Non Knee-Jerk Takes

[DanSchwartzgan]

This is such a fantastic post. Thank you for this!

Thanks.  

It is difficult to find national guys saying anything positive about this, but I found one.  The NBA Podcast does once they get past all the Harden/Simmons stuff.  Not praise, but not hating it is as bad as the Twitter-world seems to.  Both guys have a substantial opportunity to rehab their value.  Basically two teams trading distressed assets and hoping they can do better with what they got.

Bertans had a really bad case of Covid last year which hurt him and didn’t have much of a role this year with all the changes and younger guys they are trying to bring along.  So, there is some upside there compared to recent performance.  They said something similar to you….80% of what you wanted from KP (floor spacing), for half the cost (obviously you aren’t getting any rim protection, but he probably slots next to Maxi in most of his minutes)

They also saw some upside to SD.  They like the fit with Luka much better than the fit with Beal.  Probably 15/5 guy with some cutting and midrange and getting to the line.  Beal doesn’t “bend defenses” like Luka does.  Not a star by any means, but two creators at all times is a good thing given the fact other players on this team can’t create for themselves (neither could KP).

Note, they didn’t say whether Dallas got enough for KP or not.  They were mainly talking about how they saw the two players fitting here and why we might have wanted them.

Some things I’ll be looking for.  In Brooklyn SD created 83% of his two pointers.  28% were taken from 0-3 feet and his FG% on those was .620.  This year it is only 15% of his shots and he’s shooting .573.  Need to see him getting to the basket more and be more successful as he is doing it.  For Bertans, it is MPG (which I think leads to better shooting percentages).  As bad as his 3 point shooting has been this year, he’s still .571 from the corners (which means he’s had an even bigger drop off from everywhere else).  His minutes have been crazy sporadic this season, but when he’s played 20 minutes or more, he’s been fine.  I looked back over the prior four seasons and similar pattern.  He’s a rhythm guy and needs PT to get that rhythm.