2013 Offseason Assessment of Flip

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

David Lee isn't a difference maker? Jesus. I'm talking to a blind man who doesn't watch basketball. By the way, Lee was an All-Star this past season. Where have you been?

I can say they cancel out because both are good scorers on their respective teams and both are lacking in defense. Really, I was being generous saying they cancel out. Lee's a better player than Gallo so there's that. And I question how extreme Parker's injury was. For a guy with a leg injury, he played as he did throughout the whole season. I don't think his injury was as serious as the media made it out to be.

You can go off regular season series all you want to. Denver was 3-1 against a healthy OKC team last year and do you really think the Nuggets would beat them in a playoff series? Really? I highly, highly doubt that. Playoffs are different. You can't outrun a team in a seven game series like Denver does in the regular season.

[worldK]

Q12543 wrote:

If we sign AK and Martin like you suggest we dont get Brewer and dont get Bud. Then we have the problem of DWill and AK being redundant 3/4 players. Maybe the starting 5 is better (very close to call) for 1 season but the bench is significantly weakened and after this year I see major decline in AKs game.

Maelstrom -- We could have signed Martin and AK while still signing Budinger, assuming what I believe would have been a 3-year, $21 million deal for AK. Yes, we would have had to pass on Brewer, but I like the trade-off of AK over Brewer. AK has been a very good starter most of his career and was the best player on the Russian Olympic bronze team last year. Brewer is a perennial bench player -- a good one- but not in AK's league.

After adding Martin and re-signing Budinger, the Wolves most critical need was defense at the wing position. Brewer generates steals, but AK does that too, while also doing far more defensively, including blocking and changing shots, with his long armies and plus 200 pound frame.

I don't see AK and Derrick as redundant. AK defends at an elite level. That's the primary value he brings. If Derrick is an NBA caliber player (and the jury is still out on that), he's a scorer. As it turns out, our core rotation is already long on scorers and short on defenders -- Martin, Budinger, Love, Pek, JJ Barea. If Shabazz contributes at all this season, it will be as a scorer, not a defender. If anything, Derrick is redundant as to these guys, not AK

Lip.......I think flip mentioned in one of his funkadelic talks that he tried to get AK at 3 years 21 mill and was turned down. I believe AK was looking for the 3 year 30 mil deal Kahn promised (speculation but I believe it)

Thus, if we sign AK at 3 years 30mil we dont have enough to get Bud and Martin at 12 mil this year.

Regarding the redundancy of DWill and AK I only meant in terms of the position they play. Both can play the 3 and 4. I agree with you that one is better defensively and the other is a scorer. Because of the age of the 2 I would put these guys as pretty close in terms of contribution in the upcoming year. After that I see AK declining and DWill rising.

Mael, why would Kahn offer a three year deal now, when he wouldn't go past two seasons when he originally signed him and AK missed a quarter of the games last season? I find it ridiculous when I listen to all the things being attributed to Kahn after he has left. Barrerio actually stated that it was Kahn's fault for offering up a deal similar to what you stated and getting AK's hopes up. Agents don't work that way. They don't want to get the best deal for their client because they make the most money that way.

Flip has never said he made an offer to AK on the Funkadelic. Flip has stated on multiple occasions that he wouldn't go into specifics. AK's camp said they have never received an offer from Flip for any terms.

Mael, sjm is right. the 3yr 21m deal is only being discussed here at the forums as a possible or acceptable deal for ak. Flip never made that offer nor claim he did. You have to clear that up where you heard that from. In fact, flip has always been pretty non committal and seems indiffernt to ak everytime he talks about him. Makes you think that flip kind of force him out and hope he wont resign. Lets be straight, ak opting out was the reason why flip have cap space to spend for martin. Had ak opt in, we would have a hard time finding a starting caliber sg on the team. I dont believe that kahn promised ak 3yrs 30m. He would have just signed him for that amount last off season if he were willing to go that high.

I dont think it was a mutual strategy by both ak and flip for ak to opt out to free up cap space for us to sign martin and then later resigning with us. It was simply flip thinks we are better off without ak here long term and it would be easier for him to add that sg by ak opting out and freeing cap space for him. Flip has minimal interest to have ak here long term. The details of what really happened wont be known and we can only speculate but it looks more like ak just feeling unwanted and moving on.

[mjs34]

David Lee isn't a difference maker? Jesus. I'm talking to a blind man who doesn't watch basketball. By the way, Lee was an All-Star this past season. Where have you been?

I can say they cancel out because both are good scorers on their respective teams and both are lacking in defense. Really, I was being generous saying they cancel out. Lee's a better player than Gallo so there's that. And I question how extreme Parker's injury was. For a guy with a leg injury, he played as he did throughout the whole season. I don't think his injury was as serious as the media made it out to be.

You can go off regular season series all you want to. Denver was 3-1 against a healthy OKC team last year and do you really think the Nuggets would beat them in a playoff series? Really? I highly, highly doubt that. Playoffs are different. You can't outrun a team in a seven game series like Denver does in the regular season.

Lee has been putting up those same numbers and they mean very little in terms of wins/losses. Some guys get a lot of rebs because there aren't any other rebounders on the team.
Shouldn't Parker have been playing on a higher level since it was the PO's?? I guess the injury was bothering him.

I don't know if Denver would have beat OKC because they didn't play them, but certain teams just match up against some better than others. Might explain why Denver beat GS when both Lee, and Gallo were healthy. Maybe they match up better against GS in that situation. Minny always seems to play OKC tough even when we were a basement dweller.

The point is that you just don't know what will happen until they play, and so we will never know who would have won the Denver/GS series with both guys healthy.

[worldK]

Regarding the lee-gallo debate and the impact it had on the denver-gs series. It has been said that denver was not a good half court team, thats true but I'l add that Gallo
Was a big part of their half court sets. He was ty lawsons partner in the 2man pick and roll/pick and pop game thea denver uses in the half court and their go to play in crunch time. Gallo was also one of the players that can create offense in the half court set. So missing him was a big blow for them. Denver was a good team in the regular season and they miss the guy who is one of their top half court set guy.

Not saying that it would change the outcome of the series, but having lee and gallo healthy for that series will change the complexion of the series for sure.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

So you have basically made the whole loop around back to the very first point I made. We don't know if the Spurs would have beaten the Warriors with a healthy David Lee. Your last point can be attributed to this due to that type of thinking.

"you just don't know what will happen until they play, and so we will never know" -- The same thing I said to start all of this. Only difference was that I was talking about the SA/GS series and you're talking about DEN/GS. You're practically agreeing with me now even though you were set in stone that it didn't matter about David Lee in the Spurs/Warriors series.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

I didn't say Gallo wasn't an integral part of Denver's team. I recognize all of the things he brings to their game. There's the other side of that, though, being in how integral of a player David Lee is for the Warriors.

Would it really change the series? Neither were healthy for the series and GS won. Now they're both healthy and supposedly the outcome changes? Wouldn't that essentially mean that you're saying Gallo is a better player than Lee? I'm sorry, but I just can't see that to be true.

[mjs34]

Actually I made my statement in jest in response to you being so nonchalant about GS definitely beating Denver in either scenario. How can you say that and then be so sure that there could only be one outcome in the GS/Denver series?

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

Boy this thread has spiraled into a different topic. My apologies to the previous posters who were talking T'Wolves basketball and now this GS/DEN/SA debate is cluttering the thread. Still an interesting debate nonetheless.

[mjs34]

What you're missing Cam, is that whether Lee is on the floor or not, GS' offense really isn't going to change. Without gallo, Denver has to make significant changes to effectively run their offense, so it isn't about who the better player is (although I would take Gallo in a heartbeat), but more about how they fit with their team.

Lee went down in the fourth quarter of the first game, and GS lost that game. They went on to win the next 4 of 5 including the next three in a row, and that isn't easy to do if the player was an integral part of what they do offensively.

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

I think you're wrong on pretty much all accounts except that Gallo is important to the Nuggets. You're undervaluing David Lee's worth to the Warriors a bit. That's your opinion and you can believe whatever you'd like to. Lee's production speaks for itself, though.

And if I was a GM for a team, of course I'd take Gallo, but that has to do with age and potential. If I needed a player to win a game for me tomorrow, though, I'm taking David Lee and I'm not looking back.