Minnesota Sports Forum

I dont think we can land okafor or noel with the 5th pick. I would love to but it is not happening. I have okafor going to the celtics for the 3rd pick at 80% chance of happening. Makes too much sense for both teams to make that deal. Sixers would want a pg (murray or dunn) and boston wanted okafor in the trade deadline and dont really need another guard. Unless bender blows them away then celtics will want okafor instead. Noel wont be moved.

WCS is being mentioned and I think he is a more realistic target then okafor or noel.

Collison for Rubio = Three run

STFU

worldK wrote:I dont think we can land okafor or noel with the 5th pick. I would love to but it is not happening. I have okafor going to the celtics for the 3rd pick at 80% chance of happening. Makes too much sense for both teams to make that deal. Sixers would want a pg (murray or dunn) and boston wanted okafor in the trade deadline and dont really need another guard. Unless bender blows them away then celtics will want okafor instead. Noel wont be moved.

WCS is being mentioned and I think he is a more realistic target then okafor or noel.

I am praying Boston trades for Okafor. That would be great news for us if Philly takes Dunn or Murray, giving us a shot at Bender or Hield.

bleedspeed177 wrote:I hope we sign the guy on the cheap with a team option for a second year that becomes the next Biyombo.

Yes, I agree with this. I would like the idea of signing Cole Aldrich. He is older than Biyombo, so he doesn't have as much potential but he has made nice progress in couple of last seasons but I still expect that he would be available with relatively cheap contract.

JasonIsDaMan wrote:Wow. This went off the rails fast. Forget the $20m per year for a second. How do we get "younger better Ben Wallace who is totally going to keep getting better" to start ahead Jonas Friggin' Valanciunas? And can we please have a bunch of posts about how the Raptors are run by a bunch of idiots who for some reason hired Dwayne Casey instead of Kurt Rambis? And maybe a few about how they totally had Johnny Flynn rated higher than Derozan? Thanking you in advance. And who knows? Maybe TOR signs Biyombo and MIN can "settle" for Valanciunas in a salary dump.

I never compared Wallace's PER to Biyomo's. I simply said that Biyombo's PER SPLIT (-.9) is very average. And I stand by that comment.

If a basketball team is good, it is because they played good basketball. You can play good basketball by either doing good things, or not letting your opponent do good things. You can't do neither of those things and still be good. Giving lots of money to a guy who really hasn't because you think he will is not bright. And simply saying that a move is not the least brightest doesn't then make it bright.

Can you win a champioship with Biyombo as your 3rd best post? Well, since TOR is 6 games away, I am going to say yes. Can you win with him as a starter? If you have 4 absolute studs surrounding him, I'm sure you can. But if you are paying him $20m, and you have to pay the others $25m, thats a $120m starting lineup for a team that doesn't even draw as well as The Wild. Is that really going to happen?

If you think that Casey would have to be idiot for not starting Biyombo ahead of Valenciunas if Biyombo is better, I guess you think also that Kerr was idiot since he was planning to start Lee ahead of Draymond Green until Lee was injured. Sometimes even good coaches find the best lineup somehow accidentally. I'm not necessarily saying that Biyombo is right now better than Valanciunas, but he is better fit for Toronto team and very important piece for them If they won't sign him, they will lose him for nothing. Since Valanciunas is also really good young center with pretty decent contract, they could get a lot in return if they would trade him. So I think Biyombo + what they would get in return if they would trade Valanciunas would be definitely better than having just Valanciunas.

If you don't believe that Biyombo is better fit than Valanciunas, go and check net rating for each player. Biyombo had slightly higher net rating over whole season (3.8 vs 3.0) but since he was new player in team it took a while to learn to play with his new teammates. So if check net rating from second half of the season, gap between Biyombo and Valanciunas is huge. (8.2 vs -0.4).

You didn't compare Wallace's PER to Biyombo but you acted like Biymbo's stat line that is pretty close to Wallace's line is just fluke. I understood that you value Ben Wallace a lot but not Biyombo and your reasoning for not valuing Biyombo is his PER splits. My comment was that if you use just PER splits for valuing players, also Ben Wallace would have looked pretty bad. So do you actually think that Ben Wallace too was average? PER in general favors high usage players and thus defensive studs like Wallace or Biyombo are vastly undervalued.

Toronto has done pretty well in post season in games that Valanciunas missed. I would argue that winning two games against Cleveland without Valanciunas means that they are legit contender even without him. I also think that Biyombo has been by far third most important player in those games after Lowty and DeRozan. So I would say that team with Biyombo as their third best player can be contender already now and since he is just 23 years old and has improved every season so far, it is very probable that he is even better in future.

JasonIsDaMan wrote:

Mikkeman wrote:

Why you would want Noah even tough his PER splits are pretty awful (-3.3) and it seems that his game is diminishing rapidly. Last year he still had -0.5 PER splits and year before that +5.9. It is not probable that he would be able to turn that trend. In top of that he is injury prone.

I would want him at the propper price, and I would chose Gasol over him.

"Prone" is a strong word. He has played 64 or more games in 7 of 9 seasons. Last year was a bad year, no argument. But he has a track record, so why would he not be able to "turn that trend"?

And why would you call me out and not the person who originally posted it? Did you agree until you found out I did?

Noah has also missed at least 15 games in 5 of 9 seasons. It is also very rare that big men that are over 30 year old that have had pretty bad injury history would suddenly stay healthy when they get even older. It is also rare that players who have had consecutive seasons with rapidly diminishing stats would bounce strongly back especially if player is already over 30 years old.

Cam nailed it, I responded to your post because you are using PER splits like they would be final truth whenever they support your argument but forgot them totally in case using it would make your proposal look bad.

I don't like PER splits at least as a single stat to determine players value because it is really flawed stat like almost any advanced stat if it is not looked really carefully. For example Bazz looks quite OK in PER split because he has high usage and thus quite high PER and more importantly because he guards every single time the worst offensive wing on the floor. So because he is typically matched against non-scoring wings it looks like he would be OK in defense. Wiggins for example looks from PER split point of view better as shooting guard than as small forward but real reason for numbers is that when he plays with Zach he typically guards opponents best wing but when he played with Prince, he often was guarding weaker wing so that he could save energy for offense. Also in general average PER for shooting guards is lower than average PER for small forwards, so even if he would be guarding player in corresponding position and keeping them in their average numbers, it would look like he did better job as shooting guard.

Another problem with looking PER split from defense point of view is that since it considers only the PER of the guy you are supposed to guard, it won't give any credit for good team defense. For example Paul Gasol plays horrible pick and roll defense that leaves guard difficult position to recover from pick. But since he stays with his man whom doesn't score, it is not visible in defensive PER. Same was true for Pek.

BTW. I would also want Wolves team to sign Paul Gasol but only if NBA season would be 8 games long and our team name would be Spain.

I'll add this about Noah being injury prone. The last 3-4 years in addition to whatever injuries that keep him out of the lineup it seems he is also playing through something pretty significant for 20-40 games a year. I used to compare him to Camby because both guys were absolute warriors willing to play though just about anything for their team. Playing through injuries is part of what I love about Noah but it's also a concern that he has had such a struggle for so many consecutive years. Camby was about to stay on the court for enough games and until his mid-30's was still a REALLYeffective player when he played. if Noah could do that well he would be worth a healthy chunk of money. The concern is that 2 seasons ago he was clearly less effective than his usual self and this year was a disaster. Do you bet he can overcome this to get back to being a guy that plays around 75-80ish% of a team's games being very effective when he plays or do you worry he is basically done as a really effective player? I'm worried about him being able to come back.

I would like us to go with players that will grow with this team. I want Towns/Wiggins/LaVine/Rubio to be the leaders of this team not some past 30 vet that will be done when we are contending.

If we can't land Okafor, Deng, or Noah as a free agent, and if Okafor or Noel are actually available for the #5 pick, it would be pretty tough to pass that up, even if Hield were on the board (and I think we could really use Hield's shooting).

Those two didn't pan out together in Philly because neither of them has any range on their shot. But both Towns and Dieng do. Noel would shore up our defense, which we need more than offense. But having a Towns and Okafor frontcourt with Dieng coming off the bench would give opposing defenses some serious problems.

Given the circumstances I mentioned, I'd do either trade. I'm guessing Philly would want to sweeten the deal with LaVine though, and that would make me turn it down.

bleedspeed177 wrote:I would like us to go with players that will grow with this team. I want Towns/Wiggins/LaVine/Rubio to be the leaders of this team not some past 30 vet that will be done when we are contending.

I think everyone agrees with your take, bleed...that those 4 guys are the ones who are going to our leaders in 3-4 years when we are contenders and need to grow with the team. But I think several of us think Zach can be a vital member of this young core with 28-30 minutes off the bench. Think Ginobili...that's the kind of 6-man value Zach can provide. Bringing in a vet for three years allows Zach to develop at a more reasonable pace.