I've been saying from the time the picks were acquired that they are a hot mess and that there's absolutely no reason we should help them out. These picks are likely mid to early lottery and are best used by either picking young talent or using them in a trade that actually brings back a player who moves the needle. I don't think Durant or Booker really move the needle. Stone needs to target the stars of the future, not the has been's of the past.
Booker is still a more than viable target but unsure if he is the best fit in Ime system. But I agree that Booker should not be the only target for Rockets FO.
Durant is a no no for me. I'd take Booker for the right price. He is a clear upgrade over Fred and Jalen. He's only 28. Barring injuries, he should have about 5 more years of his prime. In that time frame, we will have sorted out which of our young guys will stick, forming a Big 2 or Big 3 with Booker and some high end role players to contend. We need a good closer to compete with OKC and Cleveland.
Could we sign Kyrie and trade Tari, Reed, Brooks, + pick for KD Swapping FVV/Brooks for Kyrie/KD would be nice
Forgot Harden existed for a minute. I would sign Harden and trade for KD. Westbrook and Adams off the bench That’s championship formula
I agree that Durant is a big gamble, but if he is on the court he is absolutely a difference maker, especially if we retain all our good young players. Not saying I would definitely take the gamble, but if the price is right it reduceds the gamble and certainly would make us contenders next year.
TLDR: EPM and DARKO look similar but are fundamentally entirely different from each other. EPM is historic, looking at data to tell you how well a player is performing right now. DARKO is projection system for use in gambling. It is intentionally slower moving, skeptical of current measurements of value. DPM is designed to help you avoid making bad bets on tonight's game. The difficult thing is that adjusted plus minus metrics come far closer to the truth of value than what you can see in boxscores. But they're in their infancy. Baseball started effectively quantifying defense 20 years ago, and it's been mainstream for a long time. But when Dame and Jrue were traded, so much of the analysis, even the non-stupid stuff, took for granted that a star was being traded for a very good but obviously inferior non-star. And there's no huge public community of stats nerds in basketball like there was with all the people baseball people who grew up with Bill James and started thinking in terms of OBP instead of average in the 90s. Because of that public community of sabermetricians, a scientific consensus-style was inculcated. You had to put forward your stuff out front and defend it agains tons of nerd-powered critique, which accelerated the creation of trustworthy analytical tools. Because analytics started so late in basketball, and it had MLB success as a reason to take it seriously, it went internal/team-proprietary very quickly. So instead trusting a broad consensus of professionals, in the NBA it's, well, do you trust this stats guru over here or that guru over there? I can't defend my beliefs about these stats to you on paper; my belief is only based on having some stats people in my life whom I think are smart and explain things pretty well when I pester them with questions. But even then, they aren't subjected to enough scrutiny for me to fully trust them. (I will say, they think Eli Witus is very smart.) I only know one guy who makes analytics a full-time profession, for MLB, and he's trying to learn to like basketball enough to try his hand at NBA stats, because it's so backward he sees money for stats entrepreneurs. This is context for the difficulty with EPM and DARKO. They look very similar and are entirely different. DARKO doesn't look back, it projects forward. Looking back at what a player has done for the first 50 games, you can get a pretty good idea with EPM of how productive a player is right this minute. DARKO projects how good a player will be tomorrow, and it uses every game the guy has ever played to gauge it. I tend to find baseball stat comparisons easier; it's like if a player in June who has averaged around 30 homers a year is on pace for 50, any fan who knows the game knows it's not likely that he'll finish with 50. Most of the time people don't argue a guy has suddenly become a HOF slugger. It's easier for them to believe forward projecting stats that optimistically project he'll hit a personal best 38 homers. That's what DARKO shows you. It took much longer than other P/M metrics to say that SGA was great. I asked the creator about that, and he said, yeah, that's a feature, not a bug, as far as he's concerned. DARKO was skeptical because SGA had a long history of poor to mediocre defense—he was just one of those high steals low reliability defenders i.e., what Ime is trying to make sure Cam doesn't become. So DARKO is slower to accept real improvement as being real, but is broadly and ultimately more reliable. I can see this, watching Jabari. You have a game where he's shooting it with real arc, the adjusted release he's been developing, and suddenly, oh yeah, that's the guy we hoped for, a 40% high volume 3pt gunner. But twice that game and five times the next game he's shooting line drives again. He's teaching his body to do something new to change the form he's used for a decade, and he doesn't have it fully integrated yet. So I see legit improvement, change, and real hope for Jabari's future on offense (for the first time, this season) but DARKO is still, appropriately, plenty skeptical. This is why DARKO is better for gamblers. It's risk averse. It lends itself less to hopefulness than EPM. And this is also why I tend to filter DARKO with guys like Ben Taylor who supports his opinions with video, so you can more easily see if you agree with his analysis. The one significant problem I see with DARKO is the offense/defense splits. The over all plus/minus number is the most accurate of any projection system—wins the preseason wins projections contests—but parsing how much of that is value on defense and how much of it is offense can get wacky and sometimes obviously wrong, and more frequently with the star players—I guess because they are outliers so they're the most difficult to adjust for? For example, it says Jokic is the best player and has for a few years. It basically agrees on his value with other systems. But DARKO overrates his defense and underrates his offense. Meanwhile, it way overrates Tatum's offense and underrates his defense. My understanding is that the creator doesn't have time to deal with it and it's not a priority because it doesn't impact wins projections. Same reason the website looks like crap. It's a stat created as a hobby to be used for gambling, not arguments about who the best players are.
Actual EPM is historic looking. Expected EPM is a forward looking projection system. I don't gamble on basketball. I find being able to toggle between actual and forward looking EPM is very helpful as I'm more interested in watching basketball. I want to watch players who might be in a breakout (actual EPM spikes) and being able to use expected EPM to measure how real the spikes are along with watching.
I really don’t see much of a way for Minnesota or Phoenix to make a deal for Durant. The Heat have the players and draft capital to get something done. I think they might have as good an offer as we would be willing to give and Durant would be a good fit for them. If Phoenix is not going to move Booker, their picks are less valuable to them than rotation players.
I think the Mavs are a serious dark horse for KD in the offseason could end up with a roster of Kyrie Christie KD AD Lively
From what I remember about this game they should have been a lot more worried about Steph Curry, the greatest shooter of all time.
Don't forget that top 2 pick they are going to be gifted. Probably Flagg, unless he is real about staying in college another year.
