monsterpile wrote:FNG you can't say Mitchell is inefficient and ignore what he has been doing in the playoffs the last 2 years while also ignoring his ability to get to the line and convert which is not included in eFG.
Also if Russell is Donovan Mitchell we should keep him...at least till he becomes a Mitchell type that we can trade for a lot of value to all those GMs that don't get how These guys just aren't as valuable as other less sexy players.
Monster, I think I'm being misunderstood here...not surprising, it happens all the time with my gal too ;-) . My point is that I have a difficult time labeling as a star a very poor defending shooting guard if he also isn't an efficient scorer...in my value system a shooting guard has to be really good at at least one of those two things to be considered a star. And nobody would call Mitchell an especially efficient scorer, unless you also label Andrew Wiggins as being efficient. I hear your concern about eFG%, but Mitchell's TS% (which includes free throws) was 56.9% this past season...that places him in the lower half of the league by this measure, tied with former ROY Andrew Wiggins at 183rd in the league. And while I acknowledge Q's point that efficiency might be hurt if you are clearly the #1 option on your team, I see a lot of guys who are #1 options with much higher TS%'s. Nobody would argue that Donovan is any more of a first option than Zach Lavine or SGA, but they both rank in the top 10 in efficiency among SGs and far ahead of Donovan.
And I'm not certainly suggesting that DLO will ever be as good as Mitchell...I think we know what his ceiling is after 5 years in the league. My point was more of a "woe is me as a hapless T-Wolves fan". I recognize that Abe doesn't see them as similar players in any way, but I see similarities between the two in that they are both high-scoring albeit inefficient shooting guards who are known poor defenders, but still have max contracts. I find it very T-Wolfian that our max guy in this comparison is not only much worse than their guy, but that we also gave up a 1st round pick to get him! Like I said, I'm not feeling very optimistic about our local NBA team the more I watch these playoffs...these teams are at a completely different level from us.