It's an interesting trade idea but in the end, I'd vote no. I just feel Jeff Teague is basically a glorified middle-of-the-road NBA PG. He's decent (probably a step up from decent to be fair), he's talented, but he's not top tier. When you get right down to it, what he is is about 15 ppg/6 apg and he's been at that level more or less for the past several seasons. My thinking -- how can we get that production w/o adding any significant payroll and without trading anyone. Could we go out and add a cost-effective PG option in FA like Jerryd Bayless and actually LEAN ON HIM for that type of production? I say yes, we could and I think he'd respond. He's not that far off from that level as it is anyway. I contend this dude has always been talented enough--to me, no one has ever entrusted him enough/leaned on him enough for that level of production yet, but I certainly think he's capable. And the price would be right for Bayless--that's one of the main reasons why I consider him an attractive PG option for us with some vet experience, quite possibly the best option out there pound for pound when you weigh all the factors. Plus, I think he'd welcome the challenge and actually thrive with the increased responsibility/shot attempts. Sometimes that's all it takes for some guys -- different setting coupled with more responsibility. That's how it seemed to work for guys like Chauncey Billups and Kyle Lowry, right? Once thought of as busts and backups, it took a little while but both guys eventually developed into very good NBA lead guards.
We're talking about a guy in Bayless who's developed into a knockdown 40%+ 3-pt shooter and has all the other requisite skills to be a very good lead guard for us, a HUGE step up from Calderon and a guy I feel has comparable if not better raw ability to guys like Teague, Conley Jr, etc.. I'd argue this guy's full potential hasn't been tapped yet:
We could also go out and pay more for a guy like Seth Curry and get that amount of PG production. Or we could pay a premium price (close to max money) for Mike Conley Jr. for that same amount of production (my least favorite option by far -- why pay close to max dollars for a level of production we might be able to get for $3-5mm/yr?). When looking at all of these choices, I vote Jerryd Bayless. After securing Bayless for a good cap-friendly price, I'd double down and go get one of the many decent PGs projected to go in the 2nd round. It's insures JH has plenty of choices to work with and gives us further insurance in case Grant regresses (I'm hoping Grant only builds on his strong close to the season, but you never know), Wroten never pans out, etc.. Bottom line, I don't want to drastically overpay for anything in the NBA anymore. We've tried that in the past so many times and have always failed to get the results we were looking for.
6/8/2016 10:41 AM