I was pissed when we didn't get Faried. I was also pissed when we passed on both DeJuan Blair and Paul Millsap multiple times. But the way Hickson is playing has helped me get over it. BNM
I'm not really pissed about passing on Faried (especially when they got Hickson). I get pissed when the Blazers pass on Chris Paul for Martell Webster.
After tonight's game, Hickson>Faried. Faried looks like a tweener to me and probably is about as good as he's going to be.
Faried got his ass kicked by Hickson tonight, and he's lucky he didn't have to deal with LMA and Hickson on the front line.
I wouldn't call it whining but it is time to move on. However if Hickson leaves this summer then you will keep hearing about this.
Thank you for actually addressing the actual Nolan Smith draft pick. The only other person that did so in this thread lumps Faried in as just another "hustle" player, so well, that opinion goes out the window.
I like Faried for a lot of things, but right now Hickson is more useful to us. Hickson's big weakness is defense (I get the impression he's a bit of a space cadet who misses rotations and stuff) but I think Faried is overrated as a defender, partly because he's small for his position. The Nuggets are the best team for Faried because a frantic pace masks Faried's weaknesses. But Hickson is just bigger and stronger and a better scorer, and right now we need scoring.
Points to ponder: * I don't know, but I bet Denver plays at a faster pace, which would help to pad Faried's stats. * Neither player gets many plays run for them, but I bet Hickson gets more, just because Faried gets effectively none. That's good and bad: good for JJ because you CAN run plays for him, good for Faried because he gets his points without you needing to. * Hickson's very low foul numbers makes you wonder why he plays comparatively few minutes. Obviously Stott doesn't trust him like he does our big 4. Defense is probably a lot to do with that. Also wild and boneheaded play. * Hickson has been asked to guard Cs. Can you imagine anyone asking Faried to do that? Hickson is one of those players where you wonder why he's bounced around, and why the Blazers wouldn't commit to him more than a year. My assumption is that he drives the coaches crazy with broken plays and missed assignments. Some of his tweets are very spacey. He's the forward version of Armon Johnson.
I was watching Faried last night, and the guy is super raw offensively. Not much of an offensive game to speak of.
Comparing Hickson to Armon Johnson is laughable. They gave him a one-year deal because they wanted to keep their options open with cap space. With how he's playing though, I hope they make him an offer during the season. Can they do that?
I think the reason he does not get more minutes when LMA is healthy is because he gets tired due to his "energy". That takes a toll. As far as bouncing around....Not sure what happened in Sac Town, but as for Cleveland maybe they thought Omri Caspri would pull in the Jewish fans to help fill the arena...........plus Caspri showed signs of being pretty good with Sacramento. maybe
Can we go over the cap to re-sign him? If so, I'd tell JJ, "We love you. We want to keep you here. But we also want to add to the team, deepen the bench. So we want to keep our cap space, bring players in, and then we'll re-sign you." Theoretically, they can negotiate a deal and sit on it until they have everything else taken care of (Just don't let anyone say the deal is locked up, because the NBA might bite down on you - see Juwan Howard signing with the Heat in 1996).
To retain the rights to sign him over our salary cap the NBA puts a cap hold on any room we have, so either we have significantly reduced cap space or we have to renounce his rights which means no going over the cap to resign him. If the cap space with all the holds is less than the MLE than we get the full MLE to sign free agents over the cap, if it's more than the MLE then we lose the MLE and can only sign free agents up to the cap.
