The most obvious is Porter as 6th man. A Henderson-Green-Porter 3 man rotation at guard is a lot more fearsome than a 3 guard line up imo. Martin would be pissed if this happened too. Who is 6th man then, Christopher?
You don't put the best player on the team at the 1,2, and 3 as a 6th man, so no, it's not "obvious". If you had better players than KPJ, that's one thing, but you don't. Even if we give Henderson the benefit of the doubt and assume that he'd be better than KPJ... that's just one, you'd need two more before it became "obvious". Jalen clearly isn't better and KJ isn't even close. I mean, I get it, you want to force a nonsensical scenario because you're hoping that would lead to locker room problems and the Rockets would dump the player. It's not subtle. That's literally the only reason that absurd scenario keeps being brought up. There's no argument for it based on performance.
Guess you're a mind-reader now too? I think most of us are just assuming the front office will add a point guard one way or another because it makes too much sense not to do so. Whether that be James Harden, Scoot Henderson, or somebody else. And also don't think KPJ as a ball-dominant 6'4" guard fits as a small forward. Fairly simple, nothing nefarious about it.
Players are different, as are teams. KPJ is playing for a coach who is still learning and with a young group of players. Until he has shooters and a veteran presence around him, we won't know just how good he can be. I'm of the belief that if you put any other player in this situation, you would get similar results. LeBron has AD and they are struggling to make the Play-In, Curry has a plethora of talent and they are struggling too. You put LeBron on this team with inconsistent shooting and a bunch of inexperienced players and the first thing he'll ask for is a TRADE
Sorry, I just think your whole perspective is silly. If you can't know how good any player will be without putting them on a good team, then all of this discussion is completely pointless. Shut down the GARM. More importantly, the entire jobs of GMs, front office staff, scouts, analysts--all pointless. I think you can very much judge a player by how they play, both through statistics and through watching their game. If you're trying to say "basketball is a team sport", then sure. Nobody's disputing that. But individual play still matters and can still be assessed in a variety of ways. Since you used LeBron as an example, I will too. The season before they got him, they went 17-65. The season after that, his first season, they went 33-49 (about double the wins) despite having mostly the same players around him.
The most frustrating thing about KPJ is there's nothing he desperately needs to work on as far as skills/talent but he continues to make poor choices. He's young (just a year or two older than our core) and I just think he's a guy who needs a couple more years to mature than the average player and right now he needs to be on a disciplined playoff team in order to develop further. It's just choices. It's mental. It's experience based. The practical things like shots/minutes are not improving him much. He is being developed the wrong way that's why his ass/to was static for so long. If we keep him too long, like Christian Wood the habits will seep in. Better be careful. The solution is not more shots and minutes. The solution is for him to experience and be part of a well run NBA team. He has never had that, not even in Cleveland I don't think. Before that his life was very tough from what I've read. It just happens to be time to learn how to play winning basketball and there are no other obstacles in the way but the head honcho himself. Most important thing is from next season onwards, his development should not bottleneck or systemically affect the offense. Same with his defense, he only starts if he plays defense next season. I'm very confident these things will be attempted, I just wonder how he will respond to a tighter leash on his game. I would give him a C- in general, but as far as seeing a bright future for him I am less excited about it than I was early in the season. I hope he develops quietly into a good role player. I hope something or someone gets through to him and he understand that he should be worth more than $15m per season with a team option on all but first season.
KPJ's learned to take a step back and feed the hot hand a lot better recently. He's a talented young man who's not afraid of big moments and sometimes thrives in them. And yet, every time I start liking his game again--like I did when he saved that disgusting WOW season--he does something that pisses me off. Whether it's the body language, or not giving the ball to a player in better position, or taking too long to make a decision, I feel like for some reason that his faults are magnified. Maybe it's because he's been on the team the longest, or maybe it's because he's being thrust into the lead guard role, but I do think it's very easy to blame a lot of the problems of our team on him, even when objectively it is not so. I still question his fit with Jalen, Alpi, and Jabari, but he's been doing his best, I think. And that means something.
Christopher could give you 18 ppg on a bottom team given more minutes, shots. Maybe not the 6 rbs and 6 assists.
bro nobody gives a damn what KMJ has to say. KMJ and Tate should be traded and their minutes should go to Tari and a veteran 3&D shooter We have 60 million we can spend on a 6th man and bench pieces Give KPJ the opportunity to start at SF and just have him slide to pg/sg after the first substitution of the game It would be nice if to at least have our best shooters in KPJ & Bari on the wing starting if KPJ isn’t the point guard
It's just that transparent. When you are hell bent on putting the best performing non center on the team on the bench, it's clear you have no basketball reason to do so. It would be better if you just admitted that you don't like the kid and you dont care how good he is, you just want him off the team. At least that would be honest.
You think that if we replaced KPJ with Marcus Smart for example, we wouldn't improve? I can't believe that.
It's not silly, just bringing a different analysis to a thoughtless analogy by you. You were assessing KPJ based upon statistics and what I'm saying you can not look just a player's stats to tell you if that player is good or not when he's playing with a team full of rookies and 1st and 2nd year players. Jabari is just now rounding into the player we all thought he was, KPJ and Sengun are just now learning to play together, Green is up and down, Tate and KJM still struggle to hit the open 3pt shot. So, I'm saying the other players affect his turnovers and assist numbers. And as far as LeBron, that was an example. I'm not saying KPJ is LeBron, just that no player could make the playoffs with a subpar roster.
No, we would be worst. Smart is not the scorer KPJ is. Smart is more of a glue guy. To.me, he's a better Tate, you can't compare Smart and KPJ
I think the crazy thing is that people actually think Scoot is gonna be better than KPJ day one lol. I’ve been watching him for a while now and he’s not a can’t miss prospect at all.
We'd be ok losing the 5-10 points from KPJ (and Smart could probably get some more points here too). Defense is half of all the possessions, we would suddenly have someone who would literally shave a bunch of points off the opponent. A lot compared to KPJ. Add to that the benefit of the ball moving a lot and Smart being perfect for getting the ball to Sengun. Smart is a flat out better player than KPJ. Are you really insinuating otherwise? That right now Marcus Smart who has a DPOY on his resume and several all defense teams and Finals experience isn't better than KPJ because of 5-10 points? That's honestly really shocking. No GM on earth would give you Marcus Smart for Kevin Porter Jr and it's because he would have a greater positive impact on winning a game than Kevin Porter Jr. It's not more complicated than that.
