I dunno, I guess I’m not all that jazzed about wasting cap space on a declining veteran because he can “find cutters” as if our young guys won’t develop without this cutter-finding ability. I’m just dubious about how much long-term value that really has. We traded a pretty good asset to clear cap space and that seems like a pretty wasteful way to use that space. I mean Ricky Rubio cannot throw the ball in the basket, I don’t really know how much the team is going to learn basketball by having a point guard that the opponent doesn’t have to bother guarding.

Ricky Rubio is going to be 29 in a league where tall point guards peak around 30. He has the same assists per possession than D’Angelo Russell even though Mitchell is the one doing most of the ball handling in his team (while having less turnovers per possesion). He is a much more versatile defender, whereas DAR is not a good defender.

I guess that if you think that shooting 53 TS% at 32 USG% is much more valuable than shooting 52%TS at 22%USG, then ok, D’Angelo Russell is a valuable player, but I just don’t see it.

BTW, i am truly at odds with the high bpm DAR has for this season and I think it is partly a consquence of AST%, which is flawed and given a lot of weight in the model.

Kornet is actually a pretty decent defender, which significantly ups his value. Not an athlete like Mitch, but gets in the right position and stands upward, which is often enough when you’re 7 feet tall. We should definitely re-sign the guy.

If we want to sign a backup center I would take a hard run at Noel. As for PF, I think you put Knox there and let him take his lumps. If he is going to be a plus player it will be as a stretch 4. He is too slow footed to ever be a plus defender at the 3.

I think if we are not trying to compete hard this year then put Knox and Iggy at the 4 and just hope it works out. If we sign Randle, which I am somewhat okay with he is our four and Knox is the backup.

You made a simple statement that it is oh so common to find young pg’s that played like azz their first three seasons and blossomed … I merely asked you to provide examples.

I guess the way I wrote this, it’s a little ambiguous, so it seems like I’m saying 22-year old PGs in particular make a big leap:

D’Angelo Russell just completed his age 22 season, and took a big leap, a leap that is not uncommon with PG prospects.

I’m just saying point guards, in general, are often really bad in their early 20’s, the position has a steep learning curve. Russell’s curve was longer than some, but he’s still really young as a 22-year old PG. It’s really not all that rare for players to not be able to hack it as point guards in the NBA through age 21 or so, but to still succeed in the long run.

Looking around the league at various point guards, and the age at which they had their first roughly average or better season, using WS48 as a metric:

Eric Bledsoe (23)
Kyle Lowry (22)
Kyrie Irving (19)
John Wall (22)
Steph Curry (22)
Darren Collison (24)
De’Aaron Fox (21)
Kemba Walker (23)
Damian Lillard (22)

And yes, Russell was bad for longer than most of these players, but Russell also came into the league and played heavy minutes as a 19-year old. Most of these guys had one or two throwaway seasons and Russell had three, but most of these guys also weren’t in the NBA as 19-year olds.

If you can have a good season at PG in the NBA at age 22, you’re in pretty good shape. That’s about when most good PGs emerge.

Scalabrine described him perfectly: “He’s not an elite decision-maker.” He also fouls a lot and turns the ball over a lot. He’s a mediocre defender.

I couldn’t care less if we win 18 games or 30 next season, the only reason we have some hope right now is because we sucked enough to get Barrett, flawed prospect as he might be. Imagine if we were at Charlotte’s position trying to talk ourselves into PJ Washington or the Wizards trying to get excited about adding Rui Hachimura.

I’m lukewarm on DAR, he worries me in the IQ dept. He’s probably decent value at a mini-max, but not sure how easy his contract can be moved if he regresses at all. But yeah, it’s better than Rubio et. al.

Russell, RJ, Knox, Randle, Mitchell
DSJ, Dotson,Iggy,Vonleh,Kornet
Trier,Ntilikina

Dotson’s the old man at 25.