Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[Dundalis]

You are comparing him to players that took high volume three point shots and made them at a good percentage.  He does neither.  He takes less threes than PJ (and at a worse percentage).  His three point shot profile does not look that difficult.  Most of his shots are open or wide open.  He does take shots off the dribble but at 29% I'm not sure that's a good thing.  

His teams are consistently better on defense when he is off the court.  There may be some context I am missing there, but it has been consistent throughout his career.  To me he seems like a classic case of a player with a lot of talent but doesn't translate to positive on court impact.  The history of those kind of players turning it around is not good.  

If he ends up on this roster (especially at that cost) May will have to do a better job than Rick in getting more out of him.  Seems like a tall order.

He's obviously shot reasonably well from deep in smaller sample sizes, like his stint with Indy before the trade, and his second NBA season. He's also seemingly capable of quite good POA on ball defense (which his frame and atheltic ability should allow him to be), which he did for the Clippers, but gets lost off ball, which causes his defensive metrics to fall off.

I wouldn't be anymore excited for the move as I was (wasn't) for Risacher, even if they gave up fairly little for him, but I do feel like the tools for both shooting and defense are there, and may be a matter of something clicking with experience and maturity. The guy apparently mentioned in an interview how much help he was getting from some of the Clippers guys on refining his defense and how he wanted to be a great two way guy. Doesn't mean much, but at least his head is pointed in that direction. It's a flier on a guy with plenty of holes, but I feel like this type of profile is a little better to take the risk on than the guy with the clearly broken shot, who doesn't have the length, strength or athletic ability to ever be a decent defender. His ability to get to the line obviously gives him an efficiency buffer to work from even if he isn't shooting the ball well, which is why he has a decent 57% career TS.

Happy for this to never eventuate, and just focus on smaller asset acquisition moves, but I also see a path to it paying off if it is real just because of the specific traits he has. Would obviously be preferring to give up the likes of Klay and Martin in a deal like this rather than Gaff and definitely not PJ.