He just signed a deal with us and we were all pretty excited about it. The FO was probably excited too for the same reasons. I can’t imagine we end up trading him a couple months later without really giving him a chance to play and boost his value / prove himself. Either A) he’s pissed somebody off (unlikely given he just signed a contract or B) there’s little benefit to playing him as he is not a young dude and if he rests the season, it gives us more chances to explore our depth.

All of this is consistent with the other seemingly baffling moves so far this season (Wall playing so much, Leonard resting so much, micro ball). There is a consistent theme across all of these issues. We are exploring our depth, saving our wings’ legs and we don’t give a crap about almost any of the games in the first half of the season.

In other years (especially lob city), we’ve gone all out with our best squad, and tried to win games, only to get stale or injured prior to the playoffs. Lack of consistency is a great thing to point to when you get booted from the playoffs. To build proper chemistry, I’m really not convinced at this point that we need a full training camp plus 82 games to go all the way. Some of our best teams didn’t have that. Anyone remember when we traded BG for Tobias Harris? That Clippers team improved immediately and had an awesome season the following year despite lack of roster consistency. Lob City got worse and worse the more those guys played with eachother. Championship raptors or Lakers didn’t have any roster consistency; they had health and pieces that generally fit. Maybe, the team is just focusing on getting those factors nailed down and we’ll start worrying about chemistry in March. Or maybe, I’ll just start freaking out in April again when it’s clear we aren’t trying to win games.

I used to really like heliocentric players like Lebron and Luka and the way they balance scoring with distribution. I thought that was the ideal version of winning basketball and that the “standing around” factor” was a necessary evil of the right way for a team with one super star and a bunch of role players to play the game (not every team can play warriors basketball). Jokic changed the way I think about winning basketball. He makes it so that everybody is completely engaged. His value add is so difficult to quantify, but when you watch him play, it’s hard to picture a more perfect offensive player.