Zach Lowe has DFox over Alperen Sengün as the last AS berth

And rightfully so

 

If it wasn’t debatable, you would have been able to, you know, debate it, not make overarching statements.

 

If it's not debatable, then he would have been able to debate it?

 

As in, there would have been incontrovertible evidence, not just declarations.

 

may have to put certain clutchfans on a self-harm watch tonight if things don't go their way

 

I really don’t care if he makes it or not. He’ll end up making plenty.

 

Sengunians logging in to clucthfans and read the latest threads, then this comes up....

 

Sengun is a big man, he should be grabbing way more rebounds than Fox and any guard in the league in general…don’t see why him grabbing way more boards matters

Sengun takes primarily baby hooks and shots in the paint, I would hope he’s more efficient than Fox as well

Rockets are the 7th ranked defense while the Kings are 17th…pretty hard to be on a good defensive team and have a terrible defensive rating hence why Sengun has a lower defensive rating than the likes of Kawhi and Paul George too and Jalen Green’s defensive rating is basically the same as theirs

I see no debate for Sengun being better than Fox right now…Fox is coming off a superb playoff debut and is the best player on the 5th seed in the West

 

The league is crazy..... no one is talking about it, but Sabonis is averaging 20/13/8 while shooting 62% from the floor and 45% from 3

 

I could turn this all around.

Fox is a PG. Why is he averaging the same number of assists as Sengun, a center?

The idea that centers have a TS% advantage is antiquated with the 3 point shot revolution. The TS% leaders list is full of guards.

The Kings are a mediocre defense in part because he is a mediocre defender.

Perhaps this is where we differ, but I just don't value small, offense-only PGs like Fox, especially when they are fairly inefficient.

Booker, the other hand, is certainly undebatable IMO. Unlike Fox, he is very efficient (.62 TS%), averaged assists that I would expect from a playmaking guard (7+), and is scoring more (28 points). That is "undebatable." Fox v. Sengun, in my opinion, is debatable, and if I'm forming a team, I'm taking Sengun over Fox every time.

 

Frankly, I think Sabonis is more deserving at the moment than Fox. I would have no qualms with Sabonis making it over Sengun.

 

I'd have PG over Harden. I prefer EPM by a lot over WS, BPM, and VORP. The Clippers are 8.5 games better than the Lakers and are pretty similar teams in the they have most of their value tied up in stars and get very little from their non-stars. The Clippers just have 3 stars instead of 2. The Clippers non-stars are a little better than the Lakers non-stars, but not by much. I'd guess that would put George worth about 8.5 wins assuming the stars not counting George and non-stars on the Clippers and Lakers cancel.

EPM has Kawhi worth 8.3 wins, George 7.7, and Harden 6.6. Lebron and Davis are 8.8 and 8.1, respectively. For such a star- heavy team with that many wins, I have a hard time seeing LAC not having two shoe-in All-Stars. Even if you want to say Harden is better than George, Harden should then be a shoe-in instead of George for everyone except the most hardcore Zubac lovers. Kawhi, George, and Harden being worth at least 70% of the Clippers wins makes sense (at least it makes sense to me).

 

Pretty simple why. He has Sabonis, 1 of the best playmaking bigs in the league, on his team as well, and he’s not the most amazing playmaker in the world to begin with.

Steph is a PG, and he averages a mediocre amount of assists. So has Dame for most of his career. So has Jamal Murray. So what?

of the top 20 in TS%, 17 of them are big men…

of the top 50, vast majority of them are still big men…

Sengun is barely more efficient than Fox anyways. 27 ppg on 57.5% TS is more impressive than 22 ppg on 59% TS, especially when that 59% is on basically nothing but shots at the rim.

Is Sengun is supposed to be elite on defense? Individual defensive rating really doesn’t mean much to me, or are u gonna argue that Jalen Green is on the level of Kawhi and PG defensively?

ASG isn’t about who you’d take when forming a team…Sengun has no argument over Fox this season

 

I think it is unfair to compare Alperen with Sabonis. One of them is almost 28 years old, in his prime period, while Alperen will enter his prime period maybe 3-4 years later, maybe even later.

 

The old guys aren't retiring and many aren't showing much dropoff. Heck, Kawhi and George are healthy this year. Capela, Chris Paul, Lowry, Klay, Draymond have dropped off some, but I think the young guys that have improved a lot or just entered the league like Halliburton, Fox, Maxey, Sengun, Barnes, etc. greatly outweigh the talent that has been lost to age.

The gap between the Rockets and the play-in contending teams 3 seasons ago is much less than it it is currently between the gap for tanking teams this season and the play-in contending teams. Heck, I think Popovich was avoiding playing Wemby with Jones and Vassell to avoid winning a couple of games by accident early in the year before realizing he can actually play their best players together and still probably won't win 20 despite being a much better team than the Rockets fielded last year and the year before.