Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[Dirknows]

I've been thinking about this and the conversations yesterday about positions.  It is easy to dismiss "point Flagg" as a bad thing, but the truth is he is going to have a significant creation burden.  He created 60% of his two-point attempts and 30% of his three-point attempts.  When you add in his 21.5 Assist %, you are starting to define a forward position that creates for himself and for others.  Point Forward is one way of putting it, but that doesn't fully cover the scoring burden he has.  Scoring Forward doesn't quite cover the creation burden.  For my purposes here, I'm going to call it Creating Wing.

When you look at the rest of the team, Naji and Middleton have similar profiles in terms of both self creation and Assist %.  So, whatever you call the position, they fit it also (if Middleton is on the team).  Their Assist %'s were in the 15/16 range and both created over 50% of their two point attempts.  The only players who were higher in those areas are the "pure" point guards.  As the roster stands now, that probably includes Kyrie, Nembhard and Sasser.  Sasser has a high Assist % (21.9), but his self creation has been trending downward and was slightly under 50% last season.  Sergio has a high Assist % also (28.6%), but one of the knocks on him is how much his efficiency drops on self-created shots.

I would differentiate these Creating Guards from the Creating Wings by size and would differentiate them from the Christie's/Klay's of the world in terms of self creation.  Biberovic clearly belongs in the category with Christie and Klay.  Sergio is kind of a hybrid right now in that his creation for others makes him a Creating Guard, but his poor self creation makes him more of a Shooting Wing.

So, now we are starting to find ways of dividing players into positions.  We have:

Creating Wings:  Flagg, Naji (and maybe Middleton)
Creating Guards:  Kyrie, Sasser, Nembhard and maybe Sergio
Shooting Wings:  Christie, Klay, Biberovic and maybe Sergio

When you look at what we have done and have been rumored to have tried to do, it looks like we are going to also have a category I'll call Shooting Big.  Aldama fits.  I believe Morez will get there too (I think he will eventually be our starting "4" and will grow into a bigger offensive role than most of us visualize for him currently).  Hachimura would have fit this category as well.  PJ is the outlier here in terms of his 3 point ability.  But, it feels like the team is working pretty hard to make him obsolete.

Finally, we have the non-shooting bigs who will either screen and roll or generate opportunities from the dunkers spot.  These include Lively, Gafford and Cisse (if he's here).  Again, you can argue that Morez belongs here (and he may start here), but I think we will see that change as his game expands.  In terms of the youth movement, the positions play out as follows:

Creating Guards:  Sergio, Sasser, Nembhard
Creating Wings:  Flagg (Naji is 28)
Shooting Wings:  Christie, Biberovic
Shooting Bigs:  Morez, Aldama (25)
Non-shooting Bigs:  Lively, Cisse

Id honestly be fine if Sergio became a high assist point guard who can hit the spot up 3. Cooper is going to get all the isolation plays called for him anyways. It feels like the front office has high expectations for Sergio in year one. Also when you lay the team out like that, they better pray that Kyrie builds back a lot of trade value because that team outside of Flagg has very little talent. Obviously Morez, Biberovic and Sergio are still unknowns, Lively can’t stay healthy, Christie is ok as is Aldama. Masai made a big bet on Morez becoming more than just a rim running 5 on offense (his new Pascal project), time will tell if it pays off.