What is the core issue with this team?

Example: A healthy Butler and Dragrich? would be much more effective than the current stating back court. Im not saying go get those guys as dragic is old and injury prone.

 

This is the main issue. The league feels very short on star small forwards right now.

 

There were a few players that wanted him too.

 

Go get Butler and Ball.

 

That's why they are players and not GM's.

 

Wishing every coach to be "old school" makes you an old crank. There's a reason Thibs never lasts long at any place: the players either get sick of him or just all injured because he never plays any bench players. The reason Pops has lasted is that he's adapted. But also because nobody is going to fire Pops after what he's done for the franchise. But I don't think Pops would do better with this roster.

 

Let's see: we bitch about a mediocre team underperforming despite our star player, and you want to target the star player whose team has underperformed the most of any star player ever? The player whose team only ever won when they had Jimmy Butler, who trashed him on the way out the door?

 

Can pretty much guarantee you that both Melo and Kanter would never see a minute of non-garbage time minutes under Thib. Maybe our offense rating would tank (doubt it, there's enough evidence to show that Melo is actually a negative on that end), but our defense would be significantly better no matter who you replaced them with.

 

I just completely fail to understand how anyone could think this. Stotts isn't wonderful, but he's probably top 20% of NBA coaches. He's coached more wins out of weirdly unbalanced rosters than I would ever have predicted. It's funny: every game we lose, I'm disappointed, so clearly deep down I believed we could win it. But for the past 6 or 7 seasons I always look at our roster and think "there's no way we make the playoffs this year" and the team always outperforms my expectations.

 

Point of order - what if Dame is so good that he has been carrying this heaping pile of crap on his back into the playoffs every year? Why does Stotts get any credit when Dame is basically just going super ISO and willing us to wins, but he's injured now and can't do it?

 

Poor Stotts has had to pay the price for all those idiots creaming their jeans over Olshey's offseason, whose one really solid move was acquiring RoCo. And even that came at a cost of two first rounders, one of which could've been any of this bunch of really exciting rookies:
1 16 Isaiah Stewart PF/C United States Portland Trail Blazers (traded to Detroit via Houston)[a] Washington (Fr.)
1 17 Aleksej Pokuševski SF/PF Serbia Minnesota Timberwolves (from Brooklyn via Atlanta,[C] traded to Oklahoma City) Olympiacos (Greece)
1 19 Saddiq Bey SF United States Brooklyn Nets (from Philadelphia via L.A. Clippers,[D] traded to Detroit)[c] Villanova (So.)
1 20 Precious Achiuwa PF Nigeria Miami Heat Memphis (Fr.)
1 21 Tyrese Maxey PG United States Philadelphia 76ers (from Oklahoma City via Philadelphia and Orlando)[E][F][G] Kentucky (Fr.)
1 22 Zeke Nnaji PF/C United States Denver Nuggets (from Houston)[C] Arizona (Fr.)
1 25 Immanuel Quickley SG United States Oklahoma City Thunder (from Denver,[J] traded to New York) Kentucky (So.)
1 26 Payton Pritchard PG United States Boston Celtics Oregon (Sr.)
1 28 Jaden McDaniels SF United States Los Angeles Lakers (traded to Minnesota via Oklahoma City)[f] Washington (Fr.)
1 29 Malachi Flynn PG United States Toronto Raptors San Diego State (Jr.)
1 30 Desmond Bane SG United States Boston Celtics (from Milwaukee via Phoenix,[L] traded to Memphis)[g] TCU (Sr.)
2 34 Théo Maledon PG France Philadelphia 76ers (from Atlanta)[O] ASVEL Villerbaunne (France)
2 35 Xavier Tillman PF United States Sacramento Kings (from Detroit via Phoenix,[P] traded to Memphis) Michigan State (Jr

 

Do we really need more rookies? You know Stotts won't play them, right?

 

Currently - there's none.
However, there have been opportunities in the past... PG13 & Jimmy Butler come to mind. However, rumors have always been that Olshey indicated that CJ was 'off limits'

This off-season, I was advocating for a CJ <-> Julius Randle + '21 pick trade.... but that ship has sailed as well.

 

Just like his loyalty to [name every player Dame has been close to who got dumped unceremoniously, from Will Barton on]?

 

What if it's Anfernee?

 

Was referring to the post. Having Stotts as a coach is like having constantly drunk boss at work. Any coach that is not constantly drunk will do. Don't have to be Tib or Pop.

 

What about Anfernee? He would never play either. (Nor should he)

 

I'm sure you're right, but Thibs also has a reputation for running players into the ground. That, though, leads us back to the point that this roster leads to a lot of no-win choices. Sure, you could excise two players from your rotation which leaves you with virtually no bench at all (Jones might just about be it--Thibs probably wouldn't be that interested in Little, as he's famous for not playing young players, and Simons is also not his type of player).

I don't like Melo at all, and I'm not that enamored of Kanter, but this roster really isn't set up to simply not play them. I'd like to see a roster that makes sense before I worry too much about whether a coach is maximizing a broken roster.

 

I think this is a very good point.

It's also why it's important to have players on team friendly deals and have as many draft picks as possible. Unfortunately, CJ isn't on a team friendly deal (discount required) and we've traded away 4 1st round picks for Collins & Cov. No way we could turn around a trade those two back for 4 1st round picks, so we went backwards in value there.

Our highly desired assests are getting less and less, not greater and greater. Puts us at a major disadvantage trying to obtain an all-star forward.