One of most common criticisms of the current roster construction - of which there are many - is the lack of spacing provided by Jakob Poeltl. It’s certainly true that for as good of an anchor as Jakob may be and for as good of a passer as he is for his position, his complete lack of both an outside shot and willingness to take 3s is an issue.
That being said, for as much of an issue it is that our current center isn’t a floor spacer, it needs to be highlighted how rare a “stretch 5” is in the league. To put this into perspective, the league average for 3-pointers in the 2022/23 season was 36.1%; without accounting for volume (and ignoring bench players who only got subbed in for garbage time), the number of non-All-Star centers to be average or above at 3-point shooting for that season were the following:
- Myles Turner - 37.3%
- Kelly Olynyk - 39.4%
- Brook Lopez- 37.4%
- Karl-Anthony Towns - 36.6%
- Tingus Pingus - 38.5%
- Al Horford - 44.3%
Of the names on this list, KAT is the only one who both is seemingly on the trade block - the Timberwolves are both looking to recoup some of the lost value of the Gobert trade and due to the extension of McDaniels they are expected to be above the second apron unless they get rid of KAT’s max - and matches up with Scottie’s timeline…or at least matches up better compared to the other likely available center as Olynyk is well into their 30s while Karl is around 27 years old.
That said, Towns is technically cheating - he was an All-Star in prior seasons and 2022/23 was something of a down year due to injury - he is a terrible fit at the 4 that, irrespective of what a “KAT package” constitutes would require trading Poeltl elsewhere so as to not repeat the mistakes of the Timberwolves twin towers experiment and his contract is hefty enough that any trade for him would push the Raptors into luxury tax hell post-O.G. extension, and this is under the assumption the Raptors were to trade Siakam for various smaller contracts and don’t re-sign Thad Young or Otto Porter Jr.
All of this is to say that the Raptors should have traded for Myles Turner in 2021/22 instead of Thad Young.
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It’s partially no shooting but mostly the fact that he can’t even make free throws.
It’s not just that Jak is a complete non-shooter. He’s not amazing at the PnR. He’s just way way too slow to dive to the rim fast enough to punish defenses.
But besides even that, he’s can’t shoot from anywhere on a team that’s already terrible at shooting. He compounds an already compounded problem. That’s the issue.