Quick sort of Expected EPM on DunksandThrees for players that are a guard, guard-forward, or forward-guard that have a defensive EPM>1, 3PT %>35%, and > 8 3PT Attempts. Jayson Tatum Collin Gillespie Derrick White Moses Moody Jose Alvarado De'Anthony Melton Fred VanVleet Baylor Scheierman Lonzo Ball OG Anunoby Alex Caruso Keon Ellis Brandin Podziemski Alvarado and Gillespie fail to hold up at the POA against bigger players (well non-Rocket bigger players). FVV while short was able to hold up against many bigger players last season including Draymond Green in the playoffs (GSW had to bench their other bigs to get FVV off of Green so they could target Sengun). Tatum, White, Anunoby, and Caruso are unavailable. Ball, well, he likely just isn't good enough anymore. Here are probably the best guards following your criteria assuming FVV is healthy. Moses Moody De'Anthony Melton Fred VanVleet Baylor Scheierman Keon Ellis Brandin Podziemski Alternatively, Stone could just get a bunch of 3-D forwards and not worry about having one guard-sized though this list catches a lot of forwards before reducing for defense, and shooting. Maybe, there are guys less than 1 EPM defensively that you think can play with Reed. I get that these guys aren't perfect, but the list of guards that can shoot well enough to play with Amen and play defense well enough to play with Reed is not some huge list.
Nice work compiling this data, definitely interesting stuff. Just to nitpick though, I will mention that I don't really trust defensive EPM that much and I think it's probably missing some good defenders who just aren't in a good situation (for example, Jrue Holiday only has a +0.5 this season, and even if he's declined somewhat, I think he's still better than that), and overrating some guys (Podziemski jumps out in this category) who are getting boosted by players around them. I agree that Fred is underrated defensively. I guess I'm just wary about starting two small guards conceptually. But maybe it could work. You're right that a two-way player who is a high-volume movement shooter is not necessarily that common or easy to acquire.
It should be obvious to all that we have a serious baller on our hands in Reed. At the time, I wanted Clingan, and hated the pick.. But, I later realized he was going to be pretty good. It's cool. Now though...wow. I honestly believe he's going to become an All Star.
I wanted Steph Castle because I was skeptical Reed could get to the level of the other Steph(and I REALLY like Castle's toughness) but hats off to Reed for the improvements he has made. To enter the league as basically a tweener like Jimmer Fredette, start off as an atrocious shooter....but then to work himself into better shooting nights, to pick up the PG position as quickly as he has and start to create offense for others, to see tangible improvemetns month by month, to see him use his hands to get steals on the gather, to see him crowd players to make them uncomfortable on drives despite being slow to respond to the initial burst, to see him learn a changeup drive game - it's quite a comeback story. A lot of those things we didn't really see in his college years so the fact he is showing up with this super crafty skillset is really encouraging.
Side note, how good would this team look with Tatum (assuming he gets back to 100%) replacing Jabari. Never gonna happen, but let a man dream...
I don't think Fred will agree to take so much discount for so long. 60M for 4 years may be conceivable. That would justify him being a backup. A lot of it will depend on how well he can perform after recovering from the injury. Nobody wants to see another DFS disaster.
Do you think we will have to give up a pick to trade him this summer? Or should we trade him at the deadline next year?
How good would this team look with Wemby or Cooper Flagg replacing Jabari? Or how about Jokic replacing Sengun? about the same likelihood of it happening lol
I think it's just a little more likely with Tatum because Boston has two supermax contracts on the books and are desperately struggling to stay out of the 2nd apron. Still not going to happen though, at least not this offseason.
Nah, you said "assuming he gets back to 100%"... and if he gets back to 100% there's no chance they're trading him. They'd trade Brown first if it had to come down to that. And even if they trade him, they're not trading him for Jabari lol let's be real. But I mean yea, we'd be legit lol
