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Everything posted by Betrayer
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Weaver drafted a lot of these guys. He gave up future assets to bring in Stew. He traded up for Sasser as well. They have a lot of Weaver's favorites they can dangle. Ideally, I'd love for it to be Duren, but I doubt the organization will do it.
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I'm sure it's a tough decision for him. Who does he favor? On the one hand, having a title in NYK would be huge for league $$$. On the other hand, he gave Wemby to the Euro team (Spurs) to increase the interest in that market for eventual expansion. It's basically a win/win for him.
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His FG% actually went down. He simply had more usage, taking 11.5 shots per game instead of the 7 shots he took the year before when we had Beasley and THJ chucking instead. Rebounds were flat. Assists went down. Stocks went down. Turnovers went up. So, basically JD is getting paid for usage, not improvement.
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The good news is this is just another story. I've heard reports of 36M, 37M, 40M, and now this one for 44M. This is a lot of guessing. My only hope is that it's closer to 35 than 40M. I'd obviously prefer 25-30M, where he actually belongs, but we all know that's not happening. I do love how defenders of this always justify it with, "He's only 22 so he'll get better", but nobody can offer up an answer for WHAT he'll get better at. What skill does he have that we're betting on him improving? Dunking? He's shown zero ability to be a stretch 5 and you don't suddenly learn defensive instincts and gain perimeter footspeed. I'd be more willing to bet that this season was his ceiling than that he will suddenly turn into a Embiid, Jokic, or even Gobert.
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If you're giving me other options, then yeah, I'd much rather S&T Duren for Trey Murphy.
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Three years of Turner at 28M or 5 years of Duren at 40M? I'm doing that trade just to save the franchise from the contract. "Good" or not, Turner shot 38% from three last year and that means he has an actual NBA skill. He can split time with Reed/Stew when you need more mobility in there and you don't have to promise him 30+ mpg like Duren. Getting the #10 pick in a good draft is just icing on the cake that could turn this into a much bigger win whether you keep it, package it with #21 to move up, or package it for a player trade.
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They played the Hawks, Sixers, and Cavs. That's just shooting practice. They're about to get a rude awakening against the Spurs defenders I think
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Brunson is going to find himself in a very different world going from Harden/Merrill to SA's perimeter defenders. He got off light not having to deal with Ausar in the ECF. I'm taking SA if Adam Silver hasn't already put the call in for a Knicks title. Let's see how many times we get Tony Brothers officiating.
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Exactly. Wemby forces you out of the paint. You beat Wemby with a team like the old Warriors. They weren't concerned with shot blockers when they were killing you from three point range. Problem is, it's tough to build a team like that and other teams without Steph that just fire up threes all day (Boston) have shown that the variance is high enough you can just get bounced in the 1st round.
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It's not about players not caring. When teams are tanking they're putting scrubs out there. Those player care because it's probably their only chance to show they can play and earn a contract. These aren't the stars making 10s of millions, these are the Daniss Jenkins of the world who get to play when the stars are "injured". Tanking has never been about the players. It's about the owner, the organization, and coaching staff.
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My opinion has been to offer him Jarrett Allen's contract. It was 28M this year and then goes up to 32M. That's an average of 30M. That's probably not going to get it done, but it's our best case scenario if the market is dry and you can push him to accept less than he's going to want. Realistically though, with guys like Kessler talking about 30M and Sengun getting 37M, Duren is going to get somewhere in the mid 30s. I don't love 36M, but 35M was my top end number and this is roughly that. We know they're going to sign him, so we have to think about what's going to make us sick and what we can live with. 40M would make me sick. Mostly I've been trying to think about this as the cost for both Ausar and Duren. I don't like that combined number getting to 70M. If it's closer to 60M, then I think you can work with that and keep those contracts moveable down the line.
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This is the type of thing that will inflate what Duren is asking for.
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Even if I grant you that hyperbole, then the answer is still to incentivize winning, not to penalize losing. And certainly not to do it in a way that just keeps the truly bad teams bad for longer and gives more advantage to the big market teams. A number of people, such as Vecenie and Bontemps, have discussed methods to incentivize winning that impact the pocket books of everyone from owners to coaches to players.
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Any player has value at the right price, but too many teams overvalue Centers. Gobert has never been to the finals for a reason. In fact, he's gotten benched during key moments and played off the court more times than I can count during the playoffs because teams go small, switch, and space. Centers just don't have the value that other positions do unless you can land a Wemby/Jokic. I agree with your assessment of Duren. He's not a rim protector and he can't shoot outside of 3' feet. He's a rim runner with mediocre interior defense and poor perimeter defense. He's a bad investment at anything more than average starter salary (23M) or slightly above that if you have to (25-28M).
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The whole point of the draft is for bad teams to get better. Especially bad teams in smaller markets where they have no other way to get better because free agents aren't coming there. They could make trades, but without the assets to send out and with picks being less valuable now this is just going to create a league where small market teams are stuck on the bottom forever. I suppose that's good for the league because it's all about raking in the money from the big market teams. Those teams will always be able to attract free agents and if they ever fall just out of the playoffs they can get them the #1 pick more easily to bounce back to the top. All of this because a handful of games that nobody was watching anyway were made slightly more boring. How about we fix the actual problems with the league? -Postgame reviews and fines for flopping/embelishment, leading to suspensions for frequent offenders. -Allow the defender the right to his space so offensive players can't initiate contact and get FTs.
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Same reason people have more than one child. If humans didn't evolve to quickly forget pain we'd have died out ages ago.
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Moving goalposts are always fun. Congrats to Mazzulla on doing what JB did last year when we were told it wasn't enough to qualify. Of course this year being the 60 win, top team in the East wasn't the right answer even though that's what we were told was required last year 🙄 Don't get me wrong, I'm actually happy JB didn't win it because then it would be even harder to fire him after a couple more failed playoff runs, but it's just another example of how ridiculous these awards are and how important media bias/narrative is. I'm sure JB feels like he got the award that mattered, the one from the other coaches - people who knows the job, not people like Kendrick Perkins who was going to vote for Mazzulla/Boston no matter what.
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Ausar Thompson Makes 1st Team All Defense
Betrayer replied to Deleterious's topic in Detroit Pistons
You really know these awards mean nothing when Kendrick Perkins gets a vote. That, combined with the games played minimum for awards, means it makes zero sense for this stuff to tied to player salaries in a cap league.- 9 replies
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- 2026
- ausar thompson
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(and 1 more)
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Offer him 28M (Jarrett Allen's contract) and if he wants more then his agent needs to find a team willing to do a sign and trade. Remember, you can't S&T the player once they sign an offer sheet. All you can do is match. So, you need to negotiate the S&T before the offer sheet gets signed if you want to go that route otherwise you're stuck matching or losing the player for nothing.
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Plenty of time to plan their funerals.
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And the Knicks offense is cruising because it only took Mike Brown 3 quarters of basketball to realize James Harden was on the court and you can attack him every time. JB couldn't figure that out in 7 games. I never thought I'd be saying Mike Brown is smarter than anyone, but here we are.
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Ausar Thompson Makes 1st Team All Defense
Betrayer replied to Deleterious's topic in Detroit Pistons
Whoever it is, they should be stripped of their votes for life.- 9 replies
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- 2026
- ausar thompson
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(and 1 more)
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The Pacers entire gimmick was speed. Run after misses, run after makes, get a shot up quick. Zubac is the opposite of that. I need to see him in that system before I buy it translating as well as a guy like Turner who can space the floor. Also, if you've seen the recent pictures of Haliburton...well, we're going to have to see about his conditioning. Siakam is Tobias' age, so he's not getting any younger. Mathurin is gone. They have a solid squad, but first in the East? I don't buy it.
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I'm sure the Pacers will be a playoff team with Carlisle at the helm, but Turner's offensive ability was a big part of their success. Also Haliburton has a long way to go to get back in shape. I wouldn't put them in a tier above the Pistons. Boston was already the #2 seed and got bounced in round 1. They were already in the playoffs, so no change there. Giannis coming back and going to Miami could add a new team to the playoff mix. It's not like the Pistons were the 7th seed, so we don't have to worry about a couple new playoff teams coming in and pushing us out the bottom. They'll be in the playoffs again and probably for the next several years as long as Cade and Ausar are here.
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I'm aligned with what Bryce said on Duren. The most he's comfortable with offering is around 28M. That's where I'm at as well. It's also what Allen makes and he outplayed Duren. Now, he also said he thinks they'll wind up paying more that that, which is probably also true (sadly). End of the day, I'm not going over 30M. If he wants more he needs to find a sign and trade. Of course, I expect that Sam is right and the team will sign him for somewhere between 35-40M because they feel like they have to.
