Justin Jaudon

Honest question: If we manage to collapse ourselves out of the playoffs, does Cliff lose his job?

I understand why it was so hard to let Vuc go. Coach likes him. He was an All-Star. If he doesn't decline too much from All-Star Vuc he's moveable with a declining contract by the time we need to have money. I wouldn't have re-signed him, but I get the thought process. It's why I want him to finish really strong but us to miss the playoffs. Shows he's not the future, but he's moveable. And it means we probably don't re-sign Fournier. Worst case is he sucks the rest of the season but Fournier plays well enough offensively that we limp into the playoffs and maybe we steal a game or something, making the front office think there's something there.

34-48 is my guess. I don't see more than twelve wins there. We'll lose a couple we shouldn't, and I don't trust us in a toss-up anymore.

Everything except steals, yes. He always got plenty of steals. Usually from being over-aggressive and out of position.

Evan Fournier is a plague.

True...

No. I do not think Elton Brand is Vlade Divac.

I would love this trade, but I am not convinced management is willing to move on from Fournier for what amounts to depth. It would be the right move, in my opinion. But I'll believe Fournier is traded for depth when I see it.

Here's the thing with trading Vucevic. I don't know what his value is. Neither does anyone else who isn't an NBA GM. Some of them probably don't. But here's the thing: We've proven at this point that he can play good enough defense that you can build a good defense with him in the lineup. We weren't sure of that before Clifford. That doesn't mean he's a positive defensive player. But he was on a team last year that had only two good defenders in the lineup and still was a good defensive team. That means you don't have to surround him with all-world defenders like the Celtics did with Isaiah Thomas, just to have a decent defense. You just need the right system when he's on the floor. So it's reasonable there's more interest in Vuc than there once was. Before last year, and really before this year, Vuc was not a reliable 3-point threat. Last year he was solid, but not at enough volume to be sure. Now he's shooting nearly five 3's a game, and hitting at a solid percentage. More value, even though his overall shooting #s are down, because he opens up what you can do with him on offense. How many C's in the league can operate at range, at mid-range, and down low, all with solid efficiency? Again, more value than before. Vuc's rebounding is very good. You can rely on him to be your only major defensive rebounder and it'll be fine. Surprisingly, this wasn't a sure thing even two years ago. The reason is that he was coming off a very mediocre rebounding year, only a year removed from an abysmal rebounding year during the Skiles season. Now, those years look more like anomalies, with two more solid rebounding seasons. He's not Drummond, but no one is Drummond. More value than any other time we were shopping him (I don't believe we were really shopping him at the deadline last year). On the other hand, his contract is pretty big. It goes down year-to-year, which is a major plus. I love that the current management group seems to love to do that, because it makes players' contracts look more tradeable. But $28 million for a C is a bunch of money. That contract will look solid if he's still playing this well in a year and a half. But I think it will be hard to sell a team on a questionable defensive C even at $26 million unless he's playing at last year's insane offensive efficiency. He's soft. Everyone in the league knows he's soft. Marc Gasol exposed that for everyone to see last year in the playoffs. If someone didn't know before that, they know now. So until he can prove that he can score on Gasol, he's going to be labeled soft. On the plus side, all he has to do is go off in one of our remaining Toronto games. The only one left this year (hopefully) is the final game of the season. Put up big numbers against Toronto, that will go a long way for his reputation. Any speculation on what his value is by us fans is just that: speculation. And that's fine. The Celtics have been rumored for years to like him. There's plenty of reasons he would fit well with their situation. I think he would be more valuable to them than Gordon Hayward, all things considered. The Kings make all kinds of crazy moves, and they've been rumored before to like him. There is an argument that if he had value, he would have been traded when he was making much less. There is an argument that he had less value back then. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Lastly, I don't think Vuc is a guy we HAVE to trade. Even if he plays out his contract, that basically just means Bamba didn't work out. Sucks, but Vuc is not a bad C. He's not holding us back. Him and Fournier together, though. We all know that duo needs to be broken up for the young guys to thrive. I still don't like the Idea of trading Gordon before we see what he is without Euroball.

I'll elaborate. Offensively, I've seen enough that I love Malik Beasley. He's a good shooter who can run. Doesn't give us the ball-handling and passing that Fournier does, but his spot up shooting is good, and he can get up and down the floor. I think that's exactly what we should be looking for long-term in a SG. As long as he is solid defensively, and cheap long-term, I'd love to get Beasley. I've seen enough to know he's not a terrible defender, but I wasn't really watching closely enough to adequately judge him there. I think Beasley and Hernangomez for DJ and our 2020 1st would work, but I'm not sure they'd do it.

Haven't seen enough of Beasley. How is his defense, especially team defense (We already have a perimeter lockdown guy with Gordon)?

This is why I was asking people's opinion on 3&D guys at SG we could acquire reasonably. The problem I have with a Hield trade, as much as I like the guy, is that he hurts our defense, while not giving us a huge bump on the offensive end. Fournier is not a terrific defender. But he is a solid TEAM defender, which I haven't seen any evidence that Hield is. It seems like the 3&D Shooting Guard is going away, to some degree. I don't see a lot of young ones out there. I think Mikal Bridges can play SG, but 1) he hasn't proven the 3 part of 3&D, and 2) he hasn't played a lot of SG in the NBA; mostly SF. Josh Richardson is good, but is he really good enough at the 3, and how would we get him? Where's a young Wes Matthews when we need him?

I am starting to think we trade Fournier, if anyone, so: My opinion, as Fultz improves offensively, as well as Isaac eventually, we ideally need a 3&D SG. At least, that's the direction I want to go in. So who are reasonable targets as starting 3&D SGs?

I have never understood the whole, "Fournier is selfish" thing. I don't get that from him at all. He's aggressive, sure. But a lot of guys are aggressive. He's never really played with a guy who's demonstratively better than him on offense, so why wouldn't he be aggressive as a scorer. Especially at the end of games. Dude seems very much like a guy who wants to win. He's going to be very valuable to some team with a top-tear scorer as a second or third option. Imagine this dude in Dallas, just occasionally taking pressure off of Luka and staggering his minutes so he can run the bench unit the way Gordon did for us last year. As many of us have been saying for years, the problem isn't Fournier, it's that Fournier is being asked to do more than he should be.

Yep. All the signs are positive in that direction. But that's all we have so far. Signs. He can shoot well from 15 feet. His FT shooting is solid. He shot well from three before the injuries. But his shot from deep still looks like garbage right now. So yeah, signs are good. But if signs were everything, Joe Alexander... well, people would actually remember who Joe Alexander is.

I hate our defensive scheme against Kawhi. The plan seems to be to let him take as many mid-range jumpers as he wants. Normally that's fine, but he is so good from that spot.

I actually don't mind criticism of AG. No reason for it tonight, but he is inconsistent. Problem is that Murphy seems to legitimately believe that Aaron Gordon is not a starter level player. So I don't take his criticism of AG seriously, because it goes way too far.

From what I remember, he started the game well, then sucked for a while, then ended with a huge play. He was inconsistent, but his good start helped get that big lead and put the Lakers on their heels. Not a great game from Vuc, by any stretch. But no reason to **** on him. He took good shots and played hard. He missed a lot of shots in the middle of the game.

To be clear, 'hater' in this context isn't about emotion. My point is that Murphy has never liked Gordon, has always looked at him negatively, and seems to refuse to see any positive in him. Don't need emotion for 'hate' in this context, so maybe contempt is a better word.

Murphy has talked garbage about Gordon for a long time. Nothing new. No reason to really respond beyond "hey, don't take this too seriously, anybody; this dude's a hater" The rest of his opinions I'll give respect to, but dude legitimately is a Gordon hater.

This is some serious AG hate right here.

I think we have to wait another year before we give up Gordon. Unless something crazy comes our way. Even with a healthy Isaac, I think we should wait. Gordon has a very unique defensive skill set. That specific skill set allows us to switch and recover on defense really well. I think without Gordon and Isaac together Vuc can't sustain his serviceable defense. Without Gordon's ability to switch and recover, Isaac is still great but less free to really go nuts on D. Gordon is the glue that keeps the defense together. Only way he's expendable for less than a star is if Okeke is close to as versatile on D, or if Bamba blows up and we can replace Vuc. Without knowing yet what those two are, losing Gordon would be bad. Just my opinion.

Couldn't watch the game. Just saw Gordon was the only player not in double figures. Did he shoot poorly, or just not get a lot of opportunities?

DJ is so garbage on D. I know he's been solid offensively, but his defense now outweighs that.

I suppose we should expect this from such a night-and-day team, but the night-and-day feeling of the fans here is fun to watch. Not five days ago AG was terrible, "what's wrong with AG?" was everywhere; not ten games ago Fournier was horrible, he needed to go, he was holding back the whole team; Ross was a trainwreck, we shouldn't have re-signed him; beginning of the season, Vuc was soft, shouldn't have re-signed him. I get it. I really do. But some of us need to recognize that a slump is sometimes just that. AG started in a slump (the whole team did), then started playing better and everyone laid off of him for a while. Then he got hurt, wasn't great on offense when he came back, and people were asking, "what's wrong with him?" I don't know; maybe he was coming off of an injury. Fournier was dominant in FIBA, so everyone was curious to see if he'd come out with that kind of confidence this year. He came out in a slump like everyone else (though, actually, he was our best player the first few games), so he was hated (he's kinda always hated here, but I think that might be partly that some of us hold it against him the team choosing him over Oladipo). The guy has been damn good more often than not this season, and we should recognize that. The only guys we all consistently get behind are Fultz and Isaac. We are an inconsistent offensive team. We have a ton of inconsistent offensive players. But I think we have a shot to make some noise this year so long as we don't play Toronto in the playoffs again (assuming we get there), and the whole team doesn't go cold at the same time again.