Thompson has good size (legit center size) & some good ability but most of it is fairly unrealized & a tad underdeveloped at this point. Could be a similar player to David West only a little bigger version (that's probably his ceiling), but he's not there yet. Nice game last night though in the loss, no doubt -- ran the court well, found open teammates ahead of him on the break, great recovery block on a Derrick Rose layup attempt, boarded well with the 9 rebs & I saw him can one 20 footer-all net..One positive is that if we acquired him & he came here & played decent we could always turn around & flip him in a blockbuster for a star like Melo (if something like that ever materializes) just like we would've undoubtedly had to do with Randolph. Like AR, he's still on his rookie deal too which is quite manageable, another plus..I'm not against going after him, I just wonder what Sac's asking price would be. I highly doubt they'd just give him away. Is he worth 2 or possibly 3 total assets combined to bring here? Assets we might be able to use for a much better player eventually??? Not sure but I'm inclined to say no.
What concerns me is that Randolph's value is at an all-time low. I don't even think we could get Thompson for Randolph straight up right now. Thompson's nice but it's pretty obvious to me that Randolph has the greater potential if we could ever get him going..Now what are we gonna do about this? Are we gonna do anything at all to work with this kid to realize that potential or are we just gonna throw the towel in on him already? Throwing the towel before we even know what we have with him would be a mistake if you ask me... Sacramento might ask for AR and a pick or AR & Fields or even something built around Gallinari. I'm mean do you do that? Now you're talking about giving up on a guy with vast potential along with another asset or 2 all for a player who makes us a little better and a little deeper up front, true, but nowhere near championship caliber. To be clear, I'm not that upset with Randolph--I'm a little more upset at MDA for not affording him the same luxury as guys like Gallo and Mozgov when it comes to working through problems---this kid's ability didn't just suddenly desert him, his own coach did. And if your own coach doesn't show any confidence in you, it's kinda hard to build confidence in yourself..That's how I'm looking at this right now. To me it makes a lot more sense to actually give AR an extended look right now to see if he can be that 3rd reliable big to play with Amar'e & Ronny. Find out first before we give up on him. Then we'll know for sure.
He's actually had some nice moments in this 1st half against Detroit minus Turiaf so we'll have to see. It's a start.
11/28/2010 2:54 PM