Hear me out real quick. I’m not making this statement off of one odd hot shooting game where we got blown out. As good and generational as AD is, he’s the best (along with Giannis) help defender in the league. He’s great in the secondary level of defense, cause he has a huge wingspan that allows him to rotate later than usual and still contest and block shots at a high level. Under the drop coverage schemes we play, playing him at center allows him to stay deep in the paint and potentially help clean up mistakes from our perimeter defenders, who’ve been quite bad in their own right so far this season. This is exactly what we had with Dwight in 2020 and Gasol in the starting run in 2021.

With Rui not being played to his potential, nor him being given the minutes he rightfully deserves, I can’t help but think that this team would then be better of trading him and some version of salary filler like Gabe Vincent to get a solid rebounding big who can bang bodies with bigs like Jokic and Embiid for us. The advantage is two fold -

1. We get AD in his preferred 4 and help position, and if our Center is beat, the opposing big still has to face AD on the rotation.
2. Our rebounding instantly improves and we give up fewer second chance points. Essentially on the high pick and rolls that most offenses with strong perimeter players play, our center is pulled out so we lose size in the middle to be able to grab the boards. Playing AD at the 4 helps here.

Now there’s two possible reasons I can think about why we should not do this.

1. Lebron has to shift down as well and there’s the argument that he can’t play the 3 at this age. I don’t necessarily believe this to be an issue. We don’t have to matchup Bron with the opposing team 3. We need to matchup Bron with the corner shooter on their team whose job is to space and shoot the 3. He’s still agile and quick enough to keep up with the occasional off ball movement plays setup for said shooter but other than that and especially during crunch time, this should allow us to hide him on D.
2. We lose out on spacing. This is a legitimate concern which is why it would be a godsend if our center could shoot the ball well but I would even settle on that if AD can commit to working on his jump shot and start shooting at a somewhat efficient level. No Bubble AD levels(only KD was comparable to him on jump shot efficiency during that span) but even 2017-2018 AD levels.

I was ready to part with Rui for such an opportunity and switch and to be honest I’m not happy about it but the way he’s being utilized under Ham, I think it’s a massive disservice to him. If we decide to keep him, I would strongly explore playing him as a small ball 5 (he was good in stretches while guarding Jokic man to man) with AD again in help position.

TLDR: AD should play the 4. It makes too much sense to not have him play Center, tonight was just another example of that.