So..... you're benchmark on switches is how well a center performs against the best team ever in the NBA?
@basketballholic I actually think you have a lot of good things to say when it comes to x's and o's about basketball. You'd be much more of an asset to this board if you stuck to analyzing game action and kept your opinions on roster moves to yourself.
Your opinion. I'm letting you in on future roster moves. You should appreciate it. You'll probably be crying in your soup when Capela is traded instead of looking forward to better days.
I'd venture to guess that if I put it to a poll it would weight heavily in favor of my opinion and that most here don't believe that you are "letting us in on future roster moves." I'd also guess similar results on whether anybody appreciates it. If I poll it and I'm right, will you stop?
So then essentially there are very big men in the league who meet your standards, certainly not Thon Maker, and we will have a very hard time getting them. I do want to win a championship and very much believe Capela could be the starting center on such a team. Considering our switching style, perhaps the wing is a better place to look.
Few that meet my standards???? Actually it's the opposite. There's an overabundance of big men available who can eat minutes and contribute just as much to winning as Capela does. And we can use Capela as an asset in trades to get back the more important pieces that contribute more to winning, stellar perimeter players who can switch, be disruptive defenders, can handle bigs in the paint defensively and can help create mismatches offensively.
Ah, now there's the issue. Maybe the guy you said won't be on a playoff team is better than you will ever give him credit for? Seems like statistically speaking, there aren't many bigs that contribute to winning like Capela does. Or we can build around the effective duo of Harden/CP3 and Capela.
I didn't say he wouldn't be on a playoff team. What I said is if you replace Dwight with him on the 2015-16 team they're a lottery team. Maybe he's not as good as you give him credit for. I mean he's the 3rd highest player on the team. Shouldn't he bff the third best player on the team? Is he? No, he's not. He's not even good enough to be the 4th best player on a winning team and were pricing that right now. He's not helping us win when we're playing the worst teams in the Association with our second best player out. We should be better than that. And even if you believe that its all the other players not being good enough......and you cling to the narrative that he's a very good player....then he still had to go to get other players good enough. We're not trading Harden, Paul, or Tucker. You know what's left. Capela, Gordon, Knight, and bit salaries. Knight has neutral to negative trade value. To get what we need to win we're gonna have to send out Gordon, Capela, picks, and maybe some of the youngsters. He's going to be traded. He needs to be traded. And in the end, we'll wind up much improved and closer to competing for a championship. We will trade him and build around the effective duo of Harden/Paul and Tucker.
Maker has proven nothing at the pro level while Capela is averaging 17/12/2 on 65% shooting. I am baffled that you act like these two players are interchangeable. You are creating a false dichotomy here. Why blame Capela's deal on us not paying Ariza $15 MM, when you have Knight, Nene, Chriss, and a host of other players not living up to their contract? Capela is producing far more than what $15 MM gets you on the open market. Would your perspective here change at all if @ch44 is correct and Ariza forces his way back to HOU via buyout? Huh? We would be just as likely to draft these two if we had an unproven Maker instead of Capela. You have no way of validating this and it really doesn't warrant any further discussion. You have no evidence that Ariza would agree to this deal. We had the taxpayer MLE to pay Luc if we wanted to and we didn't. It's intellectually dishonest to attribute that specifically to Capela's deal, as I mentioned above. Now let's get to the good stuff You're underselling Capela here. Not only is the efg% he allows elite, Capela regularly uses his length to contest shots he has no business getting. Most shot-blockers are somewhat neutralized when opponents drive into their chest, but Capela's absurd length allows him to still be a factor here, and the %s bear that out. Teams are not attacking Capela off the dribble on every possession. There are plenty of times where Capela is off-ball, but close enough to rotate and contest shots at the rim. And he is great in these instances. Agreed. AD and Draymond are not available. They are generational defenders and these are not just lying around. Ariza and Luc are better at shading off their man to help and recovering when needed, but provide little in terms of rim protection and rebounding. I guarantee you that if we ran a Tucker + two wings front court as our primary lineup, teams would relentlessly attack the rim and bully us on the boards even more than they do currently. It's great as a counter to other team's small lineups at times, but we simply do not have the personnel to run this out for 48 minutes without getting exposed at the rim and on the boards. AD may be the only big in the league that can hit the 3 at a rate that worries us AND guard Capela on the PnR. The play that sent the game to OT was a Capela lob. If Draymond or Thomas Bryant want to shoot threes, then we will take that all day. Brook Lopez can't jump over a quarter. Boogie was too slow before his tore his achilles. And even at 37 years old, Thon Maker hasn't shown enough to play more than spot minutes for the Bucks. My jests aside, I do agree that a big who can shoot would be a nice addition to our offense. Markieff would be a great rotation piece for our team, but I see him as a complement to Capela, as opposed to an outright replacement. Your concern about Capela switching onto a shooter and an opponent's big crashing the glass is a natural byproduct of our switch-heavy defense. We need to add forwards and wings to our rotation who won't get dominated on the glass by the Morri of the world. Our team as present is not equipped to do so. Earlier in this thread, it was cited that Capela only allows 0.78 PPP on isolations. That's pretty remarkable for a big and contradicts your point here. I wonder if this stat is available for the WCF last year - my hunch is that Capela fared similarly to the rest of our rotation on Curry/Durant isos. I appreciate the thorough response from you, but I still haven't seen enough statistically or on video to indicate that Capela is what is sinking our team. I agree that we need to add a few pieces to our rotation to be a true contender, like a backup guard (Knight hopefully), wing depth (Ariza buyout), and a solid 4/5 (Nene coming back from the dead, Markieff/Trevor Booker types), but I disagree that Capela's presence precludes us from making these small upgrades.
Didn't say they were interchangeable. I said Maker would have given us two more years of service and development on a rookie deal. I also said there are other centers that we could sign to eat minutes and finish pick and roll plays while having the same defensive affect as Capela. Maker and Capela are different players. Maker can shoot and has a developing handle. Capela doesn't. I seriously doubt if you've studied Makers game though since you're pointing to Capela's stat line like it's something special and difficult to duplicate. Dude, Mason Plumlee would duplicate Capela's numbers in our system. Knight and Chriss are the result of signing Ryan. Not Capela. Anderson deal was a bad contract. I said that at the time. That doesn't relate to Capela and what we could have traded or could trade Capela for. "Producing" is a meaningless word. A centers most important job is to positively impact his team's defense. That's not "production" that shows in a stat line. No, if we get Ariza back at the minimum it won't change my perspective. My comments about Capela had to do with possibilities of things we could do with that money rather than pay him. He sucked up our depth. And his contract combined with Paul's deal is suffocating us. We have no options to get substantially better now. We have to move him and picks. I would have rather moved him for another young center prospect and kept/signed players like Ariza/Luc/whoever. It would make trades easier right now. Most likely, Morey tried to move him during that 2016 draft and couldn't get it done. What I said was if we had traded Capela, we would have likely signed another vet center (beyond nene) and not have drafted 2 more centers in that draft. I stand by those remarks. Like I said....We could have used that money in a different way or been under the cap with all our picks, a young developing center and whoever we signed with our exceptions the last couple seasons. Would be a better set up thanwehat we currently have. My point remains. His defensive effect can be replicated with a minimum salary veteran. Legit point. But we've been at the top of the league the last two seasons in giving up layups/dunks anyways. And believe it or not that was with Capela playing. We give up MORE layups/dunks and free throws when he is on court than we do with solid defensive small ball lineups. Morey is correct. Shot blocking is severely overrated. Because it usually comes at the expense of defensive positioning. Defensive positioning is what cuts down on layups/dunks and free throws given up, not shot blocking. The best rim protection is quick feet and hands. Next best is absurd length. Capela has neither. He's an average sized big with average quickness for a big. Our small ball lineups last year with PJ, Luc, and Trevor manning the 4/5 spots were our best defensive units. Your guarantee isn't valid. Draymond destroys our PnR. We don't even try to run it against him. The only way to flip that script is to take him outside and make him defend a shooter. That was the reason for signing Anderson. It didn't work because Anderson couldn't defend anybody. But the concept is right. We will only be able to surpass the Warriors as long as Draymond plays there and is in his prime when we got a 5 that can shoot 3's and make Draymind faceguard him in the corner. We will NEVER beat the Warriors with a PnR big man that can't shoot playing 30 mpg against them. Won't happen. Agreed. Capela will have to go to get those pieces good enough to compete with the Warriors. We were better when he sat. We need more than small upgrades st this point. Wet need a major peeve at the 3. Wet need another peeve at the 5 that can switch defend, and either shot or handle like a guard. And then we need bench upgrades. With our salary cap there's no way we can get all that without using Capela in trade. These little dink upgrades aren't going to work. We need major pieces.
Guys I swear if you ignore him, there is: 1) No one on earth making this silly claim. 2) So many people showing that the opposite is true. Fans of other teams are clamoring for a Capela, and 2 teams drafted players this summer in hopes they could make them Capela clones. Capela is the 2nd best big man at guarding the perimeter today. Draymond is first. He is one of the few players who - for five years in a row now - ignores the problems and works hard consistently. Paying him $17m at age 24 for 17/12/2 (on just 12 shots), very good defense and 0 bickering is an absolute no brainer and a totally manageable contract for a contender. There is no need for you to have to prove that to anyone, especially to someone who's sole purpose is to manufacture the narrative with no intention of exchanging information. Correction: he's making $13.8m
