Just figured I'd drop this here for anyone who hasn't seen it. It's from the latest In The N.O. Pod, where Shamit and Mason are talking about the Jrue-to-Denver-trade. The trade they're discussing is the one that was floated in the media: Gary Harris + Malik Beasley + Unprotected 1st. MPJ off limits.
Shamit: ''I mean, I feel like if I want unprotected picks I'd want the pick the year after Jrue's contract expires. So, like, the 2022 unprotected first round pick. That's what I'd be aiming for, if that's what I wanted. But my larger problem with that trade is just the players. The players are just not that good. I think Gary Harris is aggressively mediocre and I really, I genuinely do not think he's producing at a higher level than E'twaun Moore right now.''
Mason: ''Okay.''
Shamit: ''He is 6 foot 3, 6 foot 4, he was supposed to be a good shooter but he's had one good shooting year, one above average shooting year, and then his last two years he's shot a combined 32% from 3. This year he's averaging 10 points a game, 2.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists. I mean like, your defense has to be all world for me to be like okay that's a guy I wanna take a chance on.''
Mason: ''Sounds like Solomon Hill, man.''
Shamit: ''He's 25 years old. Like, that's not old but he's not a young prospect anymore. So that's Gary Harris. Then you have Malik Beasley who is buried in their rotation so we don't know if he's really good or not because he doesn't get any consistent minutes, he can score the ball but again he doesn't really contribute when it comes to rebounding, he doesn't really assist, um, I don't expect his defense to be phenomenal. He's a decent shooter from 3, and he is due for a payday. He's in the last year of a $2.7m contract and then he's an RFA. So what do you do with this? So then you have Gary Harris, Malik Beasley, and on your roster you have E'twaun Moore, which he's here now, Josh Hart, JJ Redick, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Frank Jackson... and then Didi waiting in the wings, you have like 7 shooting guards. That are all about 6'4, and they all do the same thing. That would be a terrible trade. Unless I could combine them into like, one Bradley Beal -''
Mason: ''There it is [laughs]''
Shamit: ''Why would I wanna do this trade? Those picks aren't going to do anything for me. The only reason you make that trade is if someone else either values your current players or these players and you're flipping them for players of need because when you move Jrue Holiday, you're moving your singular best perimeter defender. Your only guy who is checking the opponents best player defensively; I don't wanna hear it about Lonzo Ball, he's not picking up those players. He's gotten better defensively, but it's not his game to guard 1-4 and shut them down. Ingram, we've talked about it, I'd say he's one of the lower defensive players for his position, he's not very good on that end, and you don't want him defending a lot of those players if he's going to be doing so much on the other end. Zion Williamson is a rookie and is clearly out of position all the time, you can't expect him to be that guy. Jrue's your only perimeter defender.
So you replace him with a bunch of 6'4 guys and like, Jrue's 6'4 but unlike other 6'4 guys he can play bigger than his size, and then you're removing the only guy on the roster that is able and willing to consistently run a pick and roll. I know Brandon Ingram has gotten a lot better at it and he's gotten really good at scoring out of it, but when it comes to setting the table for others out of it, there still isn't a guy on Jrue's level on this team yet. So you're replacing 2 important skillsets, with skillsets you already have on the roster. What is the difference between Gary Harris and Josh Hart right now? Hart is averaging 10.6 points, the same as Gary Harris. He's shooting better from 3. He's averaging 6 rebounds per game. He's playing less minutes.''
Mason: ''Yeah, I was going to say that the per 36 minutes [for Hart] go up even further from there.''
Shamit: ''Yeah so you already have Gary Harris on your roster. His name is Josh Hart.''
Mason: ''Yeah I mean... that's a... not to say that Gary Harris isn't an all around better player than Josh Hart, but that's certainly doing a disservice to Josh Hart in certain areas of Hart's game. Whether that's overall hustle, rebounding -''
Shamit: ''You have hustle, you have rebounding, you have tenacity in transition, I mean he's probably the best transition finisher outside of Zion on this team. I would rather give all those minutes to Hart than invest in Gary Harris.''
This is just a segment. Obviously I recommend listening to the entire pod because it's great. But there's just a segment directly relevant to this thread. They also talk about other trade possibilities, and other players [Favors, Moore, Redick, for example] so it's definitely a good listen. But I figured this was a really good breakdown of a probable Denver offer.