Could Motiejunas and Jones both move out of the rotation?

That's true. But most of them are on large expiring contracts too.

 

This thread is like beating a dead horse & the horse turned into glue a long time ago.

 

So tiago splitter is a championship big? What about perkins 2 times? Tyson chandler,dirk,and who for the championship with dallas? I'll wait

 

Not necessarily.

With Howard, Harden, cap holds of Parsons/Beverley, and min roster slots, assuming a 62 million cap, you would have 15 million in cap space. Lets say you give it to Kevin Love, resign Parsons/Bev for ~market rate and are able to pick up the same vets you have now for the minimum.

You then have the following contracts:

Howard: 22.3m
Harden: 15.7m
Love: 15m
Parsons: 10m (new contract)
Beverley: 4m (new contract)
Canaan: 1m (minimum resign)
Garcia: 1.3m (vet minimum - current salary)
Casspi: 1m (vet minimum - current salary)
Brooks: 1m (vet minimum)

Thats nine players for about 72 million. Will be in the luxury tax? Yes. I think Les would go into the tax for that team to be honest.

An alternate plan would be to grab a less than max guy like Rondo, Dragic or Milsap for ~12m. In that scenario you could keep Jones as well.

 

Well said and totally agree 100%

 

Some of the Jones hate here is absolutely mind-boggling to me. He can't be a rotation player on a championship caliber team? Really?

Unless we're trading for a Love or Millsap type, Jones is our starting PF for the rest of the season. Get used to it. For better or worse, he's our guy unless something major happens.

Ersan Ilyasova
Mike Dunleavy
Brandon Bass
Channing Frye
Patrick Patterson

Whoever else? None of these players are starting over him.

I think we would all agree that some sort of acquisition for a veteran big is forthcoming at some point. All I'm saying is don't be surprised if when the dust settles, Jones is still on the first unit.

 

Out of curiousity I went and did a little research to see what you meant by Millsap being better and 22 than Jones. I pulled from their 2nd seasons and the stats seem to indicate otherwise. Jones stacks up extremely well across the board boasting a higher PER, and a minisicule edge in scoring, rebounds, and blocks per 36, a slightly higher offensive rating, identical defensive ratings, and a nearly identical WS/48. Millsap with the slight edge in assists and his total rebounding percentage is slightly higher by a single percentage point. All in all, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference between 22 year old Millsap and 22 year old Terrence Jones. And here is the kicker, after looking at birthdates, Millsap turned 23 during his 2nd season on Feb. 10th and Jones just turned 22 on Jan. 9th. Jones is in actually nearly a full year younger while putting up identical numbers.

http://www.basketball-reference.com...m=0&p1=millspa01&y1=2008&p2=joneste01&y2=2014

 

In Millsap's first season, he was significantly more efficient scorer (TS%), much better rebounder (oRB%, TRB%), and better defender than Jones is in his second. The stats don't do a good job of showing how well Millsap plays his man and rotated well. Defensive xRAPM is not out for this season but Millsap's first year was much better than Jones's first year. Jones still looks lost rotating, but he does make big plays that do help.

PER, WS/48, defensive rating stats not using +/- data tend to overate the effect of blocks. As Millsap wins defensive xRAPM significantly comparing their first seasons, and the other defensive ratings haven't changed much for Jones from his first year to second year, I suspect when defensive RAPM comes out after the season, it will verify that Millsap was still the better defender in his first season than Jones is in his second.

 

Interesting question.

Splitter, Asik, Perkins in their prime....all championship bigs. Know why? Do you see the difference between them and Jones??? They're not the same players. Splitter, Asik, Perkins are 5s that protect the paint and rim. Jones is not those guys. Not even close.

Secondly, Dirk and Chandler. That is 2 legit 7-footers. One 7-footer was a premier defender, rebounder, and finisher. The other 7-footer is a hall-of-famer. Jones is neither of those guys. The 3rd and 4th bigs on that team were Marion and Brendan Haywood. Once again Haywood backing up Chandler. Do you remember Haywood in his prime??? And Marion in his prime??? And those guys were the 3rd and 4th bigs, leebigez, the 3rd and 4th bigs. Jones is neither of those guys.

Look, Jones might be, I said MIGHT BE, as good as Marion some day, that is SOME DAY IN THE FUTURE. MIGHT POSSIBLY BE AS GOOD AS MARION SOME DAY IN THE FUTURE! That's a big might be. Shawn Marion, who is in decline is STILL far superior to TJones today.

So, when you are realistic about the Dallas Mavs championship front line....we're not even close. That's why I keep saying...we are 2 bigs away from a championship. We've got to have a big to backup Howard for 15 minutes or so a night, a legit 5 that can control the defensive paint and glass. And we've got to have an experienced top 15 power forward. We've got to have a PF that can hold his own against the top PFs in this league, that can space the floor and force their defender to have to stay with them and that can play some legit playoff style defense on the other end.

All you gotta do is look around the league at the teams with better records than us and look at their bigs. Look at them. Then come back and tell me we can beat them with Howard and TJones. And if you say we can....well...you're full of it.

 

The only thing I disagree with here is that you need a top flight PF in this league to contend which is wrong. Small ball has made it so you only need 1 big to close games now

 

There isn't a significant difference in the amount of blocks. His TS% from his first year basically indicates that he is a better free throw shooter and not much else as their efg% is identical. The rebounding percentage he produced his rookie year was a career high in a career low amount of minutes. I wouldn't put so much stock into it. His career percentage is nearly 2.5 points below that. His defensive RAPM was only .8 and although Jones was in the negative last year as a rookie, he didn't play very much either. It's hard to use Jones' stats from last year as any kind of indicator for anything I would think. 19 games total at 14.5 minutes per? T. Jones' +/-was also negative last year and is positive this year. I would expect his RAPM to also improve as well. I would have to say that Millsap's court awareness was better on the defensive end of the court. I'm just saying that the gap between the two players at similar ages may not be as wide as you think. I wouldn't be totally shocked if T. Jones produced something close to a .8 defensive RAPM this year. After being negative along with every other PF on the roster last year, Jones has a higher +/- right now than Parsons had last year. He is improving.

 

I didn't say you needed a top flight PF to close games. I said you need a 3 big man rotation to win championships. You need a center (Dwight). You need a quality backup 5. And you need a quality 4 that can offset 4s like Love, LaMarcus, Blake, Zach, Melo, David West, Dirk, Bosh, Duncan, Ibaka, Millsap, etc., who cannot be defended with their faceup/high post games effectively by Dwight or the vast majority of 5's in the league. Nor can they be defended by smalls effectively.

Sure, you can still go small to close games. No problem. But you can't play small for 48 minutes over the course of the PLAYOFF SEASON. You will get eaten alive in the playoffs trying to do that. Championship teams have to have 3 quality bigs with mixed skill sets.

 

I would be shocked if T. Jones got close to 0.8 defensive xRAPM. Defensive xRAPM uses prior season data to more accurately judge a player's performance. Millsap, a person that had very good improvements in his first three years in defensive xRAPM, only improved by about 0.8-1 points in defensive xRAPM per year.

I just don't see how a player gets above a 0 in defensive xRAPM when his team plays significantly worse defensively with him on the court despite him playing heavy minutes with one of the best defensive players. Much less get close to 0.8 following a season that he got a -1.5 defensive xRAPM.

While I think the Millsap is only slightly better offensively at that age than Jones, I think you are really underestimating how good a defender Millsap was out of the door.

 

This thread continues to get sillier and sillier.

Terrance Jones just outscored Anthony Davis and Donatas Motiejunas was the only competent player coming off the bench tonight. Both were HUGE in coming back and winning this game.

 

This.

T-Jones has solidified his position among starts PFs of the league. He is a starting calibre power forward.

DMo has been pretty good as a backup PF/C as well.

 

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>HOU doesn't win if not for TJones &amp; D-Mo. TJ had career high 25pts &amp; career high tying 6 blocks. D-Mo was the ONLY reserve to score, had 10</p>&mdash; Craig Ackerman (@ca_rockets) <a href="https://twitter.com/ca_rockets/statuses/423664925056040960">January 16, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

Jopa, why don't you go ahead and admit that you were wrong about TJones? Dude is a near double-double machine with a knack for timely plays and he can't start for a contender? Hey, I was wrong about him and I admitted and feel better for it. :grin:

 

Jones will only get better and better, if he gets a midrange shot whoa!!! he hustles so much on the boards, plays great D & hes learning when to put the ball on the floor and attack. At first he was doing it too much like a pg. If he keeps this up we could have a major steal with him ! almost like a Davis ???

 

Congrats to D. Mo...just when I was about ready to write this guy off he starts to look like an actual NBA player again. I hope he can build on this. No matter how many minutes he gets, he needs to prove he belongs within those minutes in order to earn more and he wasn't doing that earlier in the year. The Memphis game he did and he had a few positive moments in the Atlanta game. I was proud of what he did tonight. With Howard in foul trouble and Casspi physically overmatched, we needed another big body and he came through.

 

Woah woah slow down. Jones is nothing like Davis.

Davis WILL BE a top3 player in few years. A superstar and most likely a hall of famer when it's all said and done.

T-Jones... Can be a pretty good starting PF.