The Paul George Safari: LeBron Strikes Back!

[LeShaq]

Wiggins is trash, or has been up to this point in his career. We definitely made the right decision trading him for Love.

The problem for us is that, when we made the deal of Love for Wiggins, we didn't know:

- The Warriors were going to be so much better under Kerr than they were under Jackson
- The Warriors were going to add Durant last offseason

Otherwise, we'd be in great shape without Wiggins and with Love.

Things change. I definitely believe that Love will continue to improve (he's only now fully coming into his best form with the team), but he does have certain athletic limits and the On/Off for him and Green in The Finals is a really bad sign for us, it seems.

Thus, we probably would be best served dealing Love for a strong perimeter talent with athleticism.

This is what Wiggins looked like in 2016-17:
29.0 USG
16.5 PER
-2.7 BPM
-3.16 DRPM
-1.60 RPM

The best things that can be said for Wiggins are
--> He's athletic
--> He averaged 24 PPG last year (on 19 FGA)
--> He had a positive ORPM last year

For the 2016-17 regular season, Love had a better Points Per Shot figure than did Wiggins. So Wiggins' scoring ability may be a bit overstated. And with us, he wouldn't get nearly as many shots.

Wiggins' PER given his USG is horrendous. Awful. The guy just isn't very productive, particularly given how involved he is in the Wolves' offense.

 

[Rich]

Yea, so Wiggins gets 19 shots a game. Here he'd get 12/13. So now you've got a 15 point per game player who is one of the 10-20 worst defenders in the league.

Sorry but I disagree with @gourimoko . We don't win in 2015 with Wiggins on the team. He doesn't take a loss in 6 and turn it into a win in 7. Particularly not his rookie year. No way he makes that kind of impact.

 

[godfather]

JR was considered worthless before coming to Cleveland.

I believe Wiggins would have developed defensively in Cleveland.

We were ranked 22 in defense this season. We sucked.

Wiggins is in Kyrie's level of bad defensively.

You put him on the Cavs. Without the ball in his hands, he'd be atrocious, IMO.

 

[LeShaq]

Here's a simple comparison to give people an idea of how bad Wiggins' PER-to-USG ratio is. The goal here is to get a number as close to 1.0 as you can (or even better, in rare cases).

Wiggins 2017
29.0 USG
16.5 PER
0.569 PER/USG

Lou Williams 2017
29.1 USG
21.4 PER
0.735 PER/USG

Lou Williams, who just got dealt as part of a package for Chris Paul, makes Wiggins look really bad here. And Williams isn't exactly a superstar.

Wiggins is very low on the "bang for buck" scale. He just doesn't give you much return for the offensive investment, and we know his defense has been mostly lacking since he came into the NBA.

How does Love look on this scale?

Love 2017
26.4 USG
21.1 PER
0.799 PER/USG


So, yeah.

Wiggins may finish a few dunks around the rim that Love wouldn't, sure. And run better in transition.

Other than that, however, it's probably not going to work. At least not up through this point in Wiggins' career.

 

[gourimoko]

Yea, so Wiggins gets 19 shots a game. Here he'd get 12/13. So now you've got a 15 point per game player who is one of the 10-20 worst defenders in the league.

Sorry but I disagree with @gourimoko . We don't win in 2015 with Wiggins on the team. He doesn't take a loss in 6 and turn it into a win in 7. Particularly not his rookie year. No way he makes that kind of impact.

Rich, I think you might be missing the larger portion of my point. My argument is that Love was not a major factor to our successful title run Cleveland; and that's true, he wasn't. I also said Wiggins would have helped us more than Love over the course of the first two title runs, improving our chances in the first run -- I don't see how one could possibly argue otherwise considering Love was atrocious in 2015-16, and didn't even play in 2014-15.

You're essentially saying that the team couldn't have used another body, a player who was statistically a standard deviation above replacement level, who was scoring 20 PPG on .535 TS% in the second half of his rookie year.

While it's certainly debatable as to whether or not we win; if you don't think so, fine -- but to argue that Wiggins would not have helped more than a completely absent player?

I don't think that's a tenable argument.

 

[MirORich]

No one has or will ever see rookie year through third year Andrew Wiggins handle the uptick in intensity and pressure of playoffs and especially Finals basketball.

He may have excelled, he may have had an equal impact as Love in 2015-2016. He may have had lesser impact. He may have cracked so much under the pressure that he couldn't get more than 10mpg. We'll never know.

 

[gourimoko]

Here's a simple comparison to give people an idea of how bad Wiggins' PER-to-USG ratio is. The goal here is to get a number as close to 1.0 as you can (or even better, in rare cases).

Wiggins 2017
29.0 USG
16.5 PER
0.569 PER/USG

Lou Williams 2017
29.1 USG
21.4 PER
0.735 PER/USG

Lou Williams, who just got dealt as part of a package for Chris Paul, makes Wiggins look really bad here. And Williams isn't exactly a superstar.

Wiggins is very low on the "bang for buck" scale. He just doesn't give you much return for the offensive investment, and we know his defense has been mostly lacking since he came into the NBA.

How does Love look on this scale?

Love 2017
26.4 USG
21.1 PER
0.799 PER/USG


So, yeah.

Wiggins may finish a few dunks around the rim that Love wouldn't, sure. And run better in transition.

Other than that, however, it's probably not going to work. At least not up through this point in Wiggins' career.

Wiggins is trash, or has been up to this point in his career. We definitely made the right decision trading him for Love.

The problem for us is that, when we made the deal of Love for Wiggins, we didn't know:

- The Warriors were going to be so much better under Kerr than they were under Jackson
- The Warriors were going to add Durant last offseason

Otherwise, we'd be in great shape without Wiggins and with Love.

Things change. I definitely believe that Love will continue to improve (he's only now fully coming into his best form with the team), but he does have certain athletic limits and the On/Off for him and Green in The Finals is a really bad sign for us, it seems.

Thus, we probably would be best served dealing Love for a strong perimeter talent with athleticism.

This is what Wiggins looked like in 2016-17:
29.0 USG
16.5 PER
-2.7 BPM
-3.16 DRPM
-1.60 RPM

The best things that can be said for Wiggins are
--> He's athletic
--> He averaged 24 PPG last year (on 19 FGA)
--> He had a positive ORPM last year

For the 2016-17 regular season, Love had a better Points Per Shot figure than did Wiggins. So Wiggins' scoring ability may be a bit overstated. And with us, he wouldn't get nearly as many shots.

Wiggins' PER given his USG is horrendous. Awful. The guy just isn't very productive, particularly given how involved he is in the Wolves' offense.

LeShaq; I just want to bring this back to the original argument that I think is getting lost over a series of posts designed to be either pro-Love or anti-Wiggins, or whatever. My post has nothing to do with how good or how shitty Wiggins is or was -- and what a few of the last posts in this thread seem like their designed to do is rebut some argument about Wiggins being better than Kevin Love -- and that's not at all my point.

My point is that, in hindsight, the Cavaliers would have been better off not trading Wiggins for Kevin Love.

I know a lot of people do not want to hear that; but I think it's objectively true. I say that for the aforementioned reasons. And again, I want to emphasis the point that I think my argument here is objectively true, as in, I think empirically, we should be able to agree that the Cavs would be better off today, in the context of the Warriors and this current NBA, with Andrew Wiggins as a trade chip rather than Kevin Love. We'd have the same number of titles, perhaps 1 more; and we'd be facing the same issues.

And just to recap some of the reasoning in my previous post:
1) Wiggins, today, has greater value than Kevin Love.
2) Kevin Love did not end up being a major component to the Cavs actually winning a title.
3) Wiggins today could have been flipped for a superior player than both Wiggins or Love (see Butler trade).

I think the point here isn't that Love sucks, or even to say the Cavs shouldn't have traded for Love (I argue that they made the right decision); but instead, for the purposes of illustrating one team building aspect versus another, that at this point, I do not think the Love/Wiggins trade worked out in the Cavaliers favor given what has transpired -- and a lot of that is luck, or external factors outside of the Cavaliers control.

So just to be clear, my posts have nothing to do with comparing these two as players; but instead, to demonstrate that the win-now mentality of the Cavs may end up being our undoing if we can't now flip Kevin Love for a better piece. I'm not making any judgements about which player is better than the other....

I'm just recognizing the objective reality of where we are, where we were, and how we got here.

 

[LeShaq]

I know a lot of people do not want to hear that; but I think it's objectively true. I say that for the aforementioned reasons. And again, I want to emphasis the point that I think my argument here is objectively true, as in, I think empirically, we should be able to agree that the Cavs would be better off today, in the context of the Warriors and this current NBA, with Andrew Wiggins as a trade chip rather than Kevin Love. We'd have the same number of titles, perhaps 1 more; and we'd be facing the same issues.

I think there's a good chance you're right about this, gourimoko.

* Wiggins is probably a better trade chip than Love (Love's value seems to have bottomed-out totally) since he's younger and more athletic (which is important given how the league has gone)

* Love didn't do a ton in 2016 to help us win a title (nor in 2015 or 2017)

So I agree with you. There's a strong case there, I think.

It's very difficult for me to give much credit to Wiggins. I admit that. I just don't see it with him, at least not so far.

But, my opinion doesn't really matter. What matters is how the GM's around the league see him, and how that compares with how they see Love.

Good points!

 

[The Red Viper]

I don't agree with @gourimoko 's point but can see where he is coming from.

Ideally if the Warriors hadn't got KD, we wouldn't have been having this discussion. Love would have been valuable against Warriors had they retained their team from last season. And, I feel we would have won the NBA Championship this season as well. I know Love underperformed in the Finals last year but had a coming of age game in Game-7 and it finally looked like he has figured his role out.

Then Warriors go and add the 2nd best player in the game today and completely change the dynamics again. They became more quick, even better shooting wise and made their already great offense, all time great offense. Love can still contribute and tbh still contributed against the Warriors, but it was more like an contribution from a good role-player when the truth is, we needed an All-Star/All-NBA calibre performances from him in the Finals.

So, if you saw the future and all that which has tanspired, I can see why Gou may not want to make that trade. I for one would have still traded Wiggins because I don't think he would have been able to add much. But instead of going for Love, I would have gone for a wing like Hayward or Butler along with a solid PF like Taj Gibson.

 

[The Red Viper]

Also, I still can't fucking beleive we don't have a GM yet and in a couple of days Free Agency would start. WHAT AN ABSOLUTE CLUSTERFUCK!!!

 

[wildfan]

Is this a Paul George thread?

I think so? Why offer Love for a 1 year rental of george? Stars are going cheap in the trade market ie butler cp3 and cousins. George should be really cheap since he said he will go to LA in a year.

 

[The Red Viper]

I think so? Why offer Love for a 1 year rental of george? Stars are going cheap in the trade market ie butler cp3 and cousins. George should be really cheap since he said he will go to LA in a year.

Because if rumours are to be beleived, he would stay with Cavs if LeBron also signs a long-term deal.

 

[Ethan]

It would be nice to think we could keep Love and offer TT plus a pick for PG but it would be too easy for Boston or LA to outbid us.
Now Houston could make a run at PG as well.

 

[TitleTown]

I just don't see how we get Paul George.

To be clear, I'm 100% for trading Love for George.

However, if Indiana is going into rebuilding mode, then why would they ever want Love or TT?

There are a LOT of other teams that can offer picks and young players for PG.

I think Love and TT have trade value, but not to rebuilding teams.

If this trade happens, it is ONLY because Paul George tells teams that he'll only re-sign with Cleveland or LA.

 

[Crosby_Cavs]

Also, I still can't fucking beleive we don't have a GM yet and in a couple of days Free Agency would start. WHAT AN ABSOLUTE CLUSTERFUCK!!!

Gilbert prefer to be in the White House with the Cubs than find freaking GM.