Scoot McGroot wrote:jayjaysee wrote:This thread been bumped twice over the years. That’s cute.
Impressive build around a generational player, willingness to pay to keep the team, and the players all playing in their roles and excelling.. It’s fun to watch.
This was the part that really makes it work, to me. Gordon had talked about wanting to play with the ball through his hands and shooting more when he was with Orlando, and then after being dealt to Denver, he seemed to much more embrace his off ball role and focusing on defense and just being a secondary/tertiary distributor off of the hub of Jokic. Definitely worked well.
Long history of guys on bad teams going to play with an undeniable talent like Jokic and immediately going from seeming dumb while desperately trying to make things happen on O to humble and seeming smart on the offensive end of the floor.
There's also the PG aspect of it. Ibaka decided he had to play like prime Karl Malone on O in Orlando and then fit in nicely in Toronto with Van Vleet and/or Lowry basically exclusively deciding when and where he shot the ball from.
A guard version of a guy whose usage is probably too high and might look smart on a new team is Sexton, even though Hardy is a good offensive coach and Lauri is a good big to play with. Still, the guys immediately ahead of him in usage are Kyrie, Lillard, Jaylen Brown, KD, LeBron, Jokic and Zion, so that's just too damn high. And he's got the physical tools on defence.