I didn’t refer to him as a former 1st round pick. I referred to him as a 1st round pick last year. While they are technically the same, we don’t know how Johnson will turn out, just like we don’t know how a first round pick this year will turn out. We got a first for that trade. It just happened to be last years first
I wanna draft Sharpe and Duren. Wouldn’t expect any second rounder if we keep our two picks, were we to get them of course. In free agency (outside of bringing Nurk and Ant back) I wanna sign Ingles and Jalen Smith. If someone like Collins or Siakam are available, I would scratch the Smith move and give up a lotto pick for either one. I don’t think it’ll be likely before next deadline though. Not interested in a lotto pick for Jerami. We’ll have one two way available. Pick one between Elleby and Hughes. Opens up a couple spots on the active roster.
There isn’t nearly enough Jalen Smith love. Great call However John Collins makes CJ McCollum look like a good defender. Not a great fit for Billups ball
7th in DRPM out of 82 tracked PF's. Ranks 36th in the NBA among all players and 19 of the guys ahead of him are C's. DRPM is a stat that favors C's. Collins was +2.28 last season as well. Collins has a d. rating that is +1.2 points better than his team and that's a good sign as well now, if you want to argue that DRPM has flaws as a stat, I'd tend to agree. Still, I think saying CJ is a better defender is loopy. Chauncey-ball will fail without any 2-way wings. If Portland landed Collins, he'd immediately become their best 2-way wing
Cronin's thoughts are most likely going to be worthless if we lose that Pelicans pick and can't tank well. I think if we end up with the 8th pick and the Pelicans pick ends up with Charlotte that Cronin will be taken out of the GM spot after the draft lottery and they'll have a replacement ready when they announce that Joe won't retain the interim GM position. Then I think all bets are off. Maybe that new GM will be a big Dame fan and sells all of our young talent to build around him but maybe they want to make a move towards the future and they'll trade Dame for a couple of young stars with all star potential or a young all star and some picks. I do think that the Vulcans' indifference in regards to how competitive we are could result in Joe having the interim tag removed even if all of his trade deadline moves end up being a clusterfuck. In that case I think if we only end up with a mid lotto selection that's ours to work with, Joe might still target both Grant and whoever he thinks is the most talented player that falls to us. He could do so by trading our second rounder to the Bulls or just sending them cash to take the conditions off of our first rounder for next year. Then he could draft someone like Murray, Duren or Sharpe, re-sign Ant and Nurk, pick up the option on Hart, decline the option on Bledsoe and then trade a couple of lightly protected future firsts for Jerami Grant who would use up the big TPE. We would be better next season. Dame, Ant, Hart, Grant, Nurk, Nas, Winslow, Duren, Keon would be better than what we had to begin this season, not in terms of talent but in terms of fit for Chauncey's philosophies. At the same time in this scenario we will have squandered the opportunity we had when we decided to trade four out of our seven best players. Honestly we'll have traded CJ, Norm, RoCo and Larry for Grant, a lot of very iffy future prospects, the ability to tank and appeasing the penny pinching desires of the Vulcans.
