Mirotic with 18/12 last night. Honestly, I’m not sure they’re just going to dump this guy on draft night, or over the summer, because he’ll be the perfect person to fill their scoring vacuum and his minutes won’t be limited secondary to a tank.
Here are the final key things I’ll say about Mirotic:
It’s pretty established that we need a stretch four. Mirotic isn’t just a stretch four, he’s the stretch four. We don’t just need a perimeter shooter, but we need a volume three point shooter. There has never been a PF or C in the history of the league who’s played any kind of meaningful minutes who attemps and makes as many threes as he does for the amount of time on the floor — this isn’t just this year, either. Guys like Jerebko are nice and we’ve seen the benefits when we can spread the floor some, but the difference between Jerebko and Mirotic is that Mirotic gets up twice as many threes per minute, and Jerebko shoots a respectable amount.
People act like someone like Niko grows on trees. But do we know what kinda does grow on trees? Draft picks. You literally get a new one every single year — in perpetuity. DL is going to draft a stud at 15 this year? Great, he can draft a stud in 2019, and 2020, and 2021. I’ve continued to insist we won’t have a top 10 pick and it will be 14 or beyond. Nobody wants to hear it. But whatever, he got moved.
Pelicans want to win now. I’d be on the phone offering Favors and Hood to NOP for Mirotic. He can be traded so long as his salary isn’t aggregated with someone else. The Pelicans hit a lot of things on their list with that move: 1) they want wings 2) they need front court help and defense 3) they need salary coming off the books. They can then have a backup plan if Boogie splits. I think Favors/Hood together help fill more of their holes than Mirotic. Letting Niko slip through our hands will prove to be a colossal blunder. We’ll look back in hindsight and rationalize that “well he just wasn’t worth that at the time” and “29 other GMs didn’t value him highly so it’s no biggie we missed” just like people, from any fan base, always rationalize missing on a player by “well 29 other teams passed on him too lololol.” Unfortunately, that’s the only argument we’ll be left with.
And for the record, I’ve stated I think DL is a top three GM and, no, I don’t think it’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing way to approach whether or not you believe in someone. RG and DM are awesome. Rubio was a bad move. Quin was the right hire. Burke was a bust. DL is an awesome GM. Letting Niko get away will be a huge blunder.
Tl;dr
Leave Hood in New Orleans tomorrow.
