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.
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.