Most guys drafted that high aren't forced to beat out a veteran.
Scoot did earn it, he played great as a starter. Then he got benched.
People are complaining that Ant Grant Ayton serve no long term purpose here and are just in the way.
The sad part is we have multiple young players who have beaten out Grant all season long. But Grant still gets handed the starting spot, with big minutes and big shots.
I'm complaining because we have vets playing a ton of minutes helping us win games we should be losing.
Scoot and Sharpe are playing around 30 MPG recently and for the season. Thats not holding back their development, thats giving young guys plenty of minutes to figure it out. The team's two highest paid vets Grant and Ayton are missing entire games left and right for seemingly ticky tack tanking type injuries. Them missing games hurts what little chance management has at profiling them for trades. While I'm generally pro-tank as I'd like to see the next wave of a Blazer team feature as much top talent as possible, the players who suit up are always going to try to try their best to win. I could see it being problematic for the team's culture going forward if management was heavy handed in sitting the young difference making vets like Deni and Toumani too... is that really what you're advocating for? Deni is the one who has really upped his production of late and led the team to some wins. Having another playmaker who can also switch onto and D up a variety of players is proving very anti-tank. Playing Grant more over him would be more helpful (not less) to the tank effort. If that were to happen, my strong suspicion is that most of the same complaining posters would just shift what they're complaining about.
Should have traded Grant and Simons. Deni has been solid, but has he been better than a top 3 pick in this draft?
There is no realistic alternative. If we stop dipping high in to the draft you are either saying we can win championships with this team now, or we're counting on getting incredibly lucky to add talent (drafting a superstar or two late lotto or later), or we just actually don't care about winning a championship.
But again, as we've looked at before, you are between 2 and 3 times as likely to be "lucky" in top 5 as the next 10 spots.
Lol, the way you worded it fits your narrative that he got “benched”
But that's not an accurate indicator of building a championship caliber team.
Yet we couldn't trade for a star to help Dame for a decade. We didn't have enough talent.
Actually we could’ve we just didn’t
Maybe... I'm not convinced we're in a different situation now. I'd prefer sticking with the higher odds of adding talent.
Exactly, which goes to the fact that other posters have been saying, getting “lucky” in the draft is a huge part of things, when picking in the top 3 or top 10, and even outside of the top 10 at times like Joker and Giannis.
Nobody has denied any of this. We're going to have plenty of opportunities to get lucky like that.
How is that an obstacle... accept maybe in games where we play the Rockets??? What the fuck does Amen doing so well have to do with how well Scoot is doing? IMO in no way does Amen's great play take away from Scoot's.
Again, Grant has one of the worst contracts in the league... it's a long term financial anchor. At no point since he signed it, has he been tradable for anything other then similar overpriced mediocrity. I strongly suspect if Joe wanted to trade him for an expiring contract he'd have to include substantial draft capitol like a future 1st. Is that the sort of trade you'd have been down with?
I don't care about an expirating. We can bring back a similarly mediocre player or a worse player with a similarly bad contract. Or even just sit his ass for the season.
