New City Champ

Old school: Moses Malone/Wes Unseld--though a better passer.

New school: Jokic/Sengun/Sabonis--but he has to board a little better.

do any mfers ever miss in our gym? Dort is shooting 21% on the year. JFC...

It's just not accurate to say an in-season coaching change never turns things around. I can think of one glaring example off the top of my head. When Lawrence Frank replaced Byron Scott with the Nets the team immediately went on like a 12-game winning streak and made the playoffs. Other examples as well. Not sure what Grubb was thinking....

Were you giving BI 3-years/$120 million? (If he would have even taken that from the Pels. He was asking for $50 million+).

For sure a lot of the best players in the league were not taken at the top of the draft. You mention a few, but could add Booker, Mitchell, Sengun. Hell, even Steph was outside the top 5.

That said statistically you are going to do better drafting at the top and giving two potential lottery picks--which now look like high lottery picks--for one prospect is a "put it all on red" kind of move, a huge gamble. And Queen was probably my favorite player in the draft. I've been wishing for the Pels to get a Sabonis, Sengun, Jokic-type of center for years, a guy who could be a hub for the offense, pass, handle the ball, screen rebound. It's early days, but Queen looks exactly like that kind of big.

The basketball commentariat is full of smart guy, wanna be GMs who talk to analytics-obsessed front office juniors. To them Dumars is a dinosaur, an ancient meme on a desk phone, and Weaver is a dupe who overpays for players based on hunches and personal connections. They were laughing the minute those guys were hired and when they crossed the stat-geek orthodoxy about the holy valuation of future draft possibilities, their heads exploded.

The stat squeakers could be right in the end. Certainly the Pels valuation of those picks as a pair of mid-rounders already looks to be off, in part due to bad luck an in part to a failure in foresight. But the evaluations of Fears and Queen--both of whom easily could have been top-five picks in the '26 draft if they'd stayed in college--looks right. Do I wish Weaver had put some protections on that pick? I do. And he probably could have and still made the trade. But if Queen works out, if those picks shift down the board a bit, a lot of the geek squad is going to have to choke down some crow...

Dinwiddie could help in the short term, but it's always a trade off. Give Willie a vet and he's going to play him over the rookie + we've already got Murray coming back at some point. Not sure Spencer is worth it to the Pels. Club is working on two timelines, but I think you need to give priority to developing Fears.
As noted, what we really need is another big...

The root of this, of course, is the Clippers tying themselves in knots to accommodate Leonard, their "super star." I confess reading the passage below I started to wonder if the Pels made any similar contortions to try and appease Zion and his camp over the years:

"Robertson, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, wanted Leonard to be able to initially live in San Diego rather than in Los Angeles. (Leonard would commute via helicopter. He later moved to Los Angeles.) The Clippers agreed. He wanted Leonard to be able to skip some media obligations and team community events. The Clippers agreed. He wanted the team to promise to market Leonard individually. The Clippers agreed. He wanted Leonard to be able to bring some of his own people into the organization. The Clippers agreed. (A team source disputes the existence of some of these requests and the tone of some others.)

Perhaps most importantly, Robertson said there would need to be a strict protocol about how to talk about Leonard publicly -- and that was to say nothing unless absolutely necessary."

Encouraging, but often with this kind of injury the last 5% of recovery can take almost as long as the first 95%...

Yeah, with Z dominating the ball you aren't going to be a volume 3-point shooting team, period. The math won't math. The problem was worse with BI, which was two ball-dominant guys who didn't shoot 3s.

Poole & Trey will be your volume guys. Herb was a 40%+ 3-point guy from the corners in 2023-24. From the bench Jose, Hawkins, Bey, Reeves & Peavey should all be willing 3-point shooters. TBD on Fears.

With the bigs, I'd bet Karlo & Queen will get a few up and maybe Missi too this year. But the myth of the volume-shooting big is pretty much that--a myth. Even bigs who can hit them, like Turner and Holmgren in this year's finals, only make 1 or 2 a game, not enough to really consistently impact the gravity on the court.

Overall, of the 4 teams in the conference finals this year, none was top 5 in 3-point shooting volume. The Pacers were 21st. The Thunder were 17th. The Knicks were 28th. Minny was 6th.

The Pels were 26th (two slots above the Knicks) and only made them at a 34.7% clip. That was obviously greatly impacted by the number of injuries. The season before the Pels shot 37.6% from beyond the arc, which would have been a top-5 shooting % in the league this year. So, they need to get back to around that level of efficiency. I think the focus should be more on that than increasing the overall volume of attempts. With Z, we are always going to have more shot attempts in the paint and (hopefully) from the line than perimeter-oriented teams like the Celtics.

Don't think that's actually a fair formulation.

More accurate to say we took our (potential) 2026 lottery pick a year early, at the cost of the 23rd pick.

Essentially, if Queen goes back to Maryland and comes out in 2026 do you think he projects as a top-10 pick? If so, then it was an aggressive trade but not crazy--no more so than if you had packaged your 1st rounders to trade up and get him next year.

Could you miss? Sure. But that's true of any pick you make this year or next. The real issues are could the Pels have hedged their risk more by getting protections on the pick or waiting on the Indiana pick swap until after the end of the finals? That would have been better. And maybe the value of the picks would have been better spent on a trade for an established player. Again, that's a question you can ask with any draft pick.

Bottom line: If you think Queen is a top-10 guy this year or next, then it's not a crazy move. If you don't, then it was an irresponsible gamble...