A player like that will pile up assists in addition to his expected scoring and rebounding from the forward position. So stats wise, the models will love him to death since he’s doing more than typical forward. On the flip side, when a guy like that is out or hurt, it probably gets trickier to put a team on the court that’s balanced the right way. It’s unlikely you’ll have another forward like that. So if you put out a traditional forward to replace him, you’ll have to have a traditional PG to put out there with him. But if you regular starting PG is more of an elite shooter playing off your Point Forward, he won’t be enough of a play maker. If your backup PG is more traditional and you up his minutes to make up the gap in play making, then you basically have 2 backups out there and are really hurting.

I guess what I am saying is that if one guy does a LOT, he plays in a non traditional way, and you build around him to maximize the team, you better hope he stays healthy. Otherwise you can be really screwed. As great as James is, his Cavs teams have tended to totally fall apart when he’s out or hurt. IMO, that’s not just because he’s so great, but also because his teams have tended to be built to play off him and not without him.

It’s just roster construction.

Exactly.

Teams know they need a certain amount of outside shooting, inside scoring, shot creation, rebounding, ball handling, play making, rim defense, perimeter defense etc… to maximize the team output. If you overweight some areas you’ll tend to have weaknesses in other areas teams can exploit and you’ll get diminishing returns from the areas you are overweighted.

If you have a forward that can handle the ball and make plays at a very high level, it’s kind of pointless to also have a play making PG since there’s only one ball and you want your best play maker to have it a lot of the time. So the idea would be to find a PG whose skill set will benefit from playing with your forward.

You can extend that to any position and create any non traditional lineup you want and be effective. At the same time, it’s not an accident the game evolved the way it did. Big guys tend to rebound better and small guys tend to be quicker and more nimble.

I would say Center is more often disposable simply because of the extreme value superstar, mega efficient ball handlers / shot creators bring to the table. You can get that sort of production from any of the 4 positions but not from the 5, generally.

It’s not all that different than back in the Bulls heyday when they had guys like Bill Wennington and Luc Longley manning the 5.

True— even in the 90s (aka the era of supposedly dominant post up centers) the centers that played the majority of minutes in the finals were not only Longley and Wennington but: Kevin Duckworth, Bill Laimbeer, Oliver Miller, Bill Cartwright, Stacey King, Ervin “Not Magic” Johnson, Will Purdue, Sam Perkins, and Greg Ostertag.

I just hope the damn Pelicans don’t gift wrap them Davis. I have a bad feeling that the West is so rough that the Pelicans are going to be out of the playoff picture early and Davis will want to leave. I don’t think I have forgiven the Wolves to this day for giving them Garnett, if the Pelicans give them or the Lakers AD I’ll be supremely pissed.

I don’t think there’s a clear answer here, other than Capela would definitely be more economical. But as much as it pains me to say it as a hater of all things green, if the Celts stay healthy and Rozier, Brown and Tatum continue to develop, a finals between them and the Warriors could get very interesting.