Austin Reaves Discussion: Overachiever Who Underachieved

Some are labelling him as a "great" coach.

 

The value proposition (cheap contract) is a good argument for keeping AR, but it doesn't justify keeping a bad defender next to Luka. A poor man's Luka is a nice luxury to have but not at the cost of exiting in the 1st round. Even if he comes off the bench, that's still probably like 30+ minutes of the worst defensive backcourt in the NBA. We need to address our weaknesses before doubling down on our strengths. I'd like to see our FO go after a good POA defender (ie KCP, Smart) and a quality center with the assets we have.

Also, a part of what makes the decision (of trading or keeping AR) hard is Lebron. If Lebron is going to stay here for 2+ years I think we need to trade AR. We definitely don't need 3 players that strive with the ball in their hands.

 

Trading a 26 yrs old for a 32 yrs KCP. Reaves averaged 20pts while KCP averaged 8.6 pts during last season. What are you smoking bro?

We gave away Zubac now you want to make the same mistake? I think after this last series, I trust Reaves to come back better. I rather package Rui plus Gabe for a big man. DFS can take Rui minutes and we don't care about Gabe's minutes.

 

in fairness, ham went small basically at every position but lebron's. we're actually large at every position but center with jj's preferred lineups. we just happened to run into one of the few teams that plays pretty big for most of the game and does it well.

anyway, i'm seeing a lot of "can't play reaves and luka" and "worst defensive backcourt in the league" stuff, and i wanted to say two things.

1. once again, both luka and reaves's deficiencies are being overemphasized, imo. neither grades out as the terrible defender that the media and most fans are now claiming they are. you just can't have them AND no shotblocking at all.

2. technically, luka's not really a backcourt player on defense. he can guard most sfs without too much trouble, imo. the problem is if you ask him to chase sgs and pgs. same thing happens to lebron, btw. so we have cascading issues because we run rui with lebron and luka, which means one of them is defending sgs. not great, bob.

to me, the answer is still to move reaves to the bench to start halves. you can still close games with them, particularly if you're playing with a lead.

the other part of the answer is personnel outside of reaves/luka. we need more playable defenders. one back line, one perimeter. we need a more established/expensive version of goodwin, really. if we're hellbent on starting rui, we need to add a REALLY good POA defender to the starting lineup in place of AR.

 

So in other words you're saying Luka and AR will look bad if they're expected to be Tony Allen on the perimeter and they don't have KG behind them protecting the rim?

 

I was using speech to text using Siri, and unfortunately, it was translated slightly wrong and I didn’t catch it.