Will Nets, Lakers be haunted by Ghosts of Buyouts past?
Pardon me for leading off with a heretical question: Is all this buyout market activity just subtraction by addition?
The news this weekend that LaMarcus Aldridge will join the Nets and Andre Drummond will join the Lakers is theoretically good news for both franchises. Each team has open roster spots and both players are pretty clearly better than what they could have found via a G League call-up.
Yet there are expectations that come with such a player, especially when there was something of a bidding war in each case to get their services. The bidding, in this case, wasn’t financial, since every team offered the same minimum contact. Instead, it involved selling the situation: The city, the team, and, yes, the playing time.
One thing that was hard for me to digest until I worked on the team side is the reality of what happens when teams add a veteran with “status” in the league. Even if there wasn’t a recruiting situation, that guy is going to play, at the very least until he emphatically proves that he shouldn’t play, and younger players will have to wait their turn. In some cases, the front office has to be the one to pull the plug.
If there are no better alternatives available, then it’s not a big deal.
If Nic Claxton is the alternative, on the other hand, then it might be. The idea of the Nets starting Aldridge at center and playing him heavy minutes — while Claxton rots on the pine behind him, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan — has to be a tough one to swallow for Brooklyn fans who have watched the second-year center emerge recently.
To wit, here is Nic Claxton defending a switch against a guard:
And here is LaMarcus Aldridge trying to do the same:
In 269 minutes this season, Claxton has the best PER of any Brooklyn big and is quite obviously the best defender of the bunch. He’s been so good, in fact, that his game is stealing attention from whatever is going on with that hair (I’m clearly the wrong person to ask). The otherwise fairly torchable Nets defense (ranked 26th on the season) gives up just 101.4 points per 100 possessions with Claxton on the court. That is by far the best mark of any Brooklyn regular or quasi-regular; the team allows 114.9 in non-Claxton minutes.
Thus, it seems the Nets might actually be hurting themselves by intentionally choosing Aldridge minutes over Claxton minutes.
All this conjures up images of great buyout fails of yore: Mike Bibby with the 2011 Heat (PER of 3.6 in 20 playoff games before he was mercifully DNP’d in the finale), Anderson Varejao for the Warriors in 2016 (when he played like he was still on Cleveland’s payroll) or Greg Monroe in Philadelphia’s still-stinging seven-game defeat to Toronto in 2019, when the Sixers were minus-ten-thousand points-per-100 in non-Embiid minutes.
Aldridge probably has more left in the tank than those guys, but he’s also replacing a high-performing option.
In addition to Claxton, Aldridge’s presence also could have knock-on effects through the rest of the rotation. If the Nets really want to play Griffin and Aldridge and Jordan, they’ll probably end up playing Kevin Durant a lot of minutes at the 3 and pushing Bruce Brown out of the mix, even though Brooklyn has looked its best this year playing small and fast and Durant is more effective as a 4. Similarly, lineups with Jeff Green as a small-ball 5 now seem like history; he might get more run at 3 than 5 the rest of the way.
Look, I can make an argument for how Aldridge might help. For starters, Aldridge gives the Nets another big body to throw at Joel Embiid in a potential conference-finals pairing – one area where the slightly built Claxton might be overwhelmed. Also, having a true floor-spacing 5 will make them even more potent offensively as long as they can play a drop coverage defensively. (Aldridge played almost exclusively drop coverage in San Antonio this season, a wise change after Trae Young had him dancing the robot a season earlier.)
Even then, it was a tough slog for him – the Spurs played the same coverage much more effectively with Jakob Poeltl (105.4) than Aldridge (114.2). They weren’t playing drop coverage because Aldridge can protect the rim; they were forced into it because he can’t switch. But his pick-and-pop game may make the Nets so potent offensively that they needn’t worry. (While we’re here: The far less famous but arguably more useful Gorgui Dieng offered the best combination of defensive viability and floor spacing. Ironically, he’ll be Aldridge’s replacement in San Antonio after receiving a buyout from Memphis).
Nonetheless, there are some real risks here if the Nets can’t manage minutes expectations appropriately. The Aldridge-Griffin-Jordan triumvirate looks to be of limited utility against opponents like the Bucks, Clippers, or Jazz, for instance. If they aren’t willing to pull those guys and roll with Claxton – or just play small – then Aldridge represents subtraction by addition.
The Ghosts of Buyouts Past also loom in Los Angeles, albeit not quite as noticeably. Since you asked, sure, there is a part of me that’s disgusted to see Drummond starting ahead of Marc Gasol after Marc did this to him, but hey, times change. Gasol is still the Lakers’ best defensive option in the middle, but he is recovering from COVID-19 and hasn’t given L.A. much offensively, and Anthony Davis is still out for a while.
Drummond at least gives the Lakers the ability to dominate with their size, something they did very effectively in the 2019-20 regular season before playing smaller later in the playoffs. They’re likely to employ a similar approach this time around. Markieff Morris remains available as a small-ball 5 and Davis, of course, is able to slide up. Gasol – still as stout a post defender as there is in the league – remains available for potential matchups with Nikola Jokic or Joel Embiid. (Drummond, despite his size, is not a great post defender and has been flambéd repeatedly by Embiid in particular.)
However, where Drummond unquestionably helps the Lakers is in the present moment, as they try to stagger toward the postseason with a respectable seeding without both LeBron James and Davis. The Lakers can run some offense through him at the elbows while their two superstars are out of the lineup, and use his elite offensive rebounding to recover some of the many bricks they’ve flung at the rim of late.
Where it gets tricky, again, is in managing expectations. The Lakers have to know that Drummond isn’t likely to be their best option in a playoff series, or that his role might be similar to Dwight Howard’s first-six-minutes-of-the-half cameos from a year ago. I’m more optimistic about this one working out than the Aldridge scenario, especially given the regular-season boost. Nonetheless, if it forces the Lakers to play big more than they want, and/or pushes Gasol and Montrezl Harrell to the margins in situations where they could help, it still can have unintended negative consequences.
to bi bilo pravo finale za sve prave ljubitelje kosarke, dva najbolja centra lige da dovedu svoje ekipe u finale, kad se to zadnji put desilo, da u obje ekipe glavni igrac nije na 1-3. A i ostali matchupi dobri
