Game 31 Dirkie Thread: Cooper Flagg!!!

[KillerLeft]

@noahweber00
Jason Kidd when asked about his recent comment on Anthony Davis getting back to playing power forward:

“I just said that we can look at it, not get back to it soon, just giving different options that we have to give Gaff a little bit more time on the floor. Because with AD at the five, it limits Gaff’s time. It’s gonna automatically knock him down to 15 to 17 minutes, so looking at the roster, to build a roster, you’ve gotta get him back to the four at some point in the game to give guys more time on the floor. But with the way we’re built right now, AD’s got to play the five. That gives us the best chance to win.”

On Davis and Daniel Gafford’s time together on the floor last night:

“Yeah, we’ll test it. It was tested, it failed the test last night, both offensively and defensively. We didn’t get any stops with the bigger lineup and we didn’t score. But we have to play it, and so if we can get some more time under that belt with our group we’ll have a better understanding if that group can play at a high level to help us win.”

Not sure this is the place for this discussion (not meaning you giving us the info, but rather my response to it), and it has basically ceased to matter at this point, with horrible guard play and injuries basically tanking this season in fewer than 20 games, but...

...man, this has my eyebrows raised. Lots of coded speak here, and this is EXACTLY what some of us were worried about all summer. Ironically, those on the other side of the argument will read something totally different in these words than I do, but to me, this is basically Kidd saying he can't play Gafford enough on this team, even WITHOUT Lively in the mix. He's overtly saying that the reason he feels the need to get Davis some time at the 4 is in order to get Gafford more time on the floor. Like, word for word. This is about hierarchy and pay scale. It's about roster balance. Even in the roster's current, injury-depleted state, Kidd can't play his best players together if he wants to win. 

The roster was not balanced properly. Most of us knew it. How much better would these first 30 games have gone if they had traded Gafford for an equivalent talent at PG when he signed his contract? I mean, even a slightly less than equivalent talent, but at PG? Instead, depth at ONE POSITION was prioritized over having ANY proven players at THE MOST IMPORTANT POSITION, to the point where an 18 year old was asked to learn the job on the fly, having never done so in his life. Thankfully, they figured out this was a bad idea quickly. Yes, the experiment helped and will continue to help Flagg develop quickly in certain ways, but how anyone thought this was going to translate to victories this season seems impossible to me in hindsight, and I speak as someone who was about 60% convinced I was crazy by the end of the summer. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Never again. If you don't have a PG, you don't have a basketball team.