Okay, so the thread title is a bit misleading. But most teams have gone small, and even if they haven't, many of us have been saying what a defensive liability the backup 5 is and will be now and especially come playoff time. We're starting to run Morgan out there, which is great and I hope it continues, and even Royce playing Rudy's role on defense. So that raises a few questions/observations. One is that Royce has been struggling more lately on quicker guards on the perimeter. In some backup lineups, does it make sense to move him up playing the 4/5 while we open up time for Mudiay? Moving Royce up even as a small-ball 5 really opens up our minutes to clear out the guard log-jam and allows us to replace more of Niang's minutes with Mudiay. Mudiay already is a better rebounder, grabbing more per minute and posting a higher rebounding %, which I would honesty expect to go up just by vacuum effect if he were out there as the 3/4 sometimes. His defense is better than Niang and he's a lot stronger. His ability to iso may be more valuable come playoff time.
Overall, I think this can improve defense and have more well-rounded play the more we integrate Mudiay/Morgan and minimize others. This doesn't work against LA. I'm still very much in favor of signing Udoh, but this is a good option using what we have. If we did sign Udoh, then FTW make Mudiay our backup 3/4 and have to take Niang out of rotation.
