Everything Non-Raptors 23-24 Season

[G______Deane]

With the first pick of the 2024 WNBA draft, the Indiana Fever select.....Caitlin Clark.

Well done, I wish her luck.

[TrueTorontoFan]

It's funny but Lebron ended up with a better 3pt% than Steph this year. Does that mean he's a better shooter?

Lebron - 41.0%
Steph - 40.8%

Of course Lebron took 5.1 attempts and Steph took 11.8 attempts, and Steph's shots are typically harder. Need to always look at context with these kinds of things. I like Grayson too, but if he was a Raptor he would have looked super mediocre IMO.

he would have been better but to your point he wouldn't have shot 50% from deep. Though he is a career 40% shooter. He is a proper 3 and D guard/wing type.

[planetmars]

he would have been better but to your point he wouldn't have shot 50% from deep. Though he is a career 40% shooter. He is a proper 3 and D guard/wing type.

3 and D implies he can play defense. Grayson Allen has a DRTG of 113.9. That's last among all rotation players on the Suns. 5th last for the entire team including 3rd stringers. That's just one stat and defense is hard to produce a statistical value to. But I never considered him a good defender.

He's a C&S 3 point shooter. That's his role and he excelled at it, but was also playing next to KD and Booker this season. And Giannis last season. If you are playing the Suns the best tactic would be to single him out on defense and go at him. If his 3pt shooting is in the 40% range but plays for a bad team like the Raptors he'd pretty much produce similar numbers to Gary IMO.

[TrueTorontoFan]

3 and D implies he can play defense. Grayson Allen has a DRTG of 113.9. That's last among all rotation players on the Suns. 5th last for the entire team including 3rd stringers. That's just one stat and defense is hard to produce a statistical value to. But I never considered him a good defender.

He's a C&S 3 point shooter. That's his role and he excelled at it, but was also playing next to KD and Booker this season. And Giannis last season. If you are playing the Suns the best tactic would be to single him out on defense and go at him. If his 3pt shooting is in the 40% range but plays for a bad team like the Raptors he'd pretty much produce similar numbers to Gary IMO.

except they have no center playing defence at any consistent level. fair point though. I think he would be better than gary ... but not so much better that it makes any similar difference.

[DanH]

except they have no center playing defence at any consistent level. fair point though. I think he would be better than gary ... but not so much better that it makes any similar difference.

If it means anything, this year Gary had a better D-EPM than Allen by a decent margin.

I think they are ultimately fairly similar players, but also that guys get paid on actual results (team and individual) and at the moment (when the two are getting paid) Allen has a significant edge there, so Gary may be worth a similar amount but should get paid a bit less, even if you think Allen did the Suns a bit of a favor taking that deal instead of hitting free agency.

Seems to me there's a pretty rock solid window of pay for Gary, with the MLE (13.8M AAV) as an absolute floor and Allen's deal (17.5M AAV) as an absolute ceiling. And he probably lands near the middle of that, maybe skewing to the bottom end.

Then the question is whether a deal like that makes sense for the Raps, and I think it pretty clearly does, the only exception being if they actually had a quality target they wanted to use a bigger chunk of cap space on.

[Primer]

If it means anything, this year Gary had a better D-EPM than Allen by a decent margin.

I think they are ultimately fairly similar players, but also that guys get paid on actual results (team and individual) and at the moment (when the two are getting paid) Allen has a significant edge there, so Gary may be worth a similar amount but should get paid a bit less, even if you think Allen did the Suns a bit of a favor taking that deal instead of hitting free agency.

Seems to me there's a pretty rock solid window of pay for Gary, with the MLE (13.8M AAV) as an absolute floor and Allen's deal (17.5M AAV) as an absolute ceiling. And he probably lands near the middle of that, maybe skewing to the bottom end.

Then the question is whether a deal like that makes sense for the Raps, and I think it pretty clearly does, the only exception being if they actually had a quality target they wanted to use a bigger chunk of cap space on.

Two exceptions for me.

If we keep our top 6 pick and take a guard, probably makes sense to let Gary go so we have minutes to develop that player. It was already tough enough getting Gradey minutes when the whole team was healthy, and Gradey will need more minutes next year, leaving even less minutes to go around to the draft pick if we bring Gary back. This may apply for the Pacers pick too. If we draft Carter there I'd want plenty of minutes available to develop him at the NBA level, not just in G League. Gary requires nearly 30mpg for him to be worth the salary, and I don't know if winning some more games next season is worth glueing our draft pick(s) to the bench. If we lose the pick this year and have our 2025 pick, being slightly worse by developing a rookie makes even more sense.

I do think there are also several free agent targets worth going after over Gary. We need bigs. I'd much rather pay Jalen Smith $15M per year over Gary as one example.

[DanH]

Two exceptions for me.

If we keep our top 6 pick and take a guard, probably makes sense to let Gary go so we have minutes to develop that player. It was already tough enough getting Gradey minutes when the whole team was healthy, and Gradey will need more minutes next year, leaving even less minutes to go around to the draft pick if we bring Gary back. This may apply for the Pacers pick too. If we draft Carter there I'd want plenty of minutes available to develop him at the NBA level, not just in G League. Gary requires nearly 30mpg for him to be worth the salary, and I don't know if winning some more games next season is worth glueing our draft pick(s) to the bench. If we lose the pick this year and have our 2025 pick, being slightly worse by developing a rookie makes even more sense.

I do think there are also several free agent targets worth going after over Gary. We need bigs. I'd much rather pay Jalen Smith $15M per year over Gary as one example.

I don't think it's really picking a free agent over Gary. If we want Jalen we just keep Gary and use the MLE to sign Jalen.

Point taken on keeping playing time open for rookies. But even then it may be better to bring them along slowly, let them earn the playing time (Gradey sure benefited from the way we dealt with this season after just handing him minutes early) and trade someone if we really need to open up more playing time.

Much more clarity on all these topics after the lotto and of course the draft itself.

[Primer]

I don't think it's really picking a free agent over Gary. If we want Jalen we just keep Gary and use the MLE to sign Jalen.

Point taken on keeping playing time open for rookies. But even then it may be better to bring them along slowly, let them earn the playing time (Gradey sure benefited from the way we dealt with this season after just handing him minutes early) and trade someone if we really need to open up more playing time.

Much more clarity on all these topics after the lotto and of course the draft itself.

I don't think the MLE is enough to get Jalen, he will have a lot of suitors and we'd need to go above MLE to get him to choose us. That's the case for any free agent worth signing. We finally have the ability to go above MLE and make ourselves more attractive than other teams, I'd rather not waste that opportunity by bringing Gary back and having to settle for someone crappy with our MLE. If you think Gary is worth $15M+ then Jalen sure as shit is worth that much too.

We like to pretend Gary is this super tradeable contract but that was just proven false very recently. So if our plan is to once again overpay to keep Gary and then magically assume other teams will line up to trade for that contract, I think that's a bad plan.

[TomAmnot]

Jalen Smith should be our priority IMO.

[Kagemusha]

Can we have a playoffs thread?
We need some excitement here.
This season has been turrible.

[Primer]

Can we have a playoffs thread?
We need some excitement here.
This season has been turrible.

[TomAmnot]

A countdown to NBA draft lottery day would also be pretty cool

[Kagemusha]

Please do the honours.
Or maybe Claw?

[TrueTorontoFan]

Two exceptions for me.

If we keep our top 6 pick and take a guard, probably makes sense to let Gary go so we have minutes to develop that player. It was already tough enough getting Gradey minutes when the whole team was healthy, and Gradey will need more minutes next year, leaving even less minutes to go around to the draft pick if we bring Gary back. This may apply for the Pacers pick too. If we draft Carter there I'd want plenty of minutes available to develop him at the NBA level, not just in G League. Gary requires nearly 30mpg for him to be worth the salary, and I don't know if winning some more games next season is worth glueing our draft pick(s) to the bench. If we lose the pick this year and have our 2025 pick, being slightly worse by developing a rookie makes even more sense.

I do think there are also several free agent targets worth going after over Gary. We need bigs. I'd much rather pay Jalen Smith $15M per year over Gary as one example.

I like hartenstein if they dont get a big tyus jones may not be reachable since he wants to start

[DanH]

I don't think the MLE is enough to get Jalen, he will have a lot of suitors and we'd need to go above MLE to get him to choose us. That's the case for any free agent worth signing. We finally have the ability to go above MLE and make ourselves more attractive than other teams, I'd rather not waste that opportunity by bringing Gary back and having to settle for someone crappy with our MLE. If you think Gary is worth $15M+ then Jalen sure as shit is worth that much too.

We like to pretend Gary is this super tradeable contract but that was just proven false very recently. So if our plan is to once again overpay to keep Gary and then magically assume other teams will line up to trade for that contract, I think that's a bad plan.

I would agree that Smith is more valuable on the court. I disagree that he'll have a significantly better market than Gary. Raw production still drives prices and Smith played under 18 minutes a game this year. I think the question with Smith is more whether a team actually offers the full MLE rather than whether a team offers more than it, whereas with Gary it's the latter. They SHOULD offer more for Smith, but history suggests they are more likely to with an established bench gunner than a low minutes backup big no matter the upside of each.

What exactly proved that Gary was not on a super tradeable contract? They likely could have traded him at any time, just not for value. Largely because he's been on an expiring deal for two straight seasons. In any case, if we sign Gary, it's so he can be here shooting and spreading the floor for Scottie et al, not to create a thing to trade.