Dame for Boogie? Would anyone dare?

The guy who wrote the article for Blazer's Edge is also dreaming. Nobody would trade Damian Lillard for that ass hat Cousins, either.

Based purely on the title of this thread, I deduced it was supposed to be a thread about ridiculous trade proposals that would never, ever happen in real life.

BNM

 

And yet, we're looking up at Sacto in the standings despite Dame having a better supporting cast than Cousins.

 

Are you sure about that? I'm not, not when you consider both sides of the ball.

Compare the DRtg and DBPM for their 2-10 to our 2-10 and it's not even close. SAC is not a good defensive team but they are still significantly better that POR. They have a bunch of guys who are average to slightly above average defenders. We have a bunch of guys who are way below average defensively. Anyway you slice it, any stat you want to use, we're the worst defensiveness team in the league. Everybody is better than us. Depending on what stats you use, SAC is in the 20 - 22 range defensively. Again not great, but still way better than us. Defensive advantage Boogie's teammates.

Offensively, both players have two teammates scoring more than 12 ppg. We have C.J. (22.0 ppg) and Harkless (12.2 ppg) and they have Gay (18.6 ppg and Collison (12.1 ppg). I'll concede that C.J. is a better scorer than Gay, but in terms of total production they are close.

If you just look at ppg, it apears our 4-6 payers are better than their's, but then you need to look at minutes played. SAC only plays one other player besides Boogie more than 30 MPG (Gay) and only 3 more more than 24 MPG. Dame has two teammates averaging more than 30 MPG and 4 more averaging more than 24 MPG. That may not seem significant but what it means is the scoring for SAC's 4-10 is much more balanced than POR's 4-10. We have three guys in our rotation that have FG% less than .400 (and one whose FG% is less than .300). They have one less than .400. If you look at scoring efficiency, Boogie's teammates are more efficient than Dame's

Look at it this way, in SAC's 2-10, they don't have a single player that averages less that 14 pts/100 possessions. We have 3 (Vonleh, Davis and Aminu). Scoring efficiency advantage Boogie's teammates.

In terms of overall production. SAC only has 3 players in their 2-10 rotation that have a PER less than 12.0. POR has 5. Overall production advantage Boogie's teammates.

So, Boogie's teammates are better defensively, score more efficiently and produce more that Lillard's teammates. If you think Lillard has a better supporting cast, you may be overrating our roster. We have a bunch of guys playing big minutes that flat out suck. We're a horrible defensive team and a weak rebounding team. Our best defender is shooting .295 FG%, .259 3FG% and .544 FT%. For any benefit Aminu gives us on defense, he kills us on offense.

At this point, if you consider both defense and offensive efficiency, it's really hard to make a case that Dame has better teammates than any other star in the league.

And yes, right now we are a game behind SAC in the standings, but our schedule in December has been brutal. That could change soon, and even if it doesn't, I still would absolutely not trade Damian Lillard straight up for DeMarcus Cousins. If you look beyond the current season, which isn't even half over, and look at their entire careers, Damain Lillard's resume is much more impressive.

BNM

 

Well yeah, our defense is historically bad. Of course everyone is going to have poor defensive statistics.

If you were to take a poll around the league, of who has the more desirable roster from 2 through 12, I doubt you'd find a single person who would pick the Kings. Probably not even Kings employees!

 

And does it not make sense that our defense is historically bad because our players suck at playing defense? I know most people like to blame Stotts, but when we had guys who could play defense (Rolo, Wes, Batum) we were in the top half of the league in defense and nowhere near historically bad.

I know it's harder to quantify defense than offense, but it's still 50% of the game and when your roster is historically bad at playing defense, it means you have historically bad talent in that half of the game.

Based on what? Your opinion?

Yeah, the Kings have a couple headcases in Cousins and and Barnes, but their payroll is $25 million less than ours right now and they have over $50 million less in guaranteed contracts next season than we do. They have tradeable assets in terms of both talent and expiring contracts.

Both rosters are broken, but theirs is a lot easier to fix than ours. Even with the cap going up again, we will be in luxury tax territory unless we shed salary, and that doesn't eve include resigning or replacing Plumlee. And, when you have to move players to shed salary, you usually end up getting less talent back than what you send out. Nobody wants to be the dumping ground for your bad contracts, unless the trade works in their favor talent wise.

While we're speculating about what other GMs think of our roster, exactly how many do you think would take on our current salary situation. We have the second highest payroll in the league, after CLE, and are sitting at 13-19 with a historically bad defense.

And, it gets even worse next year when C.J.'s max extension kicks in and we resign/replace Plumlee. Right now, not counting Plumlee, we have over $134 million in guaranteed contracts for next season. That's the highest in the league by over $9 million. And, if we don't dump some salary, we are over the LT threshold which will make it much harder to make future roster moves

You really think 30 out of 30 GMs would prefer that salary cap hell over the Kings and their $83 million in committed contracts? Really? The Kings will have a lot of flexibility to sign free agents, make trades and improve their roster. Unless Olshey can dump salary before the deadline, we're going to be watching SAC and others improve their rosters next summer while we're stuck with guys on huge contracts that aren't producing.

BNM

 

Is this the post where we finally fall into a Self-Hatred?! I will have to go to the Cleveland Browns Forum and find out if this is true......

 

I'm the last person here defending our defenders. I was one of the first calling for breaking up the Dame/CJ back court because of its redundancies, both good and bad. We have a handful of guys who would look like good defenders in a better system, though.

Could you have come up with a more rhetorical question?

Wait, so desirability of rosters in terms of impact on the court, which is what we were discussing, is now defined by move-ability of contracts?

 

I addressed the talent issue in my previous post. SAC 2 - 10 are better defensively, more efficient scorers and more productive overall.

My last response was to your claim that 30 out of 30 GMs would prefer our roster over SAC's. It's every GMs job to assemble the best roster possible. It's the GM's job to evaluate their current roster, decide who they want to keep and make moves to improve areas of weakness. So yeah, I think it's highly doubtful that 29 out of 29 other GM's would want to take on cleaning up Olshey's salary cap nightmare.

Of course, the salary cap issues wouldn't be a show stopper if we were actually:

a) winning
b) loaded with guys who were worth the contracts they've been given

This roster is full of holes that need to be fixed, but with so many players under-performing their contracts, the salary situation becomes a major road black to making the improvements that need to be made.

"The league previously projected the 2017-18 cap to hit $107 million but lowered that number to $102 million Thursday and lowered the luxury-tax-line projection from $127 million to $122 million."

So, we're already $32 million in guaranteed contracts over the projected cap and $12 million into luxury tax territory, and that doesn't include re-signing or replacing Plumlee.

SAC is nearly $20 million under the projected cap and $40 million under the luxury tax threshold. Their GM will have much more flexibility in improving their roster than ours will in improving ours.

BNM

 

Vlade: "Hello mister Neil Olshey my name is Vlade Divac from Sacramento Kings, my Cousins just beat your LillRad. My Cousins is so much better! So How about i give you my Cousins and you give me your LillRad?


Hello??? Hello?!
Answer me Neil Olshey! i'm Vlade Divac!"

 

Dame for ad.