A number of random thoughts:
- I remain somewhat skeptical on Smart. I like a lot of stuff but the offensive inefficiency is likely a pretty big problem, depending on who you’re subbing out.
- Separate from the above, I’m also skeptical about a Bojan move, depending on who we get, as it’s going to be a bigger hit to our overall offense than people think.
- Making the trade be Bojan for Smart may be catastrophic on its own.
- In an ideal world, I’d swap out Royce for Smart and that would be an upgrade in all ways. Royce is our third in minutes and he starts and closes. He’s different than the rest of our guys and he’s often overlooked as an upgrade spot because “we need more guys like Royce, not less.”
- It could be really good to move Bojan for Smart if you’re able to reroute the trash salary we get from Boston, +/- JC, and whatever draft compensation they give us, to the Clippers for Marcus Morris. Then that makes you legit because Morris can fill the offensive void of what a lot of things you lose with Bojan.
- Our team is staying afloat (if you want to call it that) by our offense. Don’t overestimate the impact of upgrading just the personnel. We’re still prone to the same mental collapses even with improved defense. We’ll just have less offense to sustain that. As long as you have Quin, you will have those vulnerabilities. KOC used to trope about how “sometimes the best move is no move.” Well, sometimes the best move is firing the ****ing coach. We’re all going to pretend that an offense for defense swap is going to move the needle but I’m telling you it won’t move the needle on our vulnerabilities unless we’re able to massively upgrade (like getting both Smart and Morris).
- The only other alternative is if you upgraded Royce’s spot to Smart, which is only theoretical.
- Easiest move is firing the coach. Last year was kind of like booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip with your buddy to Machu Picchu. You do all the work to get there, pay all the airline and travel costs, pay for food, and your buddy handles the reservation. When you get there, you find out that your buddy didn’t actually make the reservation to go to Machu Picchu and even though you came all that way, you won’t be going to the destination you’ve been planning all this time. If you vent about this, all of his ******* friends tell you “bro, look at the awesome trip you got to go on!” This is exactly what DL did to us last year, and it’s exactly what Quin is going to do to us now and next year, and soon our window will close. Eventually you have to learn that it’s better to fire your ****ing friend and make those reservations yourself, even if you have to take the trip alone or even find someone else for company where you’ll carry their weight.
Tl;dr a move for Smart could sink Quin’s ability to do what he does. Same thing for trading Bojan. The combination of the two could spell disaster for Quin not having the right arrows in his quiver. That’s not necessarily an argument for what may be the best roster in theory, but you have to take into account the coach and what he’ll actually do and not what we think he should theoretically do. We’re spinning our wheels with him and by the time we’ve “seen enough data,” it will be too late and we will have had 2-3 years here of a real window that’s squandered by your ******* friend not making the reservation because he was coasting.