Welcome to Take Week

A week of anonymous takes and rants from NBA insiders and outsiders

I’m not much of a hot take artist. I don’t have the fire in me. God bless anyone that’s made a career out of it, but I can’t summon the energy required to feel that strongly about anything.

But I do love reading a good hot take.

So, I asked some friends of The F5 if they’d like to be Stephen A. Smith for a day and write a guest take for this newsletter. I kept my request open-ended to solicit a variety of topics. This worked out better than I expected because I got back hot takes and rants about NBA Draft Twitter, the Eye Test, Shams Charania, and more.

To keep the authors from pulling any punches, I explained I would be publishing their takes anonymously. My thinking was that this would encourage these guests writers to say something more interesting, or at least more provocative, if they didn’t have to put their name on it.

So, starting today I’ll be publishing two takes a day from my anonymous guests.

Here are the takes on today’s menu:

• First, NBA front offices are robbing fans blind

• Then, it’s time to talk about the Italian Julius Randle

You can expect to find two new takes in your inbox every day this week.

You might agree with some of what’s published. You’ll probably disagree with a lot of it. But Take Week isn’t about being right or wrong. It’s only about the Take.

- Owen Phillips

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The Great NBA Front Office Heist

At 1:24 a.m., March 18, 1990, two police officers, responding to a report about a disturbance, approached the guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The guards escorted the police inside. Within seconds, the police handcuffed the guards, dragging them to the basement. It turns out they weren’t police, but thieves, and they stole more than $500M worth of art from the museum.

The real victim isn’t the museum. It’s you. It’s me. It’s the public. We suffer from the art we will never get to see or appreciate. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist is considered the largest such heist in history, but it’s not. What NBA front offices have done, are doing, and continue to do by missing uniquely talented individuals who play winning basketball is an even greater theft of art. We, the public, have been robbed.

What if I told you there was a better three-point shooter than Steve Kerr?

Or a better shot blocker than Victor Wembanyama?

Or a more efficient volume scorer than Nikola Jokic?

Or a better rebounder than Andre Drummond?

Okay, I’ll tell you…

No NCAA division 1 player has a career three-point percentage above 47 percent. Seger Bonifant, a 6’7 DII player, shot 52.5 percent from three on over 700 attempts in college. His team went 124-14. Then he shot 48.5 percent on more than 450 attempts across four seasons in Europe. He’s currently a high school athletic director. We were robbed.

The NBA career leader in block percentage is 7.8 percent. Wemby is at 10.1 percent. Tacko Fall was at 12.2 percent. Include his heavier minutes in the G-League, and he’s at 10.6 percent. His limited plus-minus data from the NBA was promising (+9.0 on court Net Rating with a +7.2 on-off). Now he plays in China. We were robbed.

Two players in NBA history have a career 25 percent Usage Rate with 63 percent True Shooting: Nikola Jokic and Boban Marjanović. Through their age 30 seasons, Boban was more efficient. Boban’s +4.9 on court Net Rating across nine seasons and six teams and +2.0 on-off suggest his volume and efficiency more than offset any negatives from lack of quickness or versatility. Boban is now 36. We were robbed.

Andre Drummond’s 25.1 Total Rebounding Rate is the highest in NBA history (by a large margin). Oscar Tshiebwe is at 24.3. In more extended G-League minutes, he’s at 27.4. Oscar’s +1.2 on court Net Rating and +7.6 on-off in limited NBA minutes are supplemented by his +8.9 on court Net Rating and +7.3 on-off in the G-League. Oscar can’t get beyond a two-way. Chances are high we’ll be robbed.

LeBron will surpass $500 million in career earnings next season. Younger stars today may exceed one billion, more than what was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston 35 years ago. That’s why I consider what NBA front offices are doing by handing out massive contracts to negative impact players like DeMar DeRozan and Jalen Green, while ignoring the winning talent right beneath their noses, the greatest art theft is history. And once again, it’s we, the public, who suffer.

For the love of God, someone sign Oscar Tshiebwe.

- Anonymous Hyena

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Paolo Boxscoreo

Paolo Banchero is good at one thing: putting points on the board.

Yeah, I know the game is about a bucket, but there’s more to basketball than just scoring. How you score (efficiency) and how your team scores because of you (playmaking/creation) is important, too. Impact on the basketball court goes beyond the boxscore.

Paolo plays a stagnant brand of basketball with ball-stopping isolations and face-up jab steps. His game is more similar to Carmelo’s despite being built like LeBron. He’d rather settle for a midrange jump shot than use his strength to get closer to the basket.

I know what you’re thinking: Orlando’s spacing is bad so Paolo has to take bad shots. But ask yourself why that doesn’t apply to Franz Wagner? Paolo and Franz have very similar shot selections with one crucial difference: A quarter of Paolo’s attempts come from the midrange — twice as much as Franz.

Is that good? Let’s ask his opponents:

Paolo’s never had a season with an above average True Shooting despite being a decent free throw shooter and taking more foul shots than all but seven players (Giannis, SGA, Luka, Trae, Tatum, DeRozan, and Lillard) since entering the league. Do you know how bad your shot making has to be in order for that to be true?

The Ringer thinks Paolo is the 23rd best player in the NBA. Meanwhile, NBA2K has him ranked 24th overall. One of the easiest things to find in the NBA is volume scoring on bad efficiency. And yet, Paolo’s points per game continues to be a distraction from the reality, which is that he hurts his team more than he helps it.

The Magic should trade Paolo before everyone else realizes what their front office probably already knows: he’s empty calories.

They can take a page out of the Thunder’s playbook and cut bait this summer before he’s owed a contract extension. Oklahoma City turned Josh Giddey into Alex Caruso and now they’re the favorite to win the Championship. Imagine what the Magic could get in return for the former number one overall pick.

Send him back to the Pacific Northwest by making a deal with Portland. I’d rather have Deni Avdija and a lottery pick in this year’s draft than Paolo on a max.

If the Magic are serious about getting off the treadmill of mediocrity then they need to push their chips in and build around Franz, not Paolo. In the words of Draymond Green, “Paolo, the dynasty starts after you. Not with you.”

- Anonymous Penguin

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Back tomorrow with more takes!