Mailbag Time Ep. 1

Now that the site is officially official, I thought it would be a good time to field some mailbag questions. Idea here is to give some quicker opinions than a full column but to still put some work into the answers and not just spitball. It would be cool to do this on a routine basis so if you ever have any question please send them my way!

“Hey dude as a nole just wanna ask… what’s up with Patrick Williams?” -Gio

Inside every person is an optimist and a pessimist, a boomer and a doomer, a Patrick Williams believer and nonbeliever. Yet, everyday we are met with the harshness of reality and the inherent suffering of existence and small part of the light within us dims, at least if you are a Bulls fan.

When the Bulls drafted Patrick Williams it was a complete upside play, one that I liked but I didn’t love at the time. The idea with Patrick was clear— every great team in today’s NBA has long and quick athletic freaks that can guard multiple positions (Giannis, Tatum, Brown, Draymond, Paul George, Kawhi, etc.). At 6’7″ with a 7 foot wing span and quick feet, Patrick fit perfectly within that mold. When the draft process began, Patrick was expected to go in the back end of the lottery but as the process went on Patrick kept rising up in the rankings of teams around the league. Shitty NBA teams, like the Bulls, have a bad habit of staring at the prospects for so long that they start to drool over the idea of what a prospect could become and begin to forget about what the prospects actually did in high school and college. Patrick Williams was not a starter in college for god’s sake but he had a 7 foot wingspan and was the youngest player in the draft! How could you pass that up!?!?!?!? Its not like Tyrese Haliburton with a proven jumpshot, high basketball IQ and decent size was sitting right there…

Patrick William’s rookie year was honestly somewhat inspiring. He was super young at the time but the Bulls had him play in a very specific and small role. On offense he sat in the corner, occasionally cut to the basket and often went to his patented one dribble pull up from onestep inside the 3 point line On defense, the Bulls would see how he could do against the other team’s best player and sometimes he did a decent job, especially for a rookie. Then, in the beginning of the season last season, he broke his wrist and sat out most of the season. When he came back for the last 10 games of the year, it was kinda unfair to have much of any expectations for him. The team had already soared to the top of the league and back down into mediocrity by the time he was back and there was no real way for him to work on his game with a wrist injury. He got a pass.

So as Bulls fans this is kind of the put up or shut up season for the “The Paw”. Going into the year, the optimism was alive inside of me. Maybe with a healthy offseason he could iron out parts of his game and come into full form. Maybe he would finally learn to take advantage of his incredible size and athleticism to become a beast on the defensive side of the ball. Maybe his just shot would take full form and he would start nailing three pointers with same confidence as he does those pull up 2s.

5 games into the season, and there has been no evidence of a leap. His stats are down in every category, despite the Bulls having negative forwards his minutes are down and he still looks lost out there. It’s early in the season still but the light gets dimmer and dimmer as the days go on.

All of that said, Patrick Williams turned 21 in August, the dude is still a baby and these things can take time! Given that he missed most of last season and is the age of someone in their sophomore year, he should be evaluated accordingly. Paul George did not pop off until he was 22, Kawhi did not flash insane offensive talent until he was 24, Jaylen Brown was not a consistent offensive player until 23, Brandon Ingram couldn’t hit the side of a barn until a miraculous turn around when he went to the Pelicans at 22. THERE IS STILL HOPE FOR THE PAW!

“What echelon of contender do you think the Suns belong in, assuming CP3 continues taking a step back while Book maintains his early season MVP form? Not a question but… please don’t put the nuggets with zero time all star Jamal Murray above them 😂. The site looks sick.” -Ansh

Thanks Ansh, always happy to hear from Suns Nation! I guess now is as good a time as any to make my early season tier list (if your team is not on this list that means you suck, sorry not sorry).

Tier 1: Certified Contenders

• The Warriors
• The Bucks
• Celtics (they are like tier 1b)

Tier 2: I Wouldn’t be Surprised

• 76ers
• Nuggets
• Clippers (off to a slow start and I need to see a full Kawhi/PG are awesome game)
• Pelicans

Tier 3: Dark Horse

• Cavs
• Grizzlies
• Nets
• Suns

Tier 4: Certified Playoff Team

• Raptors
• Mavericks
• Timberwolves
• Heat

Tier 5: Play-In Teams

• Bulls
• Hawks
• Blazers
• Knicks
• Wizards

I wrote down some of my thoughts on the Suns in my Westbrook column but my thoughts are essentially that now is the best time for the Suns to try and reload their roster. My core belief is that unless the Suns are packaging up their picks to go and acquire an unknown yet disgruntled superstar then I don’t see how their team gets any better than it was the last two years and that clearly was not enough. And I don’t really even like the idea of trading picks away to get a star when CP3 might not be in the league 2 years from now. This is the very last season that CP3 could ever be seen as asset by another team.

If I’m James Jones in the Suns’ front office, I’m trying to find the team that is just stupid enough to believe they are one CP3 trade away from winning it all. The Pelicans might decide that all they need to move into the certified contenders tier is the veteran savvy of CP3. Imagine being able to call CP3 in for 24 minutes a night to run the bench unit and help close out the game. The best part is that the Pelicans are absolutely loaded with young talent and picks that should entice the Suns. Oh and I did my trade machine homework, finding ways to make the money work is actually fairly easy
(Devonte Graham+Jaxson Hayes+Garrett Temple gets you there).

Im sorry Ansh but I do have the Nuggets and their sorry roster above the Suns. Not only do the Nuggets have a guy that will most likely be a top 15 player all time but they have upside in a way that the Suns just don’t. That said, MPJ play 30 games without re-injuring his back challenge. Jamal Murray play at an All-Star level not in the Bubble challenge.

“Is Cade going to take a leap this year or is he a bust” – Theo

God, I really want Cade to be awesome. Nothing is more fun than when Detroit has an amazing team (in any sport) and Cade has really seemed to embrace the wonderful energy of the city. In every interview I see with him, he just seems like he has his head on straight and is going to do what it takes to become one of the best players in the league.

Cade has everything, in theory, that you want from a player. He is 6’8″ with a 7 foot wingspan, allowing him to bully smaller players and function as a cross-positional defender. He has a pass first attitude and really seems to try and make the players around him better. He is a student of the game with a good feel for the game and a high basketball IQ. In college, he was a good and willing shooter (his FT% last season was reason for hope). All of that stuff adds up to a future superstar, there is a reason he was the unquestioned choice for the first pick.

All of that said he didn’t jump out as a future MVP last year. Overall, it was difficult for me to get a read on Cade. How many of his problems came from being surrounded by a shit team? Was he just adjusting to the speed of the NBA game? Do I really want to spend my time watching the Pistons?

Im still really nervous about Cade though. Take a look at this chart that shows the 3 most respected advanced stats for measuring a players overall performance.

The only player on that table that had a comparably bad rookie season is Andrew Wiggins. In lots of ways, the hype around the two players has been the same: both taken as unquestioned number 1 overall picks, played their rookie season on horrendous teams and had everyone believing they were future MVPs. Oh and there is one other similarity, the nerds calling bullshit. It saddens me to say but I am the nerd in your life calling bullshit on Cade.

Right now, it seems far more likely that Cade is going to be a Bradley Beal / Andrew Wiggins level of player than anything else. I looked into my crystal ball and it told me that the Pistons, faced with the two bad choices of either letting their young talent walk away for nothing or handicapping themselves to a just good not great player, will begrudgingly offer Cade a max contract.

If you want to call me a dumb nerd who needs to get off Basketball Reference and touch grass, thats fair, you’re right. But I challenge you to beat me in a “fun” little nerd game: find me any player from the top 75 list whose rookie season was as bad as Cade’s was (from an advanced stats perspective). I don’t think that advanced stats tell a full story but there is a reason I think that you won’t be able to beat my game (I have not actually checked all 75 players so do me a favor and “beat” me at this game).

I hope Im wrong about Cade. I hope I can come back to this article and laugh about my skepticism.