PG: 13 Game Losing Streak

[Scase]

Yes, there are always a large contingent of perma-tankers on this board who like to indulge in draft porn annually and will never be called upon to manage billion dollar businesses. Oh no, they disagreed with Masai finally bringing in an actual legit centre! So it must have been a mistake.

If you think the Poeltl trade was a good move, you don't understand modern NBA basketball. It's impossible to have an entire front court worth of non and poor 3 point shooters in the 2020s and be successful, this is the era when the floor spacing provided by 3 point shooting is absolutely critical to success, the entire league is built around it now.

The fact that only 2 out of our 5 starters (OG and Fred) and one bench player (Gary) were above average 3 point shooters was recipe for disaster, it's completely mind blowing that guys who make millions per year to do their job somehow didn't understand this.

I think they understood it. I believe they thought they could just train those players to shoot (not Poeltl obviously).

They had a strategy of draft raw talent, size and teach them to become shooters. It clearly didn't work.

Which I think is a bad strategy, but ignoring that. It still doesn't make the Jak trade make sense, how long does it take to reliably teach most players to shoot a 3, a year, two, three?

Scottie is an outlier, and he's also fallen off hard with more defensive focus. Norm took 3+ years before he was a consistently good 3pt shooter, Siakam hasn't become one in 9 years, OG always was one, same for FVV. Who else has been taught to be a good 3pt shooter, and how long does it normally take?

Realistically it would seem to be 2-3 years. So we trade for Jak with the sole purpose of teaching some random guys to be good shooters near the end of his contract, and Siakam on a 200mil+ max contract?

Even if they COULD teach these guys to shoot, the timing still doesn't make any sense.

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying you are wrong, cause I agree with you. I just think that even in the best case scenario, it was still an awful plan.

[ciueli]

If you think the Poeltl trade was a good move, you don't understand modern NBA basketball. It's impossible to have an entire front court worth of non and poor 3 point shooters in the 2020s and be successful, this is the era when the floor spacing provided by 3 point shooting is absolutely critical to success, the entire league is built around it now.

The fact that only 2 out of our 5 starters (OG and Fred) and one bench player (Gary) were above average 3 point shooters was recipe for disaster, it's completely mind blowing that guys who make millions per year to do their job somehow didn't understand this.

I think they understood it. I believe they thought they could just train those players to shoot (not Poeltl obviously).

They had a strategy of draft raw talent, size and teach them to become shooters. It clearly didn't work.

Which I think is a bad strategy, but ignoring that. It still doesn't make the Jak trade make sense, how long does it take to reliably teach most players to shoot a 3, a year, two, three?

Scottie is an outlier, and he's also fallen off hard with more defensive focus. Norm took 3+ years before he was a consistently good 3pt shooter, Siakam hasn't become one in 9 years, OG always was one, same for FVV. Who else has been taught to be a good 3pt shooter, and how long does it normally take?

Realistically it would seem to be 2-3 years. So we trade for Jak with the sole purpose of teaching some random guys to be good shooters near the end of his contract, and Siakam on a 200mil+ max contract?

Even if they COULD teach these guys to shoot, the timing still doesn't make any sense.

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying you are wrong, cause I agree with you. I just think that even in the best case scenario, it was still an awful plan.

My guess as to what they were thinking when they did the Jak trade, is they just wanted to get into the play-in that year and planned to fix the issues with roster construction and shooting in the offseason.

But they were overly optimistic that those issues were fixable with the limited financial flexibility and trade assets they had. I think they bet on being able to keep Fred at a discount and they lost that bet when Houston threw a short max contract at him. Their plan B to get Damian Lillard blew up when the Bucks beat their lowball offer. Plan C wound up being Dennis Schroder and Jalen McDaniels, it's not surprising the result was a significantly worse team.

Realistically there was no way their plans were ever working out. Pascal was always going to want at least a 4 year max. OG was always going to get paid. There was no way to build a team with big money contracts to Pascal, OG, Fred, and Jak while still having any money left over address glaring roster holes or to fill out the bench, especially given that trading picks to get Jak meant no steady flow of cheap talent coming in to the team through the draft. None of this made any sense at the time and there is no way to defend those decisions.

[Scase]

I think they understood it. I believe they thought they could just train those players to shoot (not Poeltl obviously).

They had a strategy of draft raw talent, size and teach them to become shooters. It clearly didn't work.

Which I think is a bad strategy, but ignoring that. It still doesn't make the Jak trade make sense, how long does it take to reliably teach most players to shoot a 3, a year, two, three?

Scottie is an outlier, and he's also fallen off hard with more defensive focus. Norm took 3+ years before he was a consistently good 3pt shooter, Siakam hasn't become one in 9 years, OG always was one, same for FVV. Who else has been taught to be a good 3pt shooter, and how long does it normally take?

Realistically it would seem to be 2-3 years. So we trade for Jak with the sole purpose of teaching some random guys to be good shooters near the end of his contract, and Siakam on a 200mil+ max contract?

Even if they COULD teach these guys to shoot, the timing still doesn't make any sense.

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying you are wrong, cause I agree with you. I just think that even in the best case scenario, it was still an awful plan.

My guess as to what they were thinking when they did the Jak trade, is they just wanted to get into the play-in that year and planned to fix the issues with roster construction and shooting in the offseason.

But they were overly optimistic that those issues were fixable with the limited financial flexibility and trade assets they had. I think they bet on being able to keep Fred at a discount and they lost that bet when Houston threw a short max contract at him. Their plan B to get Damian Lillard blew up when the Bucks beat their lowball offer. Plan C wound up being Dennis Schroder and Jalen McDaniels, it's not surprising the result was a significantly worse team.

Realistically there was no way their plans were ever working out. Pascal was always going to want at least a 4 year max. OG was always going to get paid. There was no way to build a team with big money contracts to Pascal, OG, Fred, and Jak while still having any money left over address glaring roster holes or to fill out the bench, especially given that trading picks to get Jak meant no steady flow of cheap talent coming in to the team through the draft. None of this made any sense at the time and there is no way to defend those decisions.

Precisely this.

The only way this actually worked out, was if Scottie was an MVP level player to start this year, Siakam got back to prime form, and somehow Dennis wasn't Dennis.

The problem with all of their perceived plans, is that none of them had any realistic chance of success. The FOs plan to build a contender is like someone buying a lotto ticket as their retirement plan. Sure, it could happen, but odds are you are living on a hope and a dream.

[islandboy53]

Sacrificed the future of the team by trading away an immediate lotto pick which is handcuffing this team for a specific direction.

Trading one (1) first round pick is NOT "sacrificing the future of the team". Worst case, perhaps there's a centre available who can replace what Jacob brings, in 2 or 3 years. In that scenario, the team may be better in the long term, but it's worse in the short to medium term.

Far reaching and "extremely" risky, a lotto team, trading a lightly protected pick, with the sole purpose of making the play in, all while doing this with 3 pending FAs.

At the time of the trade, only FVV was a pending UFA. The trade was made to provide a competent, starting level centre as part of a final evaluation of the core and coach. The result of that evaluation was a new coach and, with the loss of FVV, a rebuild. Making the play in can be seen as part of the evaluation, but it was hardly "the sole purpose".

Scraping the bottom of the league. We are currently 6th worst in the NBA. This one I admittedly could have been clearer on.

But sure, it's hyperbole.

Your statement seemed to be that Poeltl was "scraping the bottom of the league", which is clearly massively hyperbolic. If you really meant that our current record is scraping that bottom, I agree, obviously.

If it were one pick and gone, sure. But until it conveys it directly determines how the team can plan moving forward. If Masai thought that the best course of action for this team was to tank a couple years, get some good prospects from high picks, and go from there. He is handcuffed by the exact scenario we are currently dealing with, a potential 60 loss season with no pick to show for it. Now deal with that for 3 years hanging over your head, and every year it doesn't convey you are essentially held hostage.

The thing is, we're not handcuffed. Quite the opposite. We have a solid core that can grow with Scottie. We have 2 picks this draft, guaranteed, that we can add to that core. We have either our own FRP next year, if we convey this year, or a third pick (top 6) this year if we don't. We have additional assets that can be traded to add future draft picks and/or young players - the 3rd pick this year, if we get it, Brown, Boucher, possibly Trent. We can sign free agents. We have salary flexibility to take on unwanted salary for future picks. The only thing that is unknown is when the pick conveys. Regardless, we have lots of picks moving forward, and should be able to add more. The only one being held hostage is you.

You view it as a single pick, and I get that. The rest of the leagues GMs view it as leverage. The same way the Nets/Rockets have zero incentive to tank because they don't own their picks, that means that in any sort of trade negotiations any GM with half a brain will have some additional leverage, you can lowball, or raise your trade prices because you know that team cannot afford to be too bad. This is why I keep saying the trades biggest issues are the cascading effects.

As noted above, the team has a good base to build on, and lots of assets to build with, including draft picks. There is no expectation of an overnight rebuild, and the team can be patient, and build the right way. The only desperation is here on this board.

Not trading Siakam let us into a position where the opposing teams and Siakam himself held the most leverage, which results in worse returns and less bargaining power. None of this stuff exists in a vacuum.

As for the time of the trade, yeah FVV was the only one immediately pending, but OG was 100% going to be a UFA as there was no way he was sacrificing potentially 50mil just to sign an extension with us, so he is a UFA for all intents and purposes. Siakam, there was clearly no efforts made to extend him, and he also wanted to push his luck going for a supermax, so again, for all intents and purposes, a UFA.

This is some of the most bizarre "reasoning" I've run into in a while. Let's review. You originally said that FVV, OG and Siakam were all UFA's. On being called out, you concede that, yes, only FVV was a pending UFA. Sure, OG wasn't going to sign an extension, but he wasn't a pending UFA. There were extension discussions with Siakam, but they broke off, presumably after FVV moved on. No doubt Pascal was hoping to qualify for a potential supermax extension, whether or not he would have received it. That still didn't make him a pending UFA at the time of the trade.

Trading a barely protected FRP when you are a lotto team, and have effectively 3 pending UFAs, for a mid tier centre is objectively bad management. Or at best, a terribly stupid gamble.

We had 1 pending UFA. Acquiring Poeltl was not a gamble, nor was it "objectively bad management". Providing a competent centre who can rebound, set screens, pass and protect the rim allowed a final evaluation of the FVV, OG, Siakam, Nurse "core. Signed to a long term contract, as he was, he's very movable for a solid return in the future. Negligible risk.

No one views a 28 year old mid tier centre as part of a "rebuild", you're being naive if you think so. Jak is going to be 29 years old at the start of next season, who in their right mind spends those kinds of assets to get a player that unequivocally provides no useful benefit for a rebuilding team? Jak belongs on a contender, not on a rebuilding team, at best all he contributes to is some empty wins that devalue our picks.

If you're doing a tear it down to the studs level rebuild, you don't need a Poeltl level centre. We're starting from a higher base, and a centre with Jacob's skillset is very useful to the development process. We need to focus on growing the team around Scottie and, if we have more wins because we develop faster, that's a good thing. Focusing on "not devaluing our picks" may be important in Washington or Portland or Charlotte, but we don't need to do that, other than in this current stretch, obviously.

By the time our "rebuilding" core gets to a competitive age, Jak is most likely turning 31 and his contract his expiring. So we spent assets and money for what exactly? Empty wins?

We traded a FRP for Poeltl. We have him for 3 more years (assuming he picks up his PO) of growth and development at a reasonable salary. At that point, he'll still have value in a trade, or he could be resigned at a smaller amount as a main backup centre. Again, we're aiming to win. Jacob helps us do that. That's a good thing.

A core of BBQ+P is unlikely to result in anything other than a first round playoff team. This team is starved for talent, trading away picks for win now players does not help the team long term.

This core, as it stands, may be no more than a 1st round team. Or it may be better. Either way, we will be adding to that core steadily, so it's a tad early to give up on it, don't you think? We're certainly not "starved for talent". Maybe you've been watching our G-league version too long. The future of the team is bright, my guy. Get ready to enjoy the ride!

[Scase]

Trading one (1) first round pick is NOT "sacrificing the future of the team". Worst case, perhaps there's a centre available who can replace what Jacob brings, in 2 or 3 years. In that scenario, the team may be better in the long term, but it's worse in the short to medium term.



At the time of the trade, only FVV was a pending UFA. The trade was made to provide a competent, starting level centre as part of a final evaluation of the core and coach. The result of that evaluation was a new coach and, with the loss of FVV, a rebuild. Making the play in can be seen as part of the evaluation, but it was hardly "the sole purpose".



Your statement seemed to be that Poeltl was "scraping the bottom of the league", which is clearly massively hyperbolic. If you really meant that our current record is scraping that bottom, I agree, obviously.

If it were one pick and gone, sure. But until it conveys it directly determines how the team can plan moving forward. If Masai thought that the best course of action for this team was to tank a couple years, get some good prospects from high picks, and go from there. He is handcuffed by the exact scenario we are currently dealing with, a potential 60 loss season with no pick to show for it. Now deal with that for 3 years hanging over your head, and every year it doesn't convey you are essentially held hostage.

The thing is, we're not handcuffed. Quite the opposite. We have a solid core that can grow with Scottie. We have 2 picks this draft, guaranteed, that we can add to that core. We have either our own FRP next year, if we convey this year, or a third pick (top 6) this year if we don't. We have additional assets that can be traded to add future draft picks and/or young players - the 3rd pick this year, if we get it, Brown, Boucher, possibly Trent. We can sign free agents. We have salary flexibility to take on unwanted salary for future picks. The only thing that is unknown is when the pick conveys. Regardless, we have lots of picks moving forward, and should be able to add more. The only one being held hostage is you.

You view it as a single pick, and I get that. The rest of the leagues GMs view it as leverage. The same way the Nets/Rockets have zero incentive to tank because they don't own their picks, that means that in any sort of trade negotiations any GM with half a brain will have some additional leverage, you can lowball, or raise your trade prices because you know that team cannot afford to be too bad. This is why I keep saying the trades biggest issues are the cascading effects.

As noted above, the team has a good base to build on, and lots of assets to build with, including draft picks. There is no expectation of an overnight rebuild, and the team can be patient, and build the right way. The only desperation is here on this board.

Not trading Siakam let us into a position where the opposing teams and Siakam himself held the most leverage, which results in worse returns and less bargaining power. None of this stuff exists in a vacuum.

As for the time of the trade, yeah FVV was the only one immediately pending, but OG was 100% going to be a UFA as there was no way he was sacrificing potentially 50mil just to sign an extension with us, so he is a UFA for all intents and purposes. Siakam, there was clearly no efforts made to extend him, and he also wanted to push his luck going for a supermax, so again, for all intents and purposes, a UFA.

This is some of the most bizarre "reasoning" I've run into in a while. Let's review. You originally said that FVV, OG and Siakam were all UFA's. On being called out, you concede that, yes, only FVV was a pending UFA. Sure, OG wasn't going to sign an extension, but he wasn't a pending UFA. There were extension discussions with Siakam, but they broke off, presumably after FVV moved on. No doubt Pascal was hoping to qualify for a potential supermax extension, whether or not he would have received it. That still didn't make him a pending UFA at the time of the trade.

Trading a barely protected FRP when you are a lotto team, and have effectively 3 pending UFAs, for a mid tier centre is objectively bad management. Or at best, a terribly stupid gamble.

We had 1 pending UFA. Acquiring Poeltl was not a gamble, nor was it "objectively bad management". Providing a competent centre who can rebound, set screens, pass and protect the rim allowed a final evaluation of the FVV, OG, Siakam, Nurse "core. Signed to a long term contract, as he was, he's very movable for a solid return in the future. Negligible risk.

No one views a 28 year old mid tier centre as part of a "rebuild", you're being naive if you think so. Jak is going to be 29 years old at the start of next season, who in their right mind spends those kinds of assets to get a player that unequivocally provides no useful benefit for a rebuilding team? Jak belongs on a contender, not on a rebuilding team, at best all he contributes to is some empty wins that devalue our picks.

If you're doing a tear it down to the studs level rebuild, you don't need a Poeltl level centre. We're starting from a higher base, and a centre with Jacob's skillset is very useful to the development process. We need to focus on growing the team around Scottie and, if we have more wins because we develop faster, that's a good thing. Focusing on "not devaluing our picks" may be important in Washington or Portland or Charlotte, but we don't need to do that, other than in this current stretch, obviously.

By the time our "rebuilding" core gets to a competitive age, Jak is most likely turning 31 and his contract his expiring. So we spent assets and money for what exactly? Empty wins?

We traded a FRP for Poeltl. We have him for 3 more years (assuming he picks up his PO) of growth and development at a reasonable salary. At that point, he'll still have value in a trade, or he could be resigned at a smaller amount as a main backup centre. Again, we're aiming to win. Jacob helps us do that. That's a good thing.

A core of BBQ+P is unlikely to result in anything other than a first round playoff team. This team is starved for talent, trading away picks for win now players does not help the team long term.

This core, as it stands, may be no more than a 1st round team. Or it may be better. Either way, we will be adding to that core steadily, so it's a tad early to give up on it, don't you think? We're certainly not "starved for talent". Maybe you've been watching our G-league version too long. The future of the team is bright, my guy. Get ready to enjoy the ride!

I commend your optimism, but I've seen enough mediocre teams put together over the years, to share it.

[2019nbachamps]

I think they understood it. I believe they thought they could just train those players to shoot (not Poeltl obviously).

They had a strategy of draft raw talent, size and teach them to become shooters. It clearly didn't work.

Which I think is a bad strategy, but ignoring that. It still doesn't make the Jak trade make sense, how long does it take to reliably teach most players to shoot a 3, a year, two, three?

Scottie is an outlier, and he's also fallen off hard with more defensive focus. Norm took 3+ years before he was a consistently good 3pt shooter, Siakam hasn't become one in 9 years, OG always was one, same for FVV. Who else has been taught to be a good 3pt shooter, and how long does it normally take?

Realistically it would seem to be 2-3 years. So we trade for Jak with the sole purpose of teaching some random guys to be good shooters near the end of his contract, and Siakam on a 200mil+ max contract?

Even if they COULD teach these guys to shoot, the timing still doesn't make any sense.

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying you are wrong, cause I agree with you. I just think that even in the best case scenario, it was still an awful plan.

My guess as to what they were thinking when they did the Jak trade, is they just wanted to get into the play-in that year and planned to fix the issues with roster construction and shooting in the offseason.

But they were overly optimistic that those issues were fixable with the limited financial flexibility and trade assets they had. I think they bet on being able to keep Fred at a discount and they lost that bet when Houston threw a short max contract at him. Their plan B to get Damian Lillard blew up when the Bucks beat their lowball offer. Plan C wound up being Dennis Schroder and Jalen McDaniels, it's not surprising the result was a significantly worse team.

Realistically there was no way their plans were ever working out. Pascal was always going to want at least a 4 year max. OG was always going to get paid. There was no way to build a team with big money contracts to Pascal, OG, Fred, and Jak while still having any money left over address glaring roster holes or to fill out the bench, especially given that trading picks to get Jak meant no steady flow of cheap talent coming in to the team through the draft. None of this made any sense at the time and there is no way to defend those decisions.

100%

And the proof is in the pudding. We were still the 7th worst team before trading OG and Siakam.

We were healthy for the first 60 games of the season. The recent train wreck will be excused by injuries but conceals how poorly constructed the roster is. I also don’t understand why we didn’t ship out GTJ and BB at the deadline, even for reduced returns. They have no future with the team and 1 year of BB won’t command a better return than 1.5 years of him.

[ArthurVandelay]

Which I think is a bad strategy, but ignoring that. It still doesn't make the Jak trade make sense, how long does it take to reliably teach most players to shoot a 3, a year, two, three?

Scottie is an outlier, and he's also fallen off hard with more defensive focus. Norm took 3+ years before he was a consistently good 3pt shooter, Siakam hasn't become one in 9 years, OG always was one, same for FVV. Who else has been taught to be a good 3pt shooter, and how long does it normally take?

Realistically it would seem to be 2-3 years. So we trade for Jak with the sole purpose of teaching some random guys to be good shooters near the end of his contract, and Siakam on a 200mil+ max contract?

Even if they COULD teach these guys to shoot, the timing still doesn't make any sense.

Just so we're clear, I'm not saying you are wrong, cause I agree with you. I just think that even in the best case scenario, it was still an awful plan.

My guess as to what they were thinking when they did the Jak trade, is they just wanted to get into the play-in that year and planned to fix the issues with roster construction and shooting in the offseason.

But they were overly optimistic that those issues were fixable with the limited financial flexibility and trade assets they had. I think they bet on being able to keep Fred at a discount and they lost that bet when Houston threw a short max contract at him. Their plan B to get Damian Lillard blew up when the Bucks beat their lowball offer. Plan C wound up being Dennis Schroder and Jalen McDaniels, it's not surprising the result was a significantly worse team.

Realistically there was no way their plans were ever working out. Pascal was always going to want at least a 4 year max. OG was always going to get paid. There was no way to build a team with big money contracts to Pascal, OG, Fred, and Jak while still having any money left over address glaring roster holes or to fill out the bench, especially given that trading picks to get Jak meant no steady flow of cheap talent coming in to the team through the draft. None of this made any sense at the time and there is no way to defend those decisions.

100%

And the proof is in the pudding. We were still the 7th worst team before trading OG and Siakam.

We were healthy for the first 60 games of the season. The recent train wreck will be excused by injuries but conceals how poorly constructed the roster is. I also don’t understand why we didn’t ship out GTJ and BB at the deadline, even for reduced returns. They have no future with the team and 1 year of BB won’t command a better return than 1.5 years of him.

Getting anything of value for GTJr involved taking on future money which they didn’t want to do as they wanted to maximize financial flexibility this summer.

No one was offering a 2025 first for BB. We’ll have to see what happens on draft night.