hope I'm wrong and either Hayes, Murphy, Alvarado or Daniels emerges in a significant way. But at this point I don't see that and we are going to have to have multiple starters on the court at all times..

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I classify quality depth as players that could start for other teams or have an elite skill in short bursts

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How many teams do have guys like that? Even championship teams don't have this luxury.

And I definitely think Jaxson fits that mold. He had a couple stretches in the Suns series where he was the best player on the floor for 3 minutes. Murphy would start on a lot of teams as well. Oh and Alvarado is damn near elite defensively as well.

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You can hope for what you want. I am basing it off historical data and trends. We have had a different 12+ guys start multiple games for us every year of existence. So has almost every team in the league. Guys are going to get hurt, be held out, go through slumps, need personal time away and sometimes the coach is going to want to shake things up and experiment with the starting line up.

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I just saw an article about 56 game winner memphis. last season
morant missed 25 games,
Brooks missed 60.
and in the 6 game series vs eventual champ gsw, memphis did not have their best starting five one game. none. in one gsw game without morant they scored 140 and won easily vs gsw.
bmark is right with his stats which I guess at least partially explains the o/u I saw for pels at 44.5.
many pelisons were already guessing 50 wins and a home series.
I saw 50.5 for gsw.
due to the reality of injury its really a crapshoot to pick and bet an o/u for nba. one factor I've seen good TD posts about over the years is the luck of when you happen to play the other team. travel. back to back.
last year memphis went on a 10-0 streak after morant had a particular injury.
most of the opponents were missing a starter too.

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You want them to have 5 start level players on the bench? Do you see how ridiculous that is

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I never said that. I said that is what I classify as quality depth, which means one or more players. I do not believe any of our bench players is a starter level player. I don't see any with an elite skill set.

Someone mentioned Alvarado as an elite defender and that is an interesting one. I want to see a greater sample size and see if it carries on before agreeing with that. He was awesome in bursts and I want him to expand on that. I believe he has tremendous heart and effort. It took many by surprise. I've seen a lot of flash in the pan smaller guards though.

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Trey and Nance could potentially start for some teams, having 2 players of that caliber on the bench is quality depth.

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We have different opinion of Nance. He is a fringe NBA player to me and is majorly undersized for what he does. His athleticism is declining and he has injury issues.

A quality bench is like the Bucks with Hill, Connaugthon, Matthews and Portis. Former starters and guys capable of playing big minutes in a pinch. That is what i think of when people say a deep team..

Seems to me, a far more interesting question than...how many of our "starters" might get hurt and miss games during the season? is...assuming we all agree that our preferred starting lineup is CJ/Herb/BI/Zion/Val...who will get the most minutes off the bench?

My guess...Murphy, Nance, and then, either Jose or Kira (whomever of the 2 beats out the other)

After 8...I'm not too concerned since I tend to go with the Pat Riley playoff mantra of..."Use eight, rotate seven, play six and trust five." At least, once things get serious.

Daniels will hopefully be the unknown "wildcard", since I think he could easily make his way into the top 8 by midseason, even it's just mainly for defense.

This team is deep with holes that could be filled, or not, depending on your confidence level IMO.

Yes, we should be pretty comfortable with Trey and Nance IMO, they can come in to spell 2-4 and Nance is a decent small ball 5 in short bursts, but not a real injury to JV backup option IMO (that guy is Billy right now)…Jose is great as a Pat Beverly style (at $10mm less) defensive energy guy.

That’s 8 guys.

Jax for all his flaws (and character/maturity seems to be a big one) was a playoff starter at the 4, if he takes a step up then it gives WG a lot of flexibility, but I think his best role is as a 4 and trying to make him a 5 is likely not going to work. Good 5s need to like contact and I don’t think Jax does, but his athleticism and length can get/keep him on the floor at the 4 if he can make enough shots to keep the floor spaced. Unfortunately that does make him a bit redundant with Nance and Tre, but over the course of the season that’s a nice luxury.

So that’s 9 guys.

The thing is we don’t really have great backups for JV and CJ and they are the older guys. I love Billy and he has played sneaky good when given minutes, but that still feels like a hole. And CJ feels like the most irreplaceable to me right now. No one on the squad really does what he does…maybe collectively they get the job done another way, but not a 1-1 player swap type backup.

Kira and Graham are still on the team too, which feels super redundant…I loved Kira’s development trajectory out of college and still think he could be a nice PG, but he has a lot to prove, and Graham is a small catch and shoot guy with limited defensive impact, which just screams “empty stats guy on bad team” or “end of bench Hail Mary option”.