We need to look into moving Giddey at the end of the season for a bucket getter, possibly a guy like Donovan Mitchell assuming he’d be willing to re-up with us. He’s only 20, but the last thing we need is to be paying a non-shooter $35,000,000+ a year.
It’s been said that he’s not a fit with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and that’s absolutely true. I believe Giddey will be a very good player, but is he the guy we want next to Shai? I’ve tried to be patient on it, but he looks like the same guy so far this year. If he’s running a pick and roll, the defense automatically goes under and he can’t make them pay for that. Unless Giddey has a size mismatch, he’s almost useless as a scorer. There’s a reason he was on the bench for the stretch we came against Cleveland the other night.
This is going to come off like I’m a hater, I’m not. I just don’t think he’s a fit, and I think it’d be foolish to not look into packaging him into a better player this off-season before offering a pricy rookie scale extension.
In the meantime, I think Isaiah Joe should replace him in the starting five, and let Giddey run the offense in the whole 12 minutes that Shai isn’t on the floor.
His style is unorthodox and his weaknesses are really glaring, which is why I think it’s hard to project out how he fits. I feel like when he has a bad game he looks bad and when he has a good game, he still looks mediocre but then you look up at the box score and you’re like “huh, when did that happen?”
I think it’s interesting that he’s leaning even more into being a bully in the post against size mismatches. I can see a world in which that works for this team, but he needs to improve his finishing as well as take even more ownership of his role as primary setup man. The good news is that he’s still very young and he’s got a good head so it’s very conceivable he gets there.
I’m more skeptical of his long term fit than most okc fans, but I think it would be a terrible decision to sell on him now before seeing how he develops this year.
I would look to flip Giddey for a first round pick at some point. Depending on how high in the round the pick is expected to be, maybe add in a second pick. Giddey could end up being all world, but I don’t think he will ever merit his draft slot.