To me the following are the parts you keep: KJ Martin Sengun Green Jabari Tate Matthews Tari For the rest, get what you can at the trade deadline and move on. Clean the slate, including the coach and give Stone two more years.
Swap Gary for Garuba and that's how I see it too. Gary's good for what he does but not really someone I see as a long term player.
I think the core should be Green/Jabari/Sengun. Everyone else is in a basket of promising role players. I predict Tyty and Eason will emerge as the best suited role players around the core next season.
Bad defense? Second half squandering? Turnovers? Getting tossed (looking at you Garry)? ... To hard to pick lately. Probably poor shooting when it matters most.
Core is Jalen, Jabari, Sengun. I'd like to keep KMJ and Tari, although I'm less taken by Tari the more I see him. Still, I'd like to keep those guys for now. All the rest, I could take them or leave them. I don't hate any of them but I wouldn't be upset at all if they were traded.
You can find another matthews and if you develop eason correctly I think he will become better than Tate. The core is TyTy, Gup, Green, Martin, Eason, Jabari, Garuba and Sengun. You spent first round picks on all those guys and found a steal in KMJ. We haven’t even seen what garuba, TyTy or Gup can really do to give up on them or not count them in. That’s a rotation of 8 players. Wemby or scoot would give you 9 players. Bruno, KPJ, Tate, Matthews are tradeable pieces along with Gordon & Boban.
Jalen. Sengun. Jabari. Eason. KMJ. Ty Ty. Honorable mentions. Gup. Hopefully he gets a chance to redeem himself.
Core: -Green -Sengun -Jabari -KPJ (I said it) Role Players Worth Keeping: -KJ Martin -Jae’Sean Tate -Tari Eason Role Players that Could be Contributors: -Usman Garuba -Bruno Fernando Players We Need to Know More About: -Ty Ty Washington -Josh Christopher Players Not Part of our Future: -Eric Gordon -Daishen Nix -Garrison Matthews -Boban
The truth is nobody is truly safe or should be since nobody yet has emerged as a true cornerstone star. That being said, to the front office they should be treating Jalen, Jabari, and Sengun as their three core investments that all their effort should go into. The question they should ask themselves in every roster move is “does this help Jalen/Jabari/Sengun become the best version of themselves?” If the answer is no, then don’t do that move. That’s why you see improvement across board when you swap KPJ for Tate in a lineup and why you’d probably see more improvement if you got a veteran good defensive PG like a Mike Connelly. I hate to pick on KPJ here but it’s clear that he doesn’t make these three guys better even though yeah he’s become a decent NBA scoring guard. All this being said, all three guys are tradeable at the moment if the right deal came along. I look at the Clippers blueprint as a reality for what Fertitta and Stone might really want to do where like with Kawhi and Paul George they signed one star at the same time that they cashed in assets and young players for another. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Rockets would sign James Harden this Summer and at the same time have a trade in the works to pair Harden with maybe Bradley Beal or someone else on that level using Jalen Green and a few first rounders as the centerpiece. So yeah… I guess it’s safe to say I don’t think we really have a core but we have three big investments. Probably a better way to look at it.
KPJ/Green/Jabari/Sengun/Tate and who ever we draft this year I think KPJ gets moved to the SF I just do not care for Tari and could easily replace him with a vet
