And actually, it’s a really nice act on his part

He’s essentially prime offensive Carmelo Anthony who plays very good defense. At age 21. I know we hate us some Celtics, but this kid is really, really good.

ptmilo: sure tatum’s recent play isn’t sustainable. he’s not better than kd. but tatum has been great if you consider his entire year. he is a very good defender, a high usage scorer on pretty good efficiency, a decent passer, a good rebounder and he has one of the lower turnover rates for his usage you will see. he doesn’t turn 22 years old until next week and he is a career 40pct 3pt shooter on 56.6 ts. his numbers this year are as good or better than siakam’s. it really doesn’t mean anything that his recent hot play is unsustainable, just like his cold start was also irrelevant. it sucks for us but he is really fucking good.

DRed:
Tatum is a slightly above average efficiency scorer on slightly above average usage who plays good/very good defense and is a bit of a chucker.He’s definitely more promising than Siakam because he’s much younger, but they’re about the same this year.Siakam is also an overrated player on a team that wins because of its depth.The Celtics and the Raptors have a lot of good players and are well coached, and because of the way the NBA media is set up they both need to have ‘a guy’.

The judges have spoken. And the winner is………..Iron Chef pt

I see a guy I predicted would start the season off poorly because he was off for so long and said it would take time for him to get his confidence back in his knees and physically ready to handle game speed and conditions. I believe my exact prediction was that he'd start showing signs of improvement in January. Then the other knee got a little sore, his missed around 10 games, it set him back, he came back with something like a 2-15 disaster game, and has slowly worked himself back to form 1 month later than I predicted.

It was obvious his poor play early this season was not random. He was shooting worse from every area of the court including the FT line. The same thing is going on with Oladipo now and I've seen it plenty of other times over the decades of being a fan. It takes time for some players to recover mentally and physically from a serious injury.

Obviously, his February level of play is not sustainable. However, they are using him better. So his efficiency should rise somewhat from his NY days with his current superior shot distribution, not being the #1 option getting double teamed anymore, and being on the receiving end of better spacing and PG play. He just has to stay healthy. I see no reason he can't sustain a 56% TS or a tad better from February forward. From there you keep working on skills and strength and try to get even better. He was very raw to start and missed a lot of development time. We haven't seen his best if he stays healthy.

We had some cap space coming into this year that we were theoretically going to use first before we re-signed KP to begin with. Both Lee and Noah would be coming off the books and the end of this year anyway opening up a ton of more space. Instead, we still have Noah on the books for two more years!!!! DOH!!!!

The one thing we gained in terms of space was moving Hardaway’s contract, but that contract was not going to destroy our rebuild if we sat on it until it expired. He’s not worth the salary, but he would have been a contributing young player on an improving young team in the same way he is in Dallas now. Of course, they are competent so they have him playing better and want to extend him. He probably would have sucked for us and we’d have to sit on it until he expired.

We basically got DSJr and Dallas’s 2 picks out of the deal.

There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’d take that deal over KP.

The chances we get a player of KP’s quality out of that are extremely low. And YES KP IS WORTH THE MAX. The fact that some players that get the max are a lot better than him is an indication that some players are worth a LOT MORE than the max, That’s well known. But you don’t toss away legitimate #1 and #2 options because they aren’t one of the super elite max players worth twice the price. You keep those #1 and #2 options and keep building because you aren’t going anywhere without them.

I’d be willing to bet that if KP went on the market right now at his current max salary more than half the league would be on the phone trying to get him even though he such a poor start related to the layoff. The teams that weren’t trying would be those that either don’t have the need for a big man or that are very cautious related to injuries. But without injury risk, virtually everyone would have maxed him given his unique skillset on both sides. No one is looking at his stat…

I said from day one he's a good player that's a terrible fit on this team. I haven't changed my opinion. I have no doubt he'd he much more efficient on another team.

Of course I would, because they are productive players, and their worst seasons so far in the league are still better than Porzingis’ best season in 4 years. It’s really not that hard to understand. Give max money to players who produce like max level players. Simmons and Embiid have their flaws, but they’re far, far closer to max level production than KP is, and the comparison is even worse when their stats are much better AND they’re both elite defenders, so the esoteric “stats don’t actually capture production” argument is even more stupid here.

I’m pro Tatum. I like Kemba, too. I’m not impressed with the rest of that team, though, and they’re pretty much locked into this current roster for the next few years.