08-19-2024, 01:22 PM
(08-19-2024, 01:09 PM)mvossman Wrote: This is more a question of depth than who gets penciled in as the backup PF. Maxi is probably the guy penciled in there, but my guess is that Naji plays more actual minutes in that role.
The question is what happens when say both Maxi and PJ are out? My guess is that the forward rotation will be 2 of Naji/Luka/Klay for any meaningful minutes (assuming Omax is not ready). That makes the lineup a little smaller, but really with Lively/Gafford at center its bigger than anything they WCF team could put out there. What backup PF are going to get that we would rather have on the court than one of those three guys?
I agree with your first point that its not really about backup PF minutes (or in my mind the backup PF position at all). This team has enough size that they can afford to miss a couple of players and still put a reasonably sized team on the court. I'm not sure why folks are still obsessed with making this team bigger. In the playoffs our easiest series was against the biggest team in the NBA (and that was without Maxi for most of it). The teams we struggled with (OKC, Boston) played much smaller. Besides, Naji is bigger than DJJ, Klay is bigger than THJ and Grimes and Din are as big or bigger than Green, Exum and Hardy. We already got bigger.
How can you count on Luka or Klay to get minutes at PF? If you do the math, we need 1,700 minutes of backup PF. That's a hole that can't be schemed. If you give Naji half his minutes last year for PF, you're still lacking 1,100 minutes. You can't count on Maxi.