This guy has played thousands of minutes more than Trevor Ariza despite being the same age and sitting all of last year. Thibs ran those legs into dust. With Tucker/Melo/Ennis and SF Harden, Luol Deng would never crack our rotation.
The whole Lakers situation with him was weird, he basically sat out a whole season while healthy, made no sense. Even if you don't have him in your future plans, he couldn't get garbage time minutes?
I'd guess the idea would be that he at least has a chance to fight for minutes at the forward positions. Carmelo and Tucker will get the primary minutes there, but after them, there's Ennis and Green, he can certainly try to prove that he deserves minutes over one of those guys, or maybe next to. The forward rotation could be Carmelo / Tucker / Ennis / Deng and Green is used more situationally, but who knows, technically he should still be a useful NBA player, but I don't even see him in summer runs or anything. IIRC he has bulked up to be more of a PF, and technically he should be good in that role, but who really knows, very weird situation with him. This is basically the only game play footage of Deng that is recent: ...and it is a pickup-ish type game
Even with all his wear and tear, Luol Deng can still beat out scrubs like Marqueso, Bruno and Melo for minutes.
It is hard to know what Deng has in the tank. Deng had good numbers when he played for Miami and when he signed his contract with the Lakers. (Another one of those inflated value contracts of the Ryan Anderson mold from a couple of years ago.) However, immediately after Deng signed his contract with the Lakers, they decided to go on a youth movement. He didn't play as much as he was expected to play in his first year in LA and didn't play at all last year. So the situation in LA could possibly partially explain his poor numbers when he was in LA. Deng does have a lot of miles on his body and much more so than other guys his age (33). This is because he played a lot of NBA playoff games, in international competitions as well as for the British national team. With that said, he is still relatively young (33) and hasn't played in a year and half. He is well rested and healthy. Deng may be washed up, but you have to believe that he is healthier than Brandan Wright as well as the fact that he has more in the tank than either Joe Johnson or Rodney Hilário (Nene). It can't hurt to sign Deng to a minimum contract as a backup to Clint Capela, especially since the league pays minimum contracts. Furthermore, we don't know what Marquese Chriss will give you and since Chriss is a knucklehead, we could use the veteran presence as well as the insurance policy in case of injuries.
here are some key stats from 2017: Games played = 56 3pt shooting = 30% Ortg = 101 Drtg = 113 TS = 47% BPM = -2.5 VORP = -.02 now take those stats, and keep him away from game action of any kind for 12 months after that. i don't expect taking a year off from playing in a game would make him any better than he was in the 2017 season. in fact there should be some major atrophy, which is a scary thought because those 2017 stats are plain terrible. i mean, do i know him or his trainer personally? nope. maybe he's been working out like a maniac for the past year and somehow got better without ever playing in a competitive game. hard to imagine, but its not impossible. i just think the most likely scenario is that he's gotten worse, which based on those 2017 stats means he's not really an nba player aside from providing some locker room leadership.
i can't argue with the fact that he's younger than joe lol but age doesn't tell the story. joe's stats from last year are very similar to deng's in 2017 (the last season deng played significant games/minutes). last year joe was pretty much done being an nba player... and so was deng in 2017. now remove deng from playing in any games in 2018... there is no way he got better. he was done in 2017, then he took a year of just playing in practice. i could be wrong, but i'm pretty confident in saying he won't reverse the decline.
Not sure what he has left in the tank, but at get min, if he can play good defense and hit open shots even 2pt shots in his case worth the money has the ideal size and has role player mind set that would fit well with the rest of the team.
if GS signs him bspn and the other imbeciles will cream themselves for a full week espousing how much he still has left in the tank and it's dubs forever ever
