27 wins was an optimistic but not irrational prediction for this team coming into the season. ..anyone predicting 30’s was pushing it, and the handful who predicted play-in were the irrational ones. The team has a lot of young talent, and were playing hard the first 20 or 30 games
Gotta admit, I was very much guilty of buying into the Jalen Green and Jabari Smith hype. Really thought they'd be decent players this season boosting the win total. Turns out I was very wrong about them so here we are in another tanking season hoping to do a better job with our next top pick than we did the last 2 times.
Guys that young being decent players is EXTREMELY rare, practically never happens. Having TWO guys do it? Impossible pretty much
Green and KPJ will be one of the best young backcourts in the league! We won’t be able to tank! KPJ? Nope Green? Even more of a nope
That's not true, typically top 3 drafted players are at least decent, some are good, a few have been great. Having a top 3 drafted player that is one of the worst players on the worst team can happen, it sucks, but it can happen.... now having 2 straight top 3 players that are the worst players on the worst team? That's ridiculously rare, and should get a GM fired.
To be honest I did not they would play the young guys this much and I did not anticipate the front office would be so heavy handed in carving out a roster that shouldn't be expected to win on any given night. I thought we'd be in the 30's if things went well and our vets and coaches did their jobs well, but none of that happened. The rotation is really absurdly young, I bet it would be one of the youngest rotations ever to open a season if we someone cared to look it up. You can assemble a team of 8 minimum contract veterans and they would have a better chance at winning that a bunch of 20 year olds. Players this age struggle to convert their production to smart decisions and wins most of the time. We have that happening for several high-value players simultaneously. It's not normal to draft 7 first round picks within one year and play all/most of them. They have a severe experience deficit and there's no way to get past it than to just see who can learn and develop while they play. I suspect the ASB is going to be humbling or inspiring for a lot of these guys. They're also all super light so I bet they could use the rest with all the beating they take as a great rebounding team. I'm willing to give them all a blank slate and judge them purely based on post ASB, I think it will be a much clearer picture of what we have in these players - messy season or not.
Overall I’m happy with both players, I think expectations were too much to have these rookies/2nd year guys run a team. So I wouldn’t call either inept per se. Jalen is way too streaky and hardly trying on defense, but he’s going to be a big time scorer in a better system. Jabari’s shot has been awful but his overall skill set is fantastic, he’ll find his shot and is probably the better overall player. To your point, both will have to improve substantially next season, and I’m confident they will.
Getting an actual pg is also important as getting a new coach. Sengun is only a bandage we need a pg.
