David Levine
Posts: 74884
Joined: 7/14/2007
From: Las Vegas
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A grim, but likely accurate post from "Suspicious Sal":
The real issue in this series is Rose's "good" play.
If there was any doubt that Thibs would re-sign Rose, that is pretty much gone now. How much is Rose’s agent going to steal from them? If its the full mid-level exception, then they will be hard-capped and won’t be able to re-sign Bjelica. If it’s the tax-payer mid-level exception, they still have to make a decision if its worth going over the tax for Bjelica, a player who has not figured prominently in the playoffs. Maybe an outside market won’t develop for Rose, and he is willing to come back for the veteran minimum, but I don’t expect Thibs and Layden to have the discipline to win that stare-down with Rose’s agent.
Then they have decide if they want to address there roster imbalance with Teague, Rose, Crawford, and Jones. Is Thibs going to commit to playing 3 point guard bench units again? He can point to the Trail Blazers and Clippers using those lineups, but I don’t think its something anyone prefers to do.
Keeping all of them for injury depth, but not playing all of them would make sense given Crawford’s age and Rose’s history, but Jones is the only player that Thibs could bench without having someone get ****ed off and causing trouble—perhaps Thibs wouldn’t care about a disgruntled bench player. More likely he would prefer to bench Jones anyway—that appears to be the case based on his playoff rotations.
What about a trade? Thibs might view Rose as a starter caliber player, but I don’t think they ship Teague out, given Rose’s injury history. Thibs could have a come-to-Jesus moment and realize that Crawford is absolutely killing their defensive rating to the point where he grades out as one of the worst players in the league, but its game 4 of the playoffs and he still hasn’t had it. Which brings us back to Jones—the only player of the quartet with real trade value—potentially enough trade value to acquire a late first round pick or a suitable backup wing.
So unless there is a major shakeup involving Wiggins, we are most likely looking at the Wolves losing Bjelica in free agency, and Tyus Jones getting traded.
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