Doesn’t really make sense to trade Powell at the moment (barring some highly unlikely no-brainer opportunity for a superstar acquisition).
Before he was signed to his current contract, he was on a gradual progression of improvement which could have made this current contract theoretically a high value asset … but the unfortunate injury set that timeline back quite a bit. His numbers started rising again though as the season went on and it looks like he’s getting back on track to become a positive asset again. Probably best to hold on to our Diamond for now until the shine is back.
Plus, having quality big man depth is never going to be a bad thing for any team building around habitual-DNP’r Kristaps Porzingis … and ultimately, might be a requirement.
Finally, it’s just a good idea in general to hold on to players who can consistently offer above-average production — especially when your team doesn’t have very many of them. Even tho this was a injury-recovering ‘down’ year for Powell of sorts, he was still only 1 of 4 players on the whole roster with a Player Efficiency Rating above average in both the regular and post season. And one of those 4 guys was Boban who is more of an extremely limited but potent tool which can only be utilized occasionally more so than be a long term consistent rotation guy.
So Dwight Powell and the other two consistently above-average producers, Jalen Brunson and Luka Doncic, are 3 of the type of pieces we need MORE of, not less of. Sometimes basketball can be simple. Get more good players. Get less bad players.
Before he was signed to his current contract, he was on a gradual progression of improvement which could have made this current contract theoretically a high value asset … but the unfortunate injury set that timeline back quite a bit. His numbers started rising again though as the season went on and it looks like he’s getting back on track to become a positive asset again. Probably best to hold on to our Diamond for now until the shine is back.
Plus, having quality big man depth is never going to be a bad thing for any team building around habitual-DNP’r Kristaps Porzingis … and ultimately, might be a requirement.
Finally, it’s just a good idea in general to hold on to players who can consistently offer above-average production — especially when your team doesn’t have very many of them. Even tho this was a injury-recovering ‘down’ year for Powell of sorts, he was still only 1 of 4 players on the whole roster with a Player Efficiency Rating above average in both the regular and post season. And one of those 4 guys was Boban who is more of an extremely limited but potent tool which can only be utilized occasionally more so than be a long term consistent rotation guy.
So Dwight Powell and the other two consistently above-average producers, Jalen Brunson and Luka Doncic, are 3 of the type of pieces we need MORE of, not less of. Sometimes basketball can be simple. Get more good players. Get less bad players.