Funny, I was thinking of nearly the opposite: Trade Vonleh if he has value. Let Davis walk. Let PatC walk, unless he'll re-sign for supercheap. Re-sign Bazz for like $3.5 mil/year. i.e. use contracts to lower cap.
This thread is premature. No way we can expect to contend with our current roster. We're still 2 starters short of a starting lineup.
Yeah, I think you can also point to Vonleh starting 97 games for us before turning 22, and Harkless starting 83 games for us before 24. I think Stotts has been unusually generous in giving younger guys big minutes, often with limited reason to do so, except that he hopes in the long run those guys will eventually be worth it. He's not a Mike Dunleavy or McMillan who always favored the vets--if we had one of those coaches right now I think there'd be a lot more concern on my part. (Props to our owner and GM for giving him the space to do it.) That's one of the main reasons I'm projecting big minutes for our two rookies--he's invested a lot of time already on our other youngsters. He pretty much knows what he has with everybody else. I think he'll see things pretty immediately in Collins (defense, shooting, height) and Swanigan (rebounding, shooting) that are going to vault those guys to the top of the "experiment" pile. Both of those guys have at least two dimensions, unlike, one dimensional guys like Crabbe (threes) and Davis (rebounding) or non-dimensional guys like Leonard and Vonleh. Side note--I had to pause a minute over describing Vonleh as non-dimensional. But yeah, is there really anything that he does that's above average among NBA players?
I believe I read that he ended up being in the Top-10 in rpm among PFs in the league. For a guy that didn't get a play run for him all season long, I'm not sure what else I expect from him. He is already one of the best perimeter defenders for a 'big' on the roster and one of the better ones in the league.
The thing if we don't make any moves then the players we got have to get better. I already see players in the gym trying to get better that all I can ask for as fan. Is it going good enough who knows every season is different that why I laugh when people project how the season going to be. No one can project who going to get hurt and they can't project the teams that did make trades how that going to work out. I trade for Nurk work out great. But Boston they got Hayward and Minnesota got Bulter and OKC got George on paper they should be better. But no really knows how the chemistry going to click on those teams. But we kind knows how our chemistry is our team something we got in our favor. But the start of it for us and the younger players is Saturday.
Hmm, that doesn't appear to be the case. It looks like he finished #75 among power forwards (out of 83): http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/rpm/_/page/2/sort/RPM/position/6 Goes to show how bad Ed Davis' season was--he finished behind Vonleh at #77. Sandwiched between them: one-time Olshey target Spencer Hawes. Vonleh does move up to #32 if you go just by DRPM. Still not good, but no longer putrid.
That's Real Plus Minus, not Rebounds Per Minute. Per 48 minutes, he was 32nd. http://www.espn.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/rebounds/sort/avg48Rebounds That's pretty mediocre, when you consider he was playing limited minutes and so could go all-out a lot more than guys higher up the list.
"One of our best perimeter defenders for a 'big' on our roster." Meyers Leonard last year was one of our best perimeter defenders too, if you take into account insanely hot girlfriends. If you qualify things enough everyone can top a list. Here's the vote totals for All-NBA Defensive team. But you don't really need to click the link to know Vonleh didn't get a single vote, do you? I didn't. I would've laughed if somebody had voted for him. Maybe not as hard as Damian Lillard actually getting a vote, but pretty hard.
I thought TBPup was talking about Real Plum Minus, heh. That's what I'm used to RPM meaning--I didn't think of rebounds per minute.
Cut Aminu/Davis out of the rotation - neither are worthy of meaningful minutes. Situational minutes, but not regular rotation minutes.
Harkless doesn't require the ball in his hands like Turner does. He plays MUCH better off the ball, which is exactly what we need with Dame/CJ/Nurk controlling the ball 90% of the time.
As for PF, I'd just roll Collins out there from the beginning as some of you guys mentioned. Neil talks of him with such confidence like he did with Dame and CJ. It's not like we have a top PF in front of him as is.
Works for me. Collins is used to coming off the bench and excelled at it. Noah is used to starting and then barely seeing the court after that. That lets him play all out at the beginning of thee game, knowing that if he picks up a couple quick fouls, it doesn't really matter. Terry isn't counting on him being around for the 4th quarter anyway. They're both young guys. Let them start this season in the same roles they played last season. BNM
In watching more of the first game of the summer league, I figured it out! Unless a trade is made by the end of the month, PatC will be a blazer next year. In summer league, they're putting him in a position to fail (he's playing PG much of the time). The only reason to do that is if his position on the teach is secure. There have been several coach comments in support of Pat.
So right now this is my guess on our rotation going into training camp Starters Dame CJ Harkless Vonleh Nurkic Second unit CJ Connaughton Turner Aminu Davis I think Goodwin will surprise. Connaughton has an opportunity but Goodwin should be in the mix. Wilcox is another one. He might be the best shooter of the bunch. His contract gives the team flexibility though. I also think Swanigan has a chance at winning the PF job. At the very least he will push Vonleh. I wouldn't count out Collins either. His defense should make him a threat for minutes early. Still feel like there will be a trade soon. A lot of question marks and doesn't feel like we got much better. If this is our squad, we're going to be relying on someone making an unexpected jump (either one of the rookies, connaughton, Goodwin, or Wilcox.)
Not sure why people think we need a consolidation trade because we have too many good players. We still need 14-15 players on the roster. Are you suggesting we need more bad players on the roster? And if we do that, we're screwed when there are injuries.
Dame/Goodwin/CJ/Napier CJ/Dame/Goodwin/Patty C ET/Harkless/Layman Caleb/Leonard/Aminu/Vonleh Nurk/Collins/Vonleh/EdDavis
Goodwin is not a PG Leonard is a C Vonleh is not a C Davis is not behind Collins I'm sure there are other issues, but those are the most egregious to me.
