I hope we keep Thabeet as a work in progress type of player. The guy looks athletic and is 7'3. Surely they can make some sort of defensive presence off of the bench with him??
I'v always looked at him like Roy Hibbert. A center with good size and athleticism but uncoordinated and needs to put on weight. He needs someone to constantly work with him and bring out a drive in him. He is going to need a lot of work and still might not succeed. I'd give him a 3 year 6 to 7 mill deal and attempt to hire a big man coach to constantly work with him.
You can see that unco-ordination with his fouls, and yet, he was a defensive juggernaut at college. Perhaps like Babbit initially, he still has a bit of deer in headlights adjusting to NBA level play, and needs to find his moxy?
A lot of it is that they let you be a lot more physical in college and your not dealing with players who are at the peek of there profession.
He's worthless. Not smart enough to play in the NBA (and that's somethin'). Case in point; he was the #2 draft pick and failed to put any work/effort into his craft whatsoever.
I fell asleep after the 3rd quarter, but I did like what I saw in Thabeet. He did draw a lot of fouls, but that's common for guys who haven't played a lot of NBA minutes. He reminds me of Asik as a rookie. You can play the guy as a backup C, but you have to have a coach that will coach him (and the rest of the team) during games. You can hear Thibodeau screaming at Asik and the other players during games, especially on defense. Maybe Thabeet has a decent ceiling on the offensive end as well. His real problem was being drafted #2 as a project. He is a rookie scale contract that eats a bunch of cap space. And there is a lot of expectations, even for a project, out of a #2 pick.
A lot of people thought Joel Przybilla was worthless until he signed here. He had a lot of problems with fouls as well. If the guy could be retained cheaply, I'd keep him around.
I think there's something to salvage. We should play him as much as possible the rest of the season, it should give him some confidence and if he sucks, well then maybe we increase our draft position. In the offseason sign him to the cheapest contract we can for maybe 2-3 yrs and hire an offensive lineman nutrition specialist to beef the dude up and send a guy like bayno to work with him every day. By the start of next season hopefully we have a beefed up 7'3 center with a better work ethic and some confidence. Realistically, he probably won't pan out, but he's not going to eat up a ton of cap space and even if there is a small chance we can turn his potential into a legit NBA starting center I don't see why the organization wouldn't take that chance. It's not like we have an abundance of 7'3 athletic centers to fill in for him. And there really isn't much of an opportunity lost by doing this. Is this really that bad of an idea to you guys? We've wasted a lot more money on players that don't have his type of upside
