Gay and Collison for Goran Dragic???

Let's just roll with what we have. Gay is more valuable to us than Dragic, at this point I don't think there's much of a difference between dragic and DC. Not to mention DC is much cheaper.

Beno is about to be cut by the Heat. Per Wojo Philly and Minn are in talks about Tyus Jones. I wonder if the Kings could get involved

That's just because you don't know how to analyze, interpret or apply advanced stats. </sarcasm>

Gay to Minn, Ben to Philly, Rubio to Sac, Noel to Minn

Sac - gets its 2 for 1 and starting PG
Minn gets two good players Noel and Gay - value for Rubio
Philly get rid of Noel, picks up ben, Maybe throw in Farmar to Philly

Noel is having surgery on his knee atm

Can't we just trade Ben for Noel instead? Collison is a solid PG and he's only missing 8 games. Noel is going to win DPOY as soon as he's on a legitimate NBA team. That guy is a defensive prodigy. I don't even care that he's injured again, that just makes his trade value even lower for the Sixers.

I wonder if we are working on a three way deal with Twolves and Cavs. Recent rumors are Twolves interested in Shumpert, we are interested in Rubio and the Cavs have been linked to Mclemore for a long time. Add in the fact that the Cavs still need a backup PG and that we apparently resigned Patterson and I could see something like:
Rubio to Sac, Mclemore + Collison to Cavs, Shumpert + McRae to Twolves.

this is getting really REALLY last minute to be making a major move. Start the season unsettled again for about the 9th time in 10 losing seasons. Whoever arrives won't even be able to get a practice under their belt before the opener at this rate. If its a PG, Joerger will have to be drawing plays up for him on the back of a napkin.

I agree I would replace health permitting Noel for WCS in a second he plays with way more energy and heart and despite being in the NBA for a lot longer than WCS is still a year younger. I'd love to get a 3 way deal going with Philly where we snag Noel but the big problem is I think he's a FA meaning a massive deal going his way based on potential and some solid output on a horrific team he's had next year where as WCS still has time on his deal to prove himself.

Although the Sixers are in a difficult Situation and need to find playing time for Embiid, Okafor and Noel dreams of fleecing them in a trade and getting Noel for Willie or Ben are completely irrational. Noel is a very good defensive big able to play as the lone big. He is the blueprint of the modern era big.
Willie is an underperforming lottery pick and Ben a guy with an uncertain future in the league.
The Sixers don't need anything the Kings could give them with the exeption of DC.

I understand and I agree, but if Rudy is going to continue to drop passive aggressive statements in every interview, I want him gone as soon as possible. Everyone is on social media and there is no way that the team doesn't know what he is saying as soon as he leaves the locker room. That stuff wears on you and imagine how the rest of the guys feel about someone who literally cannot wait to be traded. We saw what happened with Cuz and Karl and that ruined our season before it even started. This isn't as extreme as that, but there should not be any bad blood in that locker room and if there is, you ship it out.

On the Sixer's front, I do like Noel myself and I would trade WCS for him in an instant. You either have heart or you don't, and WCS lacks quite a bit in that category while Noel has it in spades. Sometimes that effort and energy allow a player to play several levels over what they normally could do. It's an x-factor. We take a risk with him becoming a free agent though, so that's something to consider. I don't know what Philly would want from us, as they are looking to get rid of big men, so suggesting WCS probably wouldn't work. Would they take Ben? How glorious would that be? I think they need PG help, so they would look at Collison probably. We could then ship off Rudy and WCS for a starting PG.

Not even close salary wise. Use a trade machine before posting trade suggestions.

The only way Rubio to Sac works has to includle Gay or a similar salary from a player on another team.

Depending how the Twolves start, I could easily see a Rudy for Rubio swap a month or so into the year. If Dunn is absolutely killing it, or they get off to a 2-10 start or something, I can see Thibs just giving the keys to Dunn and letting the Wiggins, KAT and Dunn get 40 MPG.

Many coaches yes. Thibs? Mmmm...He seems like an ultimate vets/grind it out coach. Then again he does have job security since he's the GM too. Just wonder about his patience for kids playing like kids.

What use would they have in a 50 game rental of Rudy Gay? Mentor Wiggins? I just don't see it.

A team like the 6ers could easily give up something say, the Kings 2018 1st round pick which would be much more valuable.
Mavs with James Anderson, Spurs with Kyle Anderson, etc.

If the deal doesn't get done before the season starts, I really doubt that the Timberwolves give up Rubio for free...it's essentially what they'd be doing. Plus, Rudy will take shots away from KAT, Wiggins, and Dunn. I really don't see why they would want to do that.

Only teams that make sense for Gay imo are Washington/OKC/Bulls and maybe Atlanta depending on what they would have to send back.

What use would the Sixers have for Rudy? Their offense will run through Embiid or Okafor and Simmons, once he is healthy again. Saric and Convington are great fits for this offense, because they are asked to spot up a lot (Saric can Do more). Rudy wouldn't be a good fit, because his ISO game isn't needed.

Theoretically Boston could use Rudy too, when they are content to play him at the 4 and Stevens isn't in love with super small lineups with Smart playing SF.

I thought Stevens did like smalll line ups
http://www.csnne.com/boston-celtics...ticism-small-ball-lineups-give-boston-celtics

During preseason they talked about how players like Rozier/Smart could be super effective due to there rebouding ability with small ball line ups.

True and both Smart and Rozier are relentless rebounders for their size. Jaylen Brown looked promising too. Maybe it's just my own wishful thinking talking.

Maybe it has a lot to do with who is on the roster other than Crowder/Brown there's really no other 6'6+ wing players they got that are NBA ready (well at least last season before they got either Brown or Gerald Green), James Young showed a glimmer of hope in preseason after two uneventful seasons and RJ Hunter barely made the roster. Most of there best players 5-7 players are below 6'4 aside from Crowder/Horford. Based on height I read they were the shortest team in the NBA somewhere.

No guys......................I'm saying that the Timberwolves would be able to get much more better assets for Rubio, than what we can offer. Timberwolves probably don't want Gay.

The Sixers need a PG, shooting or not...and they could easily give up 1 of their few draft picks. The Spurs also need a PG, and they could give up someone like Kyle Anderson who the Timberwolves would much rather have than a half year rental of Rudy Gay.

The team that could most use Rudy in the entire NBA is the clippers, they just don't have anything they can use to acquire him outside of Doc's son, and I don't think he can be traded until December.

And there's no surprise that his RAPM is always one of the highest in the league year after year...

It's not so much that nothing else is considered, but understanding what stats are better than others when judging a players value should be a necessity for anyone who is making decisions in a FO in this day and age. I've been on record saying that I'm not as impressed as others with Boogie's "historic" offensive season last year. A lot of people look at the 27 PPG and go crazy over it. Cousins didn't help us very much on offense last year. That's not to say that I think Cousins isn't uber talented on that side of the floor. It's just a matter of putting those impressive skills together and playing smart basketball. Cousins has been most impressive to me defensively. Malone did wonders with him, and he's a very intelligent player who can definitely anchor a defense without having to be an athletic freak.

It just so happens that a lot of these same stats jive with that analysis. Cousins was 116th in ORAPM, 45th in ORPM, and had an Offensive On/Off of only 2.8 points per 100 possessions last year. These stats do a good job at seeing through the "flashiness" of some of these "simple stats" and get down to how much did that player contribute. Are there going to be mistakes or errors? Of course. Standard error is common in data of this nature, but more often than not, it's going to be correct.

Even using Dean Oliver's Off/Def Rating jives with this same conclusion (a stat I know you personally like). Cousins Offensive Rating was 10th on the team last year while his Defensive Rating was 1st.

Being below average on your team doesn't necessarily make you a poor defender. Defensive rating needs to keep the context of the teammates. If you're playing with guys like Wade, Cole, Chalmers, Johnson, Bledsoe, etc. it's going to make it harder for that said player to rank as high considering his teammates may be of equal or better caliber on that side of the floor. This is one of the drawbacks with ONLY looking at Defensive and/or Offensive rating. You need to have the context of who else plays the position on the team.

That being said, all three metrics I mentioned (including the one that does the best job for normalizing for teammates and varying lineups) has him at an average (-0.5 Def On/Off) to above average (0.7 DRPM) to good (1.89 DRAPM) defender.

The comparison was to the player Dragic is today vs. what Udrih was during his time in Sac. Looking at seven seasons worth of stats isn't necessarily the best way to go about comparing the two. It's difficult to know Udrih's impact with a lot of these metrics being created recently, but going off what I saw (which is completely an opinion and totally fine with those who disagree), I did not see a player who impacted the game as much as Dragic has done. Could Udrih have put up a 2.91 RAPM? Maybe, but I doubt it.

We also need to keep in mind the quality of teams. Weaker teammates are going to make your on/off and off/def rating look better than those who have quality teammates. Udrih had a negative net rating during his first season with the Kings while Bibby was still here, but it got a lot better after Bibby was gone and he had guys like a 35 year old Jackson & Rodriguez replacing him. That's really not that all surprising to me. Dragic, on the other hand, was consistently having to share minutes with the likes of Lowry, Bledsoe, Knight, Thomas, Wade, Chalmers, K. Martin, etc.



By the way, welcome back, hrdboild! I always enjoy our discussions and look forward to more this season.

Gay doesn't want to remain in Sacramento though and has already said he's gonna bolt the the first chance he gets.

While Dragic is locked up long term.

If this deal was actually discussed, there's little doubt in my mind that Miami is the one that's holding it up and not Sacramento.

Btw the ignorance to say that Dragic isn't much better than DC is baffling. You realize Dragic has been All NBA and Most Improved Player in the league right? What accolades has DC accomplished since coming into the league? Rookie first team? LOL

kinda early to write willie off isn't it? he spent his rookie year under 'optional practices/stay in your corner' karl and learning to break all those dumb habits under joerger. really? have we played 5 games yet?

Here is the thing. In 5 games I can tell you Joerger is going to be here for a nice long time. So Joerger's system becomes paramount.

And the thing about that is when you think about Joerger's system, at the NBA level at least, it was built around Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, and in its best incarnations, Kosta Koufos as the third big. Big strong physical big guys. And all with some ability to score (Kosta, the reserve in Memphis, obviously the least). On the other hand the long, skinny, athletic "rim runner' type bigs they trotted through there, both while Joerger was an assistant and a head coach, never did as well as you would think.

So my concern about Willie is not just that...well frankly I'm pissed at Willie. He's playing like a *****...cat. And he hasn't shown one ounce of determination or fierceness since last season. So his mentality is now in question. But aside from that, the concern isn't about just Willie, its about the whole coach/system being set up poorly for any skinny rim runner type, for any Willie of the world. If the system calls for big, tough, physical guys, who have some offensive skill...then Willie is not only out of his element, but he'll remain out of his element so long as Joerger is here, and Joerger is going to be here.

So there's kind of two separate issues:
1) is Willie failing because of Willie? If so maybe you can say is it too early to write him off etc. etc. depending on your read of him.
2) or is Willie also failing because he is not and can't be what the new coach's system needs him to be. And this possibility is almost a bigger issue than Willie playing like a weenie. Its possible while a nasty old curmudgeon like Karl was a bad coach for Willie, that his type of open court up and down, perimeter oriented system might be where Willie could thrive, where a slow it down, grind it out, punch you out system is not.

Why Do you think Im writing Willie off? He was driften in the lottery and so far didn't meet the expectations.
So indeed he is underperforming.

You make some pretty good points here. I guess where I have the biggest issue with advanced stats is where they radically diverge from other means of analysis. If all other evidence is telling me one thing about a player and RAPM is telling me something else I'm more likely to dismiss the RAPM result but that's mostly because it's so new that I don't have a lot of experience with it yet. My job isn't on the line if I get a player evaluation wrong though as it would be for a GM so I'm not as motivated to exhaust every resource available. I can see that there is an argument to be made for Dragic as an elite PG (he certainly has been so far this season) but then I'm still nervous about his age and contract. It's also occurred to me that there may be another factor I hadn't considered before -- Dragic is Slovenian so it's likely Vlade has watched his career since he was a youngster. All else being equal, I'm sure that's a point in his favor from Vlade's point of view.

If I'm the Kings I'm on the phone ASAP... and I do this deal now in a heart beat...

Apparently the Kings ended talks when MIA asked for D.C. And Gay... but now....

I've lost all faith in DC as a solid consistent starting point guard. PLUS gay and D.C. Are both out of here at the end of the season...

I'd love to see this deal and maybe one more deal that involves us sending our expiring contracts with Ben or other rookie to a team that's looking to clear Space and start over. Affalo and friends for maybe an over paid but solid player.