Building Around Cooper: A Backward-Looking Thought Experiment

[F Gump]

Sorry, you guys, I don’t want to be mean, but I think you’re missing the point here.

Of course, PJ is a very good NBA player and, in a vacuum, for example, a much better player than Dort.

But the NBA is all about fit. If you have Flagg, who plays 40+ minutes in big games, and you also have PJ, who does almost exactly the same things as Flagg, just mostly worse, when does he play? They don’t really complement each other, so their strengths are redundant and their weaknesses get exacerbated.

I have mostly just observed the back-and-forth about PJW, as well as Naji and others, and their fit. But I think one major point is being misconstrued.

The idea re PJW and others not fitting with Flagg is based on the idea that the absence of Luka (and Kyrie) makes the team different, and therefore the pieces that were good around Luka are no longer good around Flagg. While that is true, the answer is not "so we need to get rid of PJW and all the others that need spacing and don't have it." Instead, the answer is to bring in more and better spacing-type ball handlers! 

Go find a new Luka (or of course the closest facsimile you can find) or 3!! That's the job, rather than selling all the good players for iffy picks.

Kyrie will be on the way. He's great at that. That will change things significantly, all by itself. The next thing is to use one of the big additions - I would suggest the lotto pick - to also add ANOTHER ball handler who provides shooting from distance while also creating offense. And maybe yet another with the MLE/TPE.

We all agree on the need for 3-and-D guys, and 2-way guys, to surround the guys who run the offense. But an offense needs a guy to command attention and open the floor for everyone else. 

Flagg himself will presumably get better at that. But he is not a great shooter yet. They need more of those shooter types in the creators.

The point being, once you do that, the PJWs and Naji's suddenly are great again. No need to sell them for pennies on the dollar, just fix the other stuff by upgrading the shooting in general being brought by the creators. THAT is the much better solution, and gets you where you want to go.