Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[ItsGoTime]

I am with you. Poetl has his fans here, but I’ve never been one of them. I totally get that he helps a ton with rebounding, but…is he even a pick and roll guy? THAT’s why Lively has gotten this chance and been so effective. I’m not so sure the Mavs would even be interested in Poetl. 

I’m also seeing a big disconnect between groups of us (fans). I started to make this point in a reply to IGT yesterday, but got distracted before finishing. There seem to be a group who thinks “48 minutes of center play” is the missing piece here. There are lots of different ways to look at that statement, but I’m not sure 48 minutes of Lively/Poetl (that you HAD to go with every night, for financial reasons) is what I’d want in the Mavs’ shoes. 

I could be totally wrong on this - just my feeling, but I think Kleber is the PERFECT complement to Lively as a backup, if only he’d play like the Kleber from two years ago. I haven’t given up on that idea…but even if the Mavs have, it kind of seems to me like they’d need to replace Kleber with a new, better Kleber. Physical and defensive, yes (Kleber used to be both of those things). Rebounding…Kleber has never been great there, so it would be easy to improve on him in that area. 

Point is, if they add a center, shouldn’t it be a guy who offers a way to play 5-out, giving them that option again? And if not, shouldn’t it be at least another guy who can play pick and roll, like Lively and Powell?

Ya, when I say 48 mins of great C play, I don’t literally mean a full 48 minutes every game for all games. I think we have a good smallball C option in GWill who can keep the 5 out dream alive. I’ve been also saying it lately, Isaiah Stewart has come on strong to begin this season shooting the 3, HE, I think, would be a great Maxi upgrade if after his % normalizes he can stay up there at or above league average. Eventually I think Lively will get to the point where he gets the green light to shoot 3’s as well as it seems that’s a part of his development.

I just really think that our defensive path forward with both Luka and Kyrie on the team is to choose rim protection and rebounding over perimeter defense. Not saying to give up on perimeter defense, just that when 2 of your 3-4 perimeter guys on the court are Luka and Kyrie, you can’t possibly think that having 1 guy out there is going to make that much of a difference.

We all see clearly how well this team works with Lively out there, I’d just like that to be the case for longer than Lively’s minutes (he’s averaging 24.3 mpg so there is a lot of time without him). 

I put out a list of guys I’d like to see as varying degrees of upgrade on Discord a couple days ago. At that time I hadn’t thought about Poeltl. I’m in between your thoughts and Dan’s on him. He is certainly the type of solid upgrade we could use for much of his proven game, but I don’t know enough about him to know if he is good for our offense. I do suppose if he is a hard worker, Luka and Kyrie can make the most out of effort. 

That list was (in no order):
Gafford
Hartenstein 
Allen
Capela
Stewart
Zubac

There are others I’m sure that I don’t have on that list too (especially some of these young up and comers), Poeltl probably should be there IMO.