Bob_The_Cat
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The post I responded too stated he couldn’t do what he’s doing in Utah what he’s doing here, I’m not saying Koby doesn’t watch international ball, but if he did it was quite evident he was about to have a breakout year. So if Koby watched his international performance and wasn’t impressed that’s actually more worrying then him not paying attention to international basketball.
Lauri is 10x the player Allen is, he was breaking scoring records with a terrible Finnish team, this was before the trade. If Koby valued Allen over Lauri after watching those performances he has no business managing a professional basketball team.
Thinking 2 non shooting bigs is a better fit then arguably the best shooting big man in the league is crazy
That being said I still trade for Mitchel, however I do think Lauri was under valued in that trade. He’s a top 30 player, you dont trade that with 5 draft picks, and 2 players including Sexton who’s no scrub. But Ainge is simply clearly the better GM
And the entire post I wrote made it clear why he wouldn't have had the same opportunities here.
See, this is the problem on all these posts. It’s all revisionist history. Lauri wasn’t a top-30 player at the time of the trade. Not even close. The Bulls traded him to the Cavs the year before for Derrick Jones Jr and a lotto-protected ‘24 1st from the Blazers. He wasn't viewed by anyone in the league as a top-shooting big man until AFTER he was traded, Utah put him in the right situation, and he had more opportunities. He was just under 36% from 3 with the Cavs.
If people were upset about Mobley not getting touches this year, they would've been just as upset if Lauri was still here. People continually make stuff up that just wasn't true at the time of the trade. Allen by far was a more valuable piece coming off an All-Star appearance. The Cavs wanted no part of paying Sexton $17M/year. They just weren’t going to keep him because they saw Garland/Sexton didn't work. They didn't trade 5 picks. 3 picks and 2 swaps are completely different than 5 picks, especially when there's a good chance the swaps never come into play.
Anyway, done talking about this trade. It's pointless because people are going to continue to assess it based on what Lauri did on a 37-win team that was catered to HIM. The Cavs team was never going to be catered to him if Garland and Mobley were on the roster. I will reserve my judgment on Lauri for at least a year and see if he's able to elevate his team to playoff contention or if they just kind of hover in the same spot.
There's also the issue of Lauri's injury history. He's missed a ton of games over the course of his career. If he's missing almost 20 or more games every year, that's a major issue. He's played in 61 or fewer games in 4 of his 6 seasons. That's a problem until he proves his durability over several seasons.