Cam Thomas is fools gold. Why can’t he get more minutes for that team? With the way he scores, he must be a loser as a teammate at the defensive end and even maybe the offensive end just being a ball hog and a chucker.
This is only true if you buy into advanced stats that say things like Jokic is the greatest defender in the the history of the NBA (Defensive Box +-)
I think he does. Together they make a nice 4/5 combo. Claxton is all day tough and does the grunt work. KAT is a pretty boy pussy who refuses to do that grunt work.
I would not take back Simmons. NO.
I never thought they would trade him. He is 20 and improving at a pretty good rate. If there is a guy that eventually needs to go it's Dort imo
The only tradeable player the Thunder have is Dort. He’s the only one making enough salary to bring back something worth it. All of your other assets are low salary assets that are worth far more than the player they bring back. The caveat would be if you can find another great asset cheap that fits better than Giddy does and a team wants to swap their cheap asset with high potential for your cheap asset with high potential.
He is the anomaly that breaks the matrix. When it comes to defensive analytics they entirely overvalue defensive rebounds. This is Jokic wheelhouse. He’s 7 foot tall and he literally has no other defensive value that would impact his ability to rebound. Here’s what I mean. If you’re a great defender, you’re likely covering the guy who is getting up a ton of shots. That puts you in a poor rebounding position. You need a 5 to be rim protection. You can’t rebound when you’re trying to protect the rim and challenge shots. What’s left? The only thing 7 foot Jokic can do at that end is rebound. And there’s another layer. The Nuggets have had a garbage bench his entire time in Denver. This is especially true at the five position. Built into all of these analytics is a comparison to what the team does when he is off and his replacement is on. He is a cheat code to juke these numbers and produce the outlier that true statisticians need to account for whenever they do data analysis.
