Losing sucks. I get it. It’s completely valid to question Troy Weaver. HOWEVER. things are not as hopeless doom and gloom as everyone is saying. Troy weaver has proven to be excellent at selecting talent. And looking at the age of our players, I’m shocked at how young all of them are.
Cade & Jaden Ivey are part of the same class. Cade declared for the draft in 2021 after his freshmen year of college, and Jaden Ivey declared after his sophomore year in 2022. Both would be seniors in college this year.
Ausar Thompson & Jalen duren are both 20 years old and would be juniors in college this year.
Isaiah Stewart is 22 and would be a senior or grad student this year.
Cade Cunningham- 22 years old (senior)
Jaden Ivey- 21 years old (senior)
Ausar Thompson- 20 years old (junior)
Beef Stew- 22 years old (senior/grad)
Jalen Duren- 20 years old (junior)
Honorable mention
Killian Hayes- 22 years old (senior)
Marcus Sasser- 23 years old (grad)
We have the youngest starting lineup and it isn’t close. We are literally throwing out a lineup of college guys to play NBA games. The talent of Cade/ivey/ausar/duren is better than anything we’ve had since 2008. Let’s just hope troy and Monty can figure out how to translate talent into wins.
To be fair to him, that was also the covid draft. Had the tourney been allowed to happen, maxey wouldn’t have been picked like 21st. It’s horrible with retrospect but in the moment we had a few all rookie team guys, so you can actually just argue we had poor development (which I’m sure GM still hires).
The issue with the COVID draft was much less the loss of the tournament (which lost maybe two extra games of data for the average first-round draftee) and more that opportunities to work out players individually and in larger settings (e.g. the Combine) were significantly less. That said, there was still plenty of data on the vast majority of players – and every team was operating with the same shortcomings.
I think you could argue that both Stewart and Bey were safe-choice role players. Stewart was likely to be a strong defender and probably a long-term backup big of some quality, potentially with some shooting, but he was undersized and unathletic and had little potential as a creator. Bey was one of the best shooters in the country but dropped because he was similarly unathletic and struggled to create anything for himself.
Shooting is going to be a necessity for Stewart in any case, but what do you feel could reasonably have been done to develop him into more than what he is? I’ve got no idea what happened to Bey’s defense or his attitude; that’s presumably on him, so apparently there was just something about him that Weaver (for whom character has always been a strong focus in everything) did not see.
I remember that game winner from Bey against Golden State last year. After the game, Bey said something to the effect of… I think I was supposed to screen for Bojan but got the ball instead. Seemed like he was going off script on that play in favor of calling his own number. If it happened that time, I’m sure it happened others as well.
By all indications, Weaver misjudged his character. Given that Bey’s character was (in addition to being generally important) one of Weaver’s reasons for selecting him, that was another error by Troy.
He subsequently chose to trade Bey for Wiseman. Whatever his faults, Bey seems likely to stick in the NBA. Wiseman was the team’s 4th center and is so far from being an NBA rotation player that he struggled to find minutes on one of the worst teams in the league while Duren was out and did very badly in the minutes he did get.
By all indications, Weaver misjudged his character. Given that Bey’s character was (in addition to being generally important) one of Weaver’s reasons for selecting him, that was another error by Troy.
Whatever the issues with Bey were, Weaver’s decision to trade him for Wiseman was an unequivocal downgrade which made the results of that draft even worse. Wiseman became the fourth center on the roster, is far from being a capable rotation player at the moment, and cannot get even development minutes on a roster that is already clogged with bigs.
Agreed.