Well, Jabari had a better team around him to provide him better scoring opportunities and his shooting percentages across the board are lower than Murphys every single year. Defenses target Murphy not so much Jabari.
Numbers inflate the more free a player is allowed to chuck up a shot. The road to NBA hell is paved with empty stats players with decent efficiency. I mean....we have the king of such players on the team right now. There's a reason no one has given in to the Pelicans demands. He isn't Desmond Bane. You don't give up a lot of your future or cap space for someone like Trey Murphy.
Jabari had one of the worst shooting slumps we may have ever seen as Rockets fans for a big chunk of the season last year. He finally broke free of it but only due to being given plenty of opportunity to shoot at will despite his issues. If he wasn't the #3 pick and had just signed a massive contract, he would have been on the end of the bench. Rockets had no choice but to have him work through it during game time and hope he recover. If you can replace Jabari with Trey you do it even if it costs a pick or two. Trey's scoring would open up the offense spacing for Durant and Sengun, and others, way more than Jabari can. The 3-pt shooting threat of Sheppard / Durant / Murphy on the wings would greatly minimize the defensive pressure on Sengun and give him the pass out options he needs to punish the defense.
Jabari is still going to have a long career as an NBA starter - even if it's not in Houston. Guys like Kwame Brown couldn't even make an NBA roster. That's a pretty big difference in your comparison. I mean the #1 pick from two years ago was just traded in a salary dump. I'll say it again - just because you expect to get a franchise player with a top 3 pick, the reality is the odds are still slightly worse than a coin flip that you get an all star with the 3rd pick and there is still a 15% chance you end up with a player who isn't even a career NBA starter. Jabari just happened to be one of the better players of one of the poorer drafts. That he was considered to be a #1 pick pre-draft doesn't really speak to how weak the draft was does it?
Murphy is pretty dang close to Desmond Bane. Neither are stars, they're in the super role player tier like say Mikal Bridges where if they're your best player your team really sucks. I'd still happily take either. If the reports are true and New Orleans is asking for two first round picks I'd offer that all day. That's not a lot of the future. We have seven 1st round picks in the next five years. And his $29M average salary for the next three seasons isn't a huge chunk of the salary cap either. He's earning his paycheck. For comparison, Bane's average salary for the next three seasons is $42M. I wouldn't trade Jabari for Trey Murphy as that's pretty much a lateral move. But if we could trade Tari instead I'm totally down. Murphy is only one year older, just as athletic, has much higher bball IQ, and is a lights out shooter. He'd be a fan favorite here.
You do realise that Kwame played in the league for 12 seasons, right? He was trash, but he definitely made the roster of 7 NBA teams.
I think a lot of fans are still fixed on the mindset of, we selected him with a #3 pick, I want to get my money's worth from him at some point OR he's still got a lot of potential. Go pull up his career stats, analyze them, think about game after game of fans venting frustrations about what he brings or doesnt. . . . Then go analyze Trey Murphy's stats and his game and look at the defensive pressure put on him and his ability to break it down. Then tell me that you think it's a lateral move. Again, I like Jabari, he's a grood supporting cast player, but Murphy can legitimately go off when you need that scoring punch.
I didnt realize he played 12 years but it's irrelevant because I still think as much as people **** on Jabari in this board for not being an all star, he is still an NBA starter at some position on three quarters of teams in the league. Kwame never had an impact anywhere close to that. ..but I will concede that they are related in one important way - they are actually distant cousins by blood.
Even if next year or in 2029 we were able to achieve a “franchise player” in the draft that satisfied 80% of the forum, we still would need to give them a couple years and we would have to tweak the roster around them ultimately. The way we have our ourselves positioned we can still do that. so even if we find and draft the next Cooper Flagg next year, we still have a lot of work and waiting in front of us. for the here and now, we either have to commit to somebody on the roster or a combination of players on the roster or trade for somebody that we believe in. We should have a clear-cut idea of who the franchise player(s) of the future is, even if the outlook on them hitting to a satisfactory level is low. I don’t like thinking about trading Smith because I think that he definitely fits the profile of a strong starter on a title team and there is still a small chance He could be a #2 type. Low but there. We can even say it is Kevin for the next year or two and then our intention is to try to put enough around him to win but I do think that shorts the runway of somebody like Thompson or Sengun possibly leveling up a bit more than the median anticipation. Especially if FVV and Smart are soaking up minutes. I am all about acquiring Murphy, but not really at the cost of Smith and/or more. I understand that it is an upgrade, but not by a whole lot and then we are still waiting on our franchise guy. I think that they fit very well together in a lot of circumstances. I guess the point that I am trying to make is our best bet at this point is to build a very deep roster and hope that somebody either emerges from within or that somebody ends up seeing themselves as the final piece of the puzzle and pushing their way to Houston.
There is no sunk cost fallacy for me in regards to Jabari. I do not bank on growth from him. I know Trey Murphy is a better player. Straight up for each other I'd do it, but New Orleans would not agree to that. With picks attached Murphy is simply not enough of an upgrade IMO. We might feel the loss of Jabari more than the numbers alone suggest, especially since Murphy would not have the same role here as he did in New Orleans. Jabari's a role player but still a big rotation piece. Despite his limitations he's not nothing. Hell, I still miss Dillon Brooks even though we traded him for a superstar talent in KD. And the gap between KD and Brooks is smaller than the gap between Murphy and Jabari.
