Former Knicks GM Scott Perry on the Hoop Genius Podcast about the disgruntled superstar strategy: “If a guy’s disgruntled somewhere else, what makes you think he won’t be disgruntled when he comes to you? I’m just sayin. You hear this as a strategy now…Me personally, you have to proceed with real caution…I don’t have the ‘arrogance’ necessarily to believe that a guy’s gonna come to our place & he’s gonna be happy just because…And when you look at these disgruntled stars, how many of them have left a situation where everything was catered around them…when they go to the new team, it’s not quite the same for them…the guys that have been traded…Dwight Howard, when I first got to Orlando, he was the Orlando Magic. Ever since he’s been gone from there, what’s his career looked like? He’s been searching for what he had in Orlando the entire time”
The Zion love is the hardest for me to understand. He’s a player who relies so much on explosiveness and his habits tell me that he’s a significant risk to lose that over time.
And if self-pride and a desire to be great doesn’t motivate him now (like it always has been for the greats), I don’t see why people think he will develop that drive when he goes to another team. He might for a time, but he’s likely to revert.
Compare him to Randle, IQ, RJ, Sims, Josh Hart, etc. and the work they put in during the offseason and the shape they are in. There is a reason Thibs can play his guys big minutes and they stay healthy. I don’t think you can count on that with Zion.
And finally, do people really think he’s the kind of guy who’s going to develop an outside game as his explosiveness wanes? I don’t see it.