Snow and Mckie and Tyrone Hill were the other guys I remember. Maybe Ratliff. And I think they added Mutombo. It wasn’t a perfect team but it made sense. It’s actually one of the few roster constructions I always think about, given that I don’t think roster construction matters that much in general.

As for the crypto stuff, I have no idea what you are saying. But I am excited for the Michael Lewis book that is coming. Although the guy on Twitter was right. If he spent six months with SBF and didn’t know what was happening I don’t want to read the book. And ditto if he did.

Per basketball-reference, Randle has 271 points on 196 attempts for 1.38 points per attempt while Obi has 131 points on 104 attempts for 1.26 points per attempt.

How many of those points come from FTs?

quick isn’t mckie but he’s starting to look a bit eric snowy. a brunson/quick/mcbride polycule would be exceptionally rootable.

(1) Defense – he tries so I’d think he’d be better than Randle… not saying much though

(2) Rebounding – Huge concern for me, luckily we have a certain high “IQ” guard who is an excellent rebounder

(3) Shot creation – A massive (approx.) 90% of his shots are assisted. His shooting will stretch the floor, but if the offense bogs down will that be enough? Whatever your opinion of Randle doing the same, this is a concern, e.g., John Collins’s numbers look good but do you really want Collins all that bad?*

*Based on volume Obi looks like a much better shooter this year than Collins has ever been, not sure what that’s worth

As for defense, I believe that while a fully engaged Randle can be a solid defensive player, he has certainly not been that lately. He has been absolutely dogging it lately and Obi is much better defensively this season. Anyone is better defensively at this point.

KFNINJ – I do not understand what you are saying. If Obi scores the same amount of points as Randle in less shots that is somehow bad because other people will have to take those extra shots? If Obi is scoring the same in less shots the other shots cannot be worse since by definition Randle would have had to score 0 with those extra shots. So other people taking them would have to be better.

Actually agree on all your points, but you skip over one, which is what is Obi’s ceiling. He’s probably not better than Randle this year, at least at certain things (but already clearly better at others). Can he improve those things he’s not as good at? I think from the bench, not so much.

And yeah, if the choice is watching Randle hand the ball to the other team and complain to the ref while they score, and Obi running the floor like an impala, I’ll take B.

But not for Westbrook. Because I think you’re right that they’d play him because name (and trade), and that might actually be worse. In fact almost certainly would be. While blocking IQ, the other mystery that needs to be solved.

We need to see if he can continue to average 20/8/2 on increased minutes as a starter. If he can without a drop in his efficiency he is a borderline all-star.

By this standard Randle is already a borderline all-star. If all of you want to lose with Obi starting instead of Randle because it’s more fun to watch him score, just say that, because having Obi start won’t make us better. Maybe his offensive efficiency will be better but he will take less shots than Randle and the players whose shots go up to replace those missing shots won’t be more efficient than Randle in shooting. And his defense won’t be better.

As for trading Randle for Westbrook, that wouldn’t make us better either. If Westbrook actually played (instead of being waived) his defensive effort almost certainly would be bad, we know his efficiency is bad, he can’t shoot three pointers and I think the complaints here would be immediate and manifold. That’s not something I want. What’s more, the cap space we would get from Westbrook’a contract expiration will be hard to use. As I posted before, lots of teams will have cap space this summer and it’s not clear there will be a lot of highly desirable free agents to go after (Kyrie anyone?). I’m really not sure we could get someone better than Randle with that cap space. We are absolutely stuck with waiting and hoping our young players get better.

I guess not actually stuck. We could try and lose and achieve a fourteen percent chance of VW. We would have multiple competitors for that fourteen percent chance too. I leave you to w whether we have less than a fourteen percent to get better through player improvement or any other way.

I am not going into a maze of Randle denialism. We aren’t moving any goalposts. The goalposts in the NBA move themselves. The same way I pointed out for years that Kobe scored a ton of points on pretty mediocre efficiency, well, the same point applies to Randle. Being a high usage guy who scores around league average efficiency and doesn’t play defense doesn’t really mean much when you have a bunch of no names like Wade and Hauser running around hitting 45% of their threes. If it ever did.

When we acquired Brunson we should have done it on the Iverson Sixers model where we surrounded him with a bunch of absolute junkyard dogs. This is almost the opposite of that. Mitch and Hart are ok but we don’t have any Mckie’s.