Boston has a decision to make - AD?

[Bricklayer]

It's a bad move for the Pels.
They need the cap space and adding to it doesn't help.
With AD, Cousins, Cunningham (if he comes back), Diallo and Ajinca there is no minutes for Chandler or Asik.

I'd rather just stretch Asik than give up an asset.
It's not about just giving away a 20 something pick it's about what a meh move like this prevents us from doing in the future.

We can do better with the 2018 or 2019 pick than 40 year old Chandler.

However Bledsoe and Chandler for Asik, Ajinca, Q-pon and our 2018 would have me interested.

Sure, but its not realistic.

And no, Tyson Chandler is a major player. People have to get used to the idea that the Pels can and should no longer be a destination for random scrubs, D-leaguers and #20-something picks who maybe one day are your 8th-9th man. to whatever degree possible you want to turn your assets into major players or guys who have been major players now. Top talents, guys who know how to play. Its not the time to be cautious or nitpicking around the edges. Unfortunately that is all Demps has proven he can do. Hence the 6 straight years of pretty much sucking. But when you get two core stars its time to be more ambitious than that and start thinking like a top franchise, even if you are not. What would Pat Riley do? If he'd do it, so should you.

Chandler is a player who can flat add wins to a team with Cousins and A.D. on it. Not only eliminating almost all need for half scrubs like Ajinca (any 4th big minutes would more logically go to 4, possibly stretch), but also making the inevitable 8-10 games of Cousins or Davis ankle injuries a lot less damaging. If you were having to add $13mil to get him, then no. But when you are swapping Asik for him, you are barely adding $3mil for a major upgrade. If you factor in what you would have to pay that pick, you might not be adding in anything at all.

[Mythrol]

It's a bad idea because we don't need to give up a 1st for a backup center who is 35 and has a worse contract than our current old back up center.

The only way we should give up a 1st is for front court depth. Our bigs are set. To trade assets for more bigs is beyond terrible.

[Bricklayer]

It's a bad idea because we don't need to give up a 1st for a backup center who is 35 and has a worse contract than our current old back up center.

The only way we should give up a 1st is for front court depth. Our bigs are set. To trade assets for more bigs is beyond terrible.

You're trading a pick to lock down the frontcourt completely. No bad minutes. No shaky question marks. A complete strength that would dominate opposing frontlines 48 minutes of every game. Foul trouble is minimized. Injuries are skated over. Even healthy Boogie and Brow will only go about 72 of the 96 frontcourt minutes. That leaves half a game, 24 min, to be filled by somebody.

From that point onward every asset can be spent elsewhere and you don't even need to look up front. And that can be true for several years going forward. Got 48min at C and PF largely covered. When A.D. misses time, you don't stumble. When Boogie misses time, you don't stumble. Such a move could easily add maybe 3-4 wins over the course of a year at a total cost of $3 million dollar. And escaping the Asik contract. And Chandler is a former Hornet and former NBA champion and potential captain/co-captain of any bench defense.

Phoenix is like New Orleans or Sacramento in that right now people go there to die and disappear and nobody notices what they do. But Chandler did not look at all done.

This is what he was this past season:
27.6min 8.4pts (.671 --- .734) 11.5reb 0.6ast 0.7stl 0.5blk 1.4TO

Per36 (which would rarely be needed obviously):
11.0pts 14.9reb 0.8ast 0.9stl 0.7blk 1.9TO

his per36 in his best season for the Hornets back in the day?
12.0pts 12.0reb 1.0ast 0.6stl 1.1blk 1.8TO

If I came to you and said hey, you can add prime Hornets Chandler to your team for Omer Asik and $3 million would that sound interesting? Because those picks aren't going to determine the Pelicans fate. They really won't. By the time any future pick of the Pelicans is ready to do anything, their fate will be decided. You will have either succeeded and kept Boogie, or failed and lost him, and likely A.D. soon thereafter. And if you succeed, those picks are going to be late rounders.

I'm not ridiculously attached to that deal so much as was just using it as the sort of thing that can and should absolutely be done this offseason, and I'm certainly down with offering 2nds to make a deal like that happen if that's all it took, but no matter the pick used, those things are all just fungible assets at the moment. The Pelicans whole future gets determined in the next 12 months. Draft picks can only matter to that future if they are used in the present. You can of course hoard them "in case it goes wrong", but that very act of not going all in increases the chance it goes wrong, and you can draft for the next 100 years and never end up with 2 players of the caliber of A.D. and Boogie on your roster at the same time, in prime. Pels should be treating this like a team that thinks it has a chance at a ring this year. Because in most ways locking down the Boogie/Brow future IS the brass ring for the Pelicans. They do it, they get to matter for years. Maybe even contend. They don't...it's likely starting all over again and years and years of more suck.

[Mythrol]

No. We have bigger needs than trading a 1st for a 35 year old backup center. How can we even be certain that Chandler would shore it up? He only played in 46 games last year. Since turning 30 he's only played in over 66 games once. Heck in the last 10 years he's only done it two times. He is ancient in NBA terms and he is a big man that typically has a shorter career. Not to mention he was completely phased out of the Sun's offense post All-Star break.

There are only 48 minutes available for the center. Cousins plays 36 of that. So trade a 1st to lock down the other 12 minutes? Just stop.

Even if we expanded that to 96 minutes between PF and C that's 72 minutes covered by those two guys. That means we'd actually have to take away 12 minutes of AD and Cousins playing together to find the extra 12 minutes for Chandler to begin with. Also assuming we bring back Cunningham, which why wouldn't we, we have him, Diallo, Ajinca, and Asik to fill the other 24 minutes.

But let's go down this asinine path and trade our 1st for Chandler. Ok, great so we spent a 1st to give us AT MOST 24 minutes. Who's going to pass them the ball?

Guard depth is 1000x more important than spending a 1st on a player that can only play the position BOTH of our All-Star players can already.

It has nothing to do with keeping the pick. It has to do with we already have a loaded front court and a paper thin back court. Trade pick, fine. Heck trade with Phoenix, awesome. But trade for a guard not a backup center.

[AUSSIE_PELICAN]

No. We have bigger needs than trading a 1st for a 35 year old backup center. How can we even be certain that Chandler would shore it up? He only played in 46 games last year. Since turning 30 he's only played in over 66 games once. Heck in the last 10 years he's only done it two times. He is ancient in NBA terms and he is a big man that typically has a shorter career. Not to mention he was completely phased out of the Sun's offense post All-Star break.

There are only 48 minutes available for the center. Cousins plays 36 of that. So trade a 1st to lock down the other 12 minutes? Just stop.

Even if we expanded that to 96 minutes between PF and C that's 72 minutes covered by those two guys. That means we'd actually have to take away 12 minutes of AD and Cousins playing together to find the extra 12 minutes for Chandler to begin with. Also assuming we bring back Cunningham, which why wouldn't we, we have him, Diallo, Ajinca, and Asik to fill the other 24 minutes.

But let's go down this asinine path and trade our 1st for Chandler. Ok, great so we spent a 1st to give us AT MOST 24 minutes. Who's going to pass them the ball?

Guard depth is 1000x more important than spending a 1st on a player that can only play the position BOTH of our All-Star players can already.

It has nothing to do with keeping the pick. It has to do with we already have a loaded front court and a paper thin back court. Trade pick, fine. Heck trade with Phoenix, awesome. But trade for a guard not a backup center.

Thank you....saved me about 10 minutes of my life.

[Bricklayer]

No. We have bigger needs than trading a 1st for a 35 year old backup center. How can we even be certain that Chandler would shore it up? He only played in 46 games last year. Since turning 30 he's only played in over 66 games once. Heck in the last 10 years he's only done it two times. He is ancient in NBA terms and he is a big man that typically has a shorter career. Not to mention he was completely phased out of the Sun's offense post All-Star break.

There are only 48 minutes available for the center. Cousins plays 36 of that. So trade a 1st to lock down the other 12 minutes? Just stop.

Even if we expanded that to 96 minutes between PF and C that's 72 minutes covered by those two guys. That means we'd actually have to take away 12 minutes of AD and Cousins playing together to find the extra 12 minutes for Chandler to begin with. Also assuming we bring back Cunningham, which why wouldn't we, we have him, Diallo, Ajinca, and Asik to fill the other 24 minutes.

But let's go down this asinine path and trade our 1st for Chandler. Ok, great so we spent a 1st to give us AT MOST 24 minutes. Who's going to pass them the ball?

Guard depth is 1000x more important than spending a 1st on a player that can only play the position BOTH of our All-Star players can already.

It has nothing to do with keeping the pick. It has to do with we already have a loaded front court and a paper thin back court. Trade pick, fine. Heck trade with Phoenix, awesome. But trade for a guard not a backup center.

The difference in opinion here might stem from our different perspectives on the Pelicans.

Now I in no way hold up PER as the be-all and end-all of stats. I am going to use it here just because its clean, broadly illustrative of player values, and because what is a "good" or "bad" PER is well established and easy to work with (15 is league average). There are obvious asterisks that are always there, specifically for it not catching the value of defensive specialists and not always accurately valuing roleplayers, but still, here we go. All the Pelicans' PERs from last year (guys who left the team etc. I'll list at the end just to keep the list relevant for current purposes):

Davis 27.5
Cousins 25.9 (23.3 with Pels)
Crawford 17.6
Holiday 17.1
Diallo 16.8 (199 min)
---------------------------------
Ajinca 12.9
Frazier 12.4
Moore 12.1
Cunningham 10.2
Asik 9.8
Hill 8.0


Others:
Goodwin 19.7
Jones 16.2
Evans 15.8
Cook 15.3
Williams 11.7
Galloway 11.2
Stephensen 10.3
Selden 10.0
Casspi 10.0
Hield 9.9
Montiejunas 9.2
Toupane 8.6
Jack 7.7
Brown 5.9
Thompson 4.7


Ok, now for my money all of those players, and all of those minutes, below that dotted line should be in red font. A 12.0 PER guy is at VERY best drab and low tier functional (I should say sans terrific defense). By the time you hit a 10.0 you are talking about seriously unproductive guys chewing up minutes. You get enough guys who are that poor chewing up enough minutes, and you will be a bad team.

In any case, as I mentioned in an earlier post, there are going to be roughly 24 big man minutes a game not eaten up by Davis and Cousins. And that's when both guys are healthy, which given their history, is unlikely to be the whole season. In any case, each team has 48x5 = 240 total minutes a game, so roughly 1/10 of your total minutes are going to be played by non-A.D./Boogie bigs. And while I noted that PER is an abstraction, it's not THAT much of an abstraction, and often bears an uncanny resemblance to what you might arrive upon just watching the games. If you have guys of the caliber of Cunningham, Asik (who BTW years ago when he used to be useful was about a 14-15 PER guy), and Ajinca filling those minutes, then 10% of your minutes are going to inferior subpar players that are costing you points and possessions through bad defense, rebounding, inefficient scoring, whatever.

Again, just using PER, let alone the logic of knowing that Chandler has been a major center and former DPOY/All-Star, Chandler carries to this day a 16.6PER, right on his career of 16.4. It should be an obvious upgrade over the random bodies of the week filling out the Pels roster (if you trusted PER more than I do you could even say a 25%-40% improvement). You could improve 10% of your team's minutes by making that move. That's far from nothing.

The team needs a lot of help. It obviously does need guards. The late season signing of Crawford might be the only piece you'd really be excited about returning. but you would have to show me a realistic proposal where Asik's dead money contract could be used as a base to get any guard of note that would help. To the contrary, I think its a net negative and borderline unmoveable unless you get inventive. My little proposal was not meant to singlehandedly address all of the Pels problems, but it was meant to address something that the numbers suggest is A problem. Eliminate it, and maybe you need to be a little less perfect with your guard moves, and you stiffen up the interior defense to such a degree you don't end to find as many scorers the other way.

[AUSSIE_PELICAN]

The difference in opinion here might stem from our different perspectives on the Pelicans.

Now I in no way hold up PER as the be-all and end-all of stats. I am going to use it here just because its clean, broadly illustrative of player values, and because what is a "good" or "bad" PER is well established and easy to work with (15 is league average). There are obvious asterisks that are always there, specifically for it not catching the value of defensive specialists and not always accurately valuing roleplayers, but still, here we go. All the Pelicans' PERs from last year (guys who left the team etc. I'll list at the end just to keep the list relevant for current purposes):

Davis 27.5
Cousins 25.9 (23.3 with Pels)
Crawford 17.6
Holiday 17.1
Diallo 16.8 (199 min)
---------------------------------
Ajinca 12.9
Frazier 12.4
Moore 12.1
Cunningham 10.2
Asik 9.8
Hill 8.0


Others:
Goodwin 19.7
Jones 16.2
Evans 15.8
Cook 15.3
Williams 11.7
Galloway 11.2
Stephensen 10.3
Selden 10.0
Casspi 10.0
Hield 9.9
Montiejunas 9.2
Toupane 8.6
Jack 7.7
Brown 5.9
Thompson 4.7


Ok, now for my money all of those players, and all of those minutes, below that dotted line should be in red font. A 12.0 PER guy is at VERY best drab and low tier functional (I should say sans terrific defense). By the time you hit a 10.0 you are talking about seriously unproductive guys chewing up minutes. You get enough guys who are that poor chewing up enough minutes, and you will be a bad team.

In any case, as I mentioned in an earlier post, there are going to be roughly 24 big man minutes a game not eaten up by Davis and Cousins. And that's when both guys are healthy, which given their history, is unlikely to be the whole season. In any case, each team has 48x5 = 240 total minutes a game, so roughly 1/10 of your total minutes are going to be played by non-A.D./Boogie bigs. And while I noted that PER is an abstraction, it's not THAT much of an abstraction, and often bears an uncanny resemblance to what you might arrive upon just watching the games. If you have guys of the caliber of Cunningham, Asik (who BTW years ago when he used to be useful was about a 14-15 PER guy), and Ajinca filling those minutes, then 10% of your minutes are going to inferior subpar players that are costing you points and possessions through bad defense, rebounding, inefficient scoring, whatever.

Again, just using PER, let alone the logic of knowing that Chandler has been a major center and former DPOY/All-Star, Chandler carries to this day a 16.6PER, right on his career of 16.4. It should be an obvious upgrade over the random bodies of the week filling out the Pels roster (if you trusted PER more than I do you could even say a 25%-40% improvement). You could improve 10% of your team's minutes by making that move. That's far from nothing.

The team needs a lot of help. It obviously does need guards. The late season signing of Crawford might be the only piece you'd really be excited about returning. but you would have to show me a realistic proposal where Asik's dead money contract could be used as a base to get any guard of note that would help. To the contrary, I think its a net negative and borderline unmoveable unless you get inventive. My little proposal was not meant to singlehandedly address all of the Pels problems, but it was meant to address something that the numbers suggest is A problem. Eliminate it, and maybe you need to be a little less perfect with your guard moves, and you stiffen up the interior defense to such a degree you don't end to find as many scorers the other way.

Thanks for the effort, but why spend all that money and a 1st on Chandler, just to dump Asik?
You can stretch him and then use the money you have saved + the 2018 pick on wings and guards.
Ajinca, even though his PER is below average is still reasonable for 5M per year.
If we are relying on Chandler or Asik or Ajinca to log minutes at the C position because Davis and/or Cousins have been injured then we are ***** anyway and that pick you just traded for a 36 year old Chandler just came in handy!!

[Mythrol]

None of that matters. We have no *back* court starters if we lose Jrue.

It's absolutely insane to trade a 1st for a backup center who is 35 when we don't even have starting guards locked in.

This isn't a difference of opinion where both points have a valid argument. You are just WAY off in wanting to spend what little resources we have on a backup center.

We were already a top 10 defense last year. Adding an aging defensive center who played only 46 games last year and is owed more money than Asik while giving up a 1st round pick is not only a waste of an asset but a huge risk. Chandler is only going to continue to get worse and will be 38 when his contract ends. As center.

Go back and look at your own list of our players. How many guards/wings below the dotted line will be getting minutes if we don't add more talent there. That should be all the evidence you need to see spending assets on a big is insane this summer.

Instead of being worried about the 10% of the minutes of backup bigs I'm far more worried about the other 50-60% of the minutes by our starting guards and wing.

[Tinman]

None of that matters. We have no front court starters if we lose Jrue.

It's absolutely insane to trade a 1st for a backup center who is 35 when we don't even have starting guards locked in.

This isn't a difference of opinion where both points have a valid argument. You are just WAY off in wanting to spend what little resources we have on a backup center.

We were already a top 10 defense last year. Adding an aging defensive center who played only 46 games last year and is owed more money than Asik while giving up a 1st round pick is not only a waste of an asset but a huge risk. Chandler is only going to continue to get worse and will be 38 when his contract ends. As center.

Go back and look at your own list of our players. How many guards/wings below the dotted line will be getting minutes if we don't add more talent there. That should be all the evidence you need to see spending assets on a big is insane this summer.

Instead of being worried about the 10% of the minutes of backup bigs I'm far more worried about the other 50-60% of the minutes by our starting guards and wing.

C'mon, Mythrol! I know, that you know that JRUE is NOT a FRONT court starter. RIGHT?

[Mythrol]

C'mon, Mythrol! I know, that you know that JRUE is NOT a FRONT court starter. RIGHT?

It was nearly 3am when I typed that. Sometimes wrong words are typed.

[Tinman]

It was nearly 3am when I typed that. Sometimes wrong words are typed.

Stop typing at 3am, then!

[Mythrol]

Stop typing at 3am, then!

Yes Mother.