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At the end of the day some people just have a clear agenda with Valanciunas. Doesn't matter what evidence there is, it will never be justified in their minds to move him to the bench. And the same sets of data will always be interpreted in favor of starting him even when they don't indicate that's necessarily the right way to go about things.
If you want to talk about maximizing the team and our players. You have a guy who can contribute a lot offensively, particularly in pick and roll and in the post. He can likely handle a 25%+ usage typical of a sixth man (Kanter's at over 27% in OKC) and produce a lot of offense while really helping Norm and Wright and co. off the bench. That kind of offensive workload will not come when a significant portion of his minutes are played with three guys ahead of him in the pecking order. That's where Poeltl would fit in better. We drafted him because he has two way potential and already looked quite good last year defensively. However, he has nowhere near Val's offensive game at the moment, for now, offensively he's mainly just a garbageman who will take baskets as they come, and tbh that's what we need with Lowry-DD-Ibaka soaking up ~80% usage on their own.
We say he's not utilized properly on offense and doesn't have a big enough role. Well this is how he can get a bigger role in the offense. Playing more with Wright especially, who's definitely going to be looking to him more offensively in those bench units than Joseph would have been, and limiting the minutes where he's on the court with our 1st, 2nd and 3rd options offensively.
Reality is he is a net minus player defensively at a position where that can't really be afforded unless you are an offensive juggernaut (Towns, Jokic, etc). As a 6th man that becomes less of an issue which is why we've seen that done with comparable guys to JV like Monroe and Kanter.
EDIT:
What's funny and hypocritical about this is, that if JV was carrying a 34% usage and scoring 27ppg with 2 other starters scoring 20ppg and 15ppg with high usage, and DeMar was the 4th option offensively, people would definitely be advocating for moving him to a 6th man role.
If you want to talk about maximizing the team and our players. You have a guy who can contribute a lot offensively, particularly in pick and roll and in the post. He can likely handle a 25%+ usage typical of a sixth man (Kanter's at over 27% in OKC) and produce a lot of offense while really helping Norm and Wright and co. off the bench. That kind of offensive workload will not come when a significant portion of his minutes are played with three guys ahead of him in the pecking order. That's where Poeltl would fit in better. We drafted him because he has two way potential and already looked quite good last year defensively. However, he has nowhere near Val's offensive game at the moment, for now, offensively he's mainly just a garbageman who will take baskets as they come, and tbh that's what we need with Lowry-DD-Ibaka soaking up ~80% usage on their own.
We say he's not utilized properly on offense and doesn't have a big enough role. Well this is how he can get a bigger role in the offense. Playing more with Wright especially, who's definitely going to be looking to him more offensively in those bench units than Joseph would have been, and limiting the minutes where he's on the court with our 1st, 2nd and 3rd options offensively.
Reality is he is a net minus player defensively at a position where that can't really be afforded unless you are an offensive juggernaut (Towns, Jokic, etc). As a 6th man that becomes less of an issue which is why we've seen that done with comparable guys to JV like Monroe and Kanter.
EDIT:
What's funny and hypocritical about this is, that if JV was carrying a 34% usage and scoring 27ppg with 2 other starters scoring 20ppg and 15ppg with high usage, and DeMar was the 4th option offensively, people would definitely be advocating for moving him to a 6th man role.
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