Happens man, you don't realize how a bad start can affect a whole season as well. It can mess up with standings and the Number 1 seed.
$32,000,000. Someone explain to me how the Rockets come up with that much matching salary without giving up Amen, Sengun, Durant, Jabari, or Adams. Fred isn't accepting a trade costing him his bird rights. That $25m is dead money.
I don't know about that man. If you rank the top 10 and bottom 10 there's still insanely erratic results. I know since that new app has come out it's very commonplace to say "in 4 out of 5 advanced stats, xyz" because of that silly app but this doesn't work for defense no matter how many of the calculations agree unfortunately. Defensive stuff is just archaic compared to offensive. On offense we have things we're 99% certain about, there's absolutely nothing like that. It's also obviously just the nature of it, defense is far more dependent on the other 4 people on the floor with you than offense. On the Donovan thing, I think do a little more digging because I don't think you're familiar. He already called him out as a poor defender the previous season - and it was discussed a couple of times in between as well. So that was noteworthy across the Bulls community. Very much how we were shocked Jalen went from being a terrible defender to a passable one, he's done the exact same journey. It's fun to research about, worth it.
I think you're being very cynical on Fred thing. If they convinced him to do his rehab in Miami tomorrow, no one would be surprised and we'd have a good laugh about it. What on earth does he need bird rights for? He's never making more than the MLE again with or without bird rights. That's an old, short player who's stats declined suspiciously last season exactly when old players decline fast. I think he will prefer to start somewhere than come off the bench here. That guy is not going to be good enough to start on the kind of team we're going to have next season, the bar is just going to be too high. Question: why can't we trade Adams before the deadline?
If FVV wants to go to a place, he could accept his option which I think would cause his Bird rights to convey, but I appreciate that you are placing value on Bird rights. For him to want to go to a place, I expect they would likely need to be projected to be good next year. I just don't know if any team would be willing to give up someone Rockets would want if they are going to be good next season.
