He was awesome in college. Very few freshman guards are even close to as good as he was in his year at Washington, and pretending he wasn’t good is dumb. He was a very good passer and a high level shot maker with an advanced handle and terrific positional size.

They drafted him because he was clearly the best prospect. If he had turned out to be as good as he was expected to be, the fit between him and Simmons would have been fine, at least good enough to justify the pick.

It seems highly unlikely that Houston is offering both Eric Gordon and P.J. Tucker. If they’re mortgaging their future, they certainly want to give themselves the best possible shot of winning now, and that involves keeping Tucker.

Nah, I thought it was from the baseline camera angle but it’s not. If you look at the play from the normal camera angle, he keeps his right foot down the whole time, before jumping at the end, and passing before he lands. So no travel.

The greatest strength of the American sports leagues right now compared to their European counterparts is parity. Getting rid of the draft would be an awful idea.

I think he really deserved those All-D teams, all of the team and individual metrics point towards him being one of the very best defenders in the NBA. He had obviously declined from his peak, but at his peak he was one of five or so best defenders in NBA history. Even after his decline he was still an incredible…

Calling him a great defender in spurts undersells him, he was one of the very best defenders in the league. He made All-D teams for Boston in 09', 11', and 12' (as well as 08', obviously). I’m usually not a huge proponent of judging players purely by their accolades, but the advanced stats love him and the Boston D,…

This is an extremely wrong take, Garnett was never quite as good after his 2009 injury, but he was still a phenomenal basketball player. Certainly much better than anybody else Rondo played with until he was teammates with AD this past season.

You might have missed it, but Blake Griffin happens to be in one of those pictures

He finished a stellar 370th in RAPM last year, so... yeah. He’s not very good. His biggest problem is that he can’t (or won’t) play off the ball on offense, which is unfortunate because that’s absolutely his ideal role on that end. He should be spotting up, attacking closeouts, and being a terror in transition, but…

The issue in this case was more that Thibs doesn’t really know who his best players are. Jeff Teague and Tyus Jones are both starting caliber point guards.

Minny isn’t taking back Whiteside unless they can get rid of Dieng. Dragic is Miami’s best player, but he’s 32 and Minny needs wings more than point guards, so it seems unlikely. Either Winslow or Richardson would certainly be involved in any deal for Butler. Miami would probably prefer to keep Richardson and deal…

Jimmy Butler wants to be traded to a team that can afford a free agent like KAT, but that does not mean Jimmy Butler wants to play on *any* team that has or can afford to have a free agent like KAT. It seems like Butler and KAT really do not like each other at all and would prefer not to play together. Additionally,…

And this is exactly why you don’t draft a running back second overall, especially when you’re starting a replacement level QB and have one of the three worst O-lines in the league. There’s just no point. Taking running backs that high pretty much never works out, even when they turn out to be good, and Barkley is good.…

I mean you can be shitty and exciting at the same time. Plenty of young players are! The problem for Wiggins is that after 4 years of NBA basketball, he still hasn’t come close to figuring out most of the basic stuff that he needs to be even a decent starting wing, which is a little worrying. At some point it becomes…

Do you know his stats? Was he an All-Star? I mean, it doesn’t matter. But last year, I was First Team All-WNBA, which only goes to five players. I was also a WNBA All-Star for the third time.

I think I’d go the other way. I expect the Spurs to produce another middling offense. DeRozan helps a little bit on that end, but Aldridge is probably not going to produce at the same level as last year. I can’t imagine the defense being in the top 10 without Green and Anderson. Murray is great, but he can’t play too…

I’d say the main difference is that the Raptors won’t allow him to control his own rehab like the Spurs did. They don’t care about ruining the relationship with Kawhi since he’s probably not re-signing anyway. They won’t allow him to sit out without a legitimate reason.

Kawhi doesn’t want to be there, but what can he do? He’s not sitting out the season. He’s in a contract year and I’d wager that he’ll probably look a lot like the Kawhi of 2016-17, in which case Toronto made a great move.

Green is expiring and a bargain at $10M. He was included to match salaries, not because the Spurs wanted to dump him.