re: Would you trade Hawk and a 1st for Walker Kessler?

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I see we’ve learned nothing

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That starting lineup would be very good in the regular season, and with the correct rotations you could have ample shooting on the court during stretches and crunch time.

ETA: it’s obviously not optimal and I think you still try to trade BI to get either Trey or CJ in the starting lineup, but that team would still win a good number of games. I don’t see how you get around starting any of those players. Zion and DJ are locked in as starters, if BI is on the roster he has to start, a center has to start, and it would be dumb to bench our All NBA defender.

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I need to see this "center" rotation fail before I make that kind of trade.

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See, I'm the opposite. I don't need to see this center rotation to know it isn't gonna cut the snuff.

Missi won't be ready to touch an NBA court for awhile and Theis and Karlo are both backup level bigs. Karlo has potential, but anyone hoping he's gonna be a starting caliber 5, out of the gate, is setting themselves up for a major disappointment. Our rebounding and rim protection will be bottom 3 in the league with this roster. Make a move now and bring someone in.

The crazy thing is if the Jazz trade us Kessler for Hawkins and the 2025 1st.

Then they trade Markannen to the Hawks for the package I mentioned, that includes the Lakers and Kings 2025 1st round picks.

That gives them 6 1st round picks in the 2025 draft, none of which belong to serious contenders (all top 20ish).

They still have Collins, Sexton and Clarkson that they can move at the deadline or next summer (big expiring deals). Ainge is set up to dominate next offseason and flip the roster big time..

It would be better than a slight upgrade.

The Pels do not need to be paying stupid big salaries for players off the bench.

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What if Griffin fools us all, resigns Ingram to a lower deal, then trades Murphy?

He will justify it by saying he wanted to do right by Murphy, plus he gets to keep Ingram (his pet project). Murphy has as much value as Ingram, maybe a bit more (supposedly the Hawks offered the 1st pick for him). We can easily get Kessler for him, plus picks. We'd be under the tax too then.

I'm sure it would piss a lot of us off. But it tactically makes sense..

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This would be utterly idiotic to do considering the construction of our team from a salary and talent perspective. I'd fire Griff for even speaking about this idea out loud.

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But Hawk's shooting skills far transcend the percentages. Hes a true movement shooter in a way that Trey and CJ and many of the other top shooters percentage wide in the league aren't.

The way that Trey, CJ, and Hawk get their threes are all different. Trey mostly has to have other people create his shots for him. He has shown the occasional ability to create for himself whether it be with step backs or especially pull up threes in transition, but outside of that its others creating for him. CJ does his mostly off the dribble or also in transition if he does not have others creating for him. Hawkins can catch the ball on the run off a screen while being chased and just needs the slightest bit of room to get his shot off. So while his 3 point percentage is less than Herb's I would assume most would say that Hawk's three point ability is more valuable than Herb.

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I won't argue with any of this. If Hawk is shooting well he gives us something that we likely 1) need 2) don't currently have, but I was just saying that for a movement shooter who doesn't do anything else all that well...Hawk needs to knock down those movement 3's at a higher clip. "Malik Beasley but not quite as good" is not all that appealing as a rotation player for a good team.

Beasley isn’t nearly as much of a movement shooter as hawk either. He can somewhat but it’s a lot more catch and shoot. But the main point of my post was this:

1) people talk about Hawk’s potential as if Kessler is 9 years older and not 9 months older thank Hawk. There is still just as much time for Kessler to improve as there is for hawk

2) because of point 1, we need to look at their strengths and weaknesses and the likelihood of making their weaknesses somewhat serviceable. My use of the word elite was surely an exaggeration but it was a more minor part of the reason for my post as the focus was on the weakness to be developed. For hawk that is defense, and for Kessler is spacing. Do we think that Kessler is more likely to have a Jonas like shooting progression where he can shoot threes if left wide open at a decent clip? Do we think he can do better than that? Do we think he can even get to that point? It appears to be something he’s working on.

For Hawk it’s obviously defense. Can he become a neutral defender that allows his offense to become an overall positive? I believe Kessler has more potential to become a serviceable shooter than hawk does at defense.

3) the last point was what if they do not improve and stay with the way their games are now? Once again I think this is a huge advantage to Kessler hence why I would not even hesitate to trade hawk and a first for Kessler.

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Hes a true movement shooter in a way that Trey and CJ and many of the other top shooters percentage wide in the league aren't.

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Is he really a better movement shooter than Matt Ryan?

definitely