Irishniner wrote:As someone who has followed the team from Ireland since the Love, Pek, Rubio wolves, it's great to see a true great defensive big on the team.
Structurally, a team without a great C on defense is either going to struggle to win much or have to score a ton to be successful or have amazing defenders around the big so very little help defense is needed at the rim. I liked Pek as a character, but he was an awful fit on the team next to Love. Kat at 5 was never satisfactory on defense and limited our defensive ranking.
Aside from KG, this team hasn't had a centre or bigman with this level of defensive impact in its history.
Any talk of remortgaging the future is nonsense. The reason it could be talked of that way is in terms of flexibility or adding talent. We already have an all NBA bigman locked up for years and years in Towns, 3x DPOY on a long contract, a 20 year old SG who JUST missed being an allstar on his rookie deal, a super promising SF/PF defensive role player in McDaniels and a 20 point a game PG who excels in PnR who we can see if we want to keep or free up some space. We also drafted two players this year as well. We are very much sorted for talent. We may need to make moves for role players but this is the correct course to take.
We should be a good team for the next three or four years based purely on who's locked in contract wise. Gobert's defense should age pretty gracefully aswell which is a bonus.
Off topic: What I find strange is all the talk of a KD trade requiring a massive amount of return based on this trade. He'll be 34 when the season starts and has played 90 games in the last 3 years and has sulked off of 3 teams now. It has a massive chance of blowing up in his new teams face.
This is a really good take on the situation to be honest.
When I initially woke up (in Australia) and saw the trade I was floored by the outgoings, and had to re-read the graphic a couple of times to make sure I'd correctly understood exactly what was happening. Like many on here, my initial fears were that we were 'mortgaging' the future in this move, but as time went on (and as I began to actually wake up, I'm a terrible morning person) I started to really like the move.
To avoid any suggestions of homerism, clearly it's a huge outlay of picks from us, and Utah should be very pleased with the return that Ainge has brought back for Gobert IMO, but it's a fantastic result for the Wolves to bring in a player as impactful as Gobert whilst retaining not only our current 'big 3', but to also hold onto what the team sees as it's most valuable young talent in McDaniels.
As you say, the future picks become substantially less of a concern when you take into account who we've actually managed to hold onto, and what the core talent of the team looks like now. This is easily the best starting 5 in the history of the franchise, and only one of them is over the age of 26 in Gobert.
My overriding emotion now is just sheer excitement. For basically the first time since 2004, we've got a team that you'd think has a pretty decent shot of getting to the WCF, and if Ant's trajectory continues and he eventually becomes the best player on this team and an MVP level talent, a team with a pretty decent shot of contending for a chip.
