re: irl zion i think he doesn't have a feel for defense, which is not a dealbreaker for a perimeter player (c.f. harden, james) but it's tougher to build around with a big man. he also hasn't shown any kind of jump shot, like at all. outside of three feet (THREE!) he's 25 of 75, and he's shooting 65% from the line, and that's just not gonna cut it. nobody has the ball in their hands 100% of the time, and in the post 2004 nba world your defender is going to play 20 feet off you when it counts if you shoot that bad... and this is crucial because it goes back to point one; if you have one big man who can't defend you need to play another big man who can defend, and there's an extremely short supply of big men who can defend AND shoot, and if you can't get one of them you're playing two non shooters and that makes your life so, so much harder as an nba team
irl kevin love was a very good jump shooter period (let alone for a big man) and also couldn't play defense, and was a DRAMATICALLY better passer than zion, and he was on mediocre teams his whole career until he got on the Bron-Bron Express, and if your only plausible way to a title is to be on a team with a better player are you really a superstar? it's gonna be a no from me dawg
this also ties in with irl anthony davis - he has never had and still doesn't have a feel for defense. he reaches, he reacts, he keeps his feet planted. you gotta be there early, you gotta anticipate, you gotta keep your hands to yourself. he has visibly put in thousands of hours of practice time and is miles ahead of where he was as a rookie, but there's a hard ceiling on defense for a guy like that, and zion doesn't have anywhere near davis' length or in-game burst athleticism
could zion become a better jump shooter? absolutely. lots of players have become better jump shooters. could he stay the same or get worse as a jump shooter? absolutely. lots of players have stayed the same or gotten worse from where he is.
this is also putting aside, as odin points out, zion's body is throwing up every possible red flag for repeated and permanent break down. there are a lot of 6'6" 300 lb guys in the world, it's not a coincidence that 6'6" guys in the nba average 217 pounds, and that's WITH zion. people talk about charles barkley but chuck was listed at 252 baby
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expansion wise i think it's always worth looking, we've seen a few good players go in expansion but it is admittedly rare. i think it's imperative for a new gm to try and get at least a couple 2+ bird year players though because otherwise it can get very hard to match salary
tim and odin are right and you can never go wrong with inside scoring upgrades for a scorer. after that strength is never a bad choice, but i'd add that jump shot is a little better than strength for guards
on the scoring topic, if you have a scorer with a bad jump shot, it never hurts to upgrade jump shot.
i did an article! this does not mean that jump shot is the BEST upgrade, inside is still the best upgrade, just that there is a legitimate concern that 'well if i have a 100 inside 30 jumper guy and i upgrade jumper, he'll take more jumpers, could that hurt?' but it turns out no, it doesn't hurt, it helps
for the record 4.0 bill walton didn't leave in free agency, what happened (in the roleplay) was he shook my hand and promised to retire... and
didn't. i think my record shows the former 4.0 knick factor hasn't influenced me though, alfred butch lee junior legitimately was an elite college player which arguably could have made him an elite prospect at the time
which assistant coach to hire for competition is a legit question for sure, the one thing i would add is that "very fast" is not strictly an offensive coach but a
margin coach. if you have a middling offense and super elite defense that adds up to a great margin, in general you still want as many possessions as possible to bring that super elite defense to bear... but only against teams your margin is better than (which will generally be the case). if you're going up against a specific team with a super elite defense AND a super elite offense, the play is to slow it down as much as you can because that makes it more likely you pull off a fluke win. now, what complicates this further is that pace in the software is pretty linear but trap isn't. put another way, very fast is about as much an improvement to fast as fast is to normal, but always trap is a much bigger improvement to often as often is to normal
bottom line for me is there's no clear-cut choice for competing teams between those two, and i won't pretend i had that in mind all along but it is a good outcome for game theory
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okay. good pod 👍
