That was my thought as well. If my memory is not failing me, Kirilenko had some moments offensively, sort of a Swiss Army knife scorer.
The size of the buyout makes it difficult for Garuba to actually come to the NBA. Even if the Rockets pay him 120% of his rookie scale contract, which is the most they can, Garuba is still paying taxes to the US gov't and his own. Maybe Stone could do some financial gymnastics and get Tilman to put him in a Landry's commercial or something. That said, I'd be surprised if he actually comes this year.
Darko was a number 2 pick overall in the 2003 draft ine of the best drafts in NBA history ahead of Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade. In most drafts he would be viewed as an average player, which, while wanting more from a 1st round pick is OK for a 16th pick in the draft. Keep in mind no shade, but Sagana Diop was a number 8 overall pick in his draft.
Interesting to see someone cite Charles and Shaq for their supposed "basketball expertise". That's rich. If there is any "fake science" it is the snake-oil sham of "professional" scouting based on eye-ball test "experience". Lastly, anyone that watched that 2018 Rockets team and can think so poorly of Daryl Morey's analytics department is crazy to me. That team, when healthy, was absolutely incredible and 100% driven by deadly analytics. I'm not sure If our championship teams could have competed with our 2018 squad fully loaded.
The source that I found was that his buyout with Real Madrid actually increases by €1M per year he stays in Spain, so he's heavily incentivized to come over ASAP. https://basketnews.com/news-154349-real-madrid-to-get-at-least-3m-buyout-for-garuba.html While I have no particular source for this, I do wonder if Garuba was perhaps showcased this past year to generate some operating revenue for the club. It seems ridiculous that Real Madrid would put a number of $3M on Garuba when they let Luka Doncic go for only $2M a couple years ago, and escalating his buyout is pretty much pushing him out the door. Kind of feels like a team using a promising young defensive-oriented prospect to get back about 10% or more of their overall player budget. Seems like a pretty cheap and unnecessary move for an organization that brings in nearly $1B per year. Glad that the Rockets aren't owned by someone who would ever make such a move to throw away assets for straight cash savings while making his team worse. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...e-ryan-anderson-deanthony-melton-phoenix-suns https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25940969/kings-send-iman-shumpert-rockets-3-team-trade-cavs
And if he plays his contract out, then he would be waiting until 2025 to come over. So, he would be betting on himself if he comes this year. He would have to think that he could at least perform well enough to get another contract and make some serious money, which is very possible.
Good post. What is interesting to me from his scouting videos is that he seems like a solid roll guy/finisher at the hoop and I was REALLY impressed by his quick decision making with the short pass when the defense rotates to take away the roll. I agree with you about needing to improve the 3pt shot, but part of why we camped out Tucker in the corners was because he wasn't an effective roll player in a PNR so that limited his ways to help on the offensive end. If our "big" has 3pt range(Wood), then Garuba can be the dive man in most sets where he is the preferred screen setter. Agree that Green can't be Green without some high level shooters around him but I could see setting up a PNR ballhandler at the top and spreading our best shooters in the corners and letting lets say KPJ and Garuba have some fun with screens and setting up Green/Wood to be the guy the defense has to recover to on their rotations. ...one aside - as much as I love Jalen Green - was kind of disappointed that he isn't very good at the PNR.
That's the whole point! The narrative that is being pushed on us is that Shaq and Charles are some dumb Neanderthals, completely disregarding that they were right all along: you can't win in the playoffs over-relying on 3 pointers. The 2018 team was a great regular season team that could have won it all if they did not over-rely on the junk science. Any traditional basketball coach would have gone away from that. Also, another point about 2018 and Morey. As a practical GM he deserves credit for getting CP3 with his midrange shot and moving away from the rigid 2017 Morey-ball. Yet as a theoretician he was exposed as complete fraud by the events on the basketball court over the past 2-3 years, and Shaq, Charles, JVG were validated in their wisdom. That's just the reality of it, and that's why I am saying you don't have to look like a nerd to have valid insight. Science is about accurate explanation of reality not about nerd-cred and Dork-Elvis branding. In that regard Shaq/Charles are indeed better "scientists", that' my point.
