Hot Stove: UNC Basketball

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Names of other Bigs being floated about having been contacted by UNC -- could be rumors and rumors of rumors but here they are...

Sayon Keita -- Barcelona

Patrick Wessler -- UNCW

Alexandros Samodurov -- Greece

Joaquim Bountje -- Cameroon

Brice Dessert -- France

Momo Faye -- Barcelona

Damon Wilkinson -- S. Dakota State
 
TurdFerguson said:
I have a bad feeling Veesaar leaving is going to screw the Heels.
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To an extent, players are fungible. No one fills the role of Henri, but you can use that money to add other strengths to your team. Greg Barnes quoted Billy Beane in today's IC podcast: "Guys, you're still trying to replace Giambi. I told you we can't do it, and we can't do it. Now, what we might be able to do is re-create him. Re-create him in the aggregate."
 
2026-2027 Carolina Basketball Roster

Sr Stevenson
Sr Brown
Sr Young
Jr Logue
So Avdalas
So Able
So Denis
R-Fr Bennerman
Fr Adams
Fr Smith
 
Calheel said:
To an extent, players are fungible. No one fills the role of Henri, but you can use that money to add other strengths to your team. Greg Barnes quoted Billy Beane in today's IC podcast: "Guys, you're still trying to replace Giambi. I told you we can't do it, and we can't do it. Now, what we might be able to do is re-create him. Re-create him in the aggregate."
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I appreciate the analogy Greg is making there but that kind of approach works a lot better in baseball than basketball. In reality it is obviously way more valuable, on a basketball team, to have one player who can do 3 things well than 3 players who can each do one of those things well. We might spend the Veesaar money on three different centers but that doesn't mean that collectively they will be as valuable as Veesaar because none of them, individually, are likely to be as valuable on the court as having Veesaar on the court instead. So our ceiling is lowered.

Now, if not re-signing Veesaar meant we could leave open the possibility of adding someone like Juke Harris to the perimeter rotation, along with adding a starting post, then I would agree with it. But it sounds like what Malone has in mind is more just loading up on potential frontcourt options. In other words, we're not going to use the money to replace 32 borderline elite Veesaar minutes with 25 "very good" post minutes and 25 "very good" wing minutes; we're going to use it to replace 32 borderline elite Veesaar minutes with three guys who could collectively play 65 post minutes that are somewhere between OK and very good, but we can probably only use 40 of those minutes on any given night.

Doesn't mean it won't work. And maybe Keita or someone else will turn out to be closer to Veesaar than we thought. But the whole "players are somewhat fungible" thing only works if there are actually players on the market worth spending on, and those players happen to fit what we're doing.
 
rodoheel said:
I appreciate the analogy Greg is making there but that kind of approach works a lot better in baseball than basketball. In reality it is obviously way more valuable, on a basketball team, to have one player who can do 3 things well than 3 players who can each do one of those things well. We might spend the Veesaar money on three different centers but that doesn't mean that collectively they will be as valuable as Veesaar because none of them, individually, are likely to be as valuable on the court as having Veesaar on the court instead. So our ceiling is lowered.

Now, if not re-signing Veesaar meant we could leave open the possibility of adding someone like Juke Harris to the perimeter rotation, along with adding a starting post, then I would agree with it. But it sounds like what Malone has in mind is more just loading up on potential frontcourt options. In other words, we're not going to use the money to replace 32 borderline elite Veesaar minutes with 25 "very good" post minutes and 25 "very good" wing minutes; we're going to use it to replace 32 borderline elite Veesaar minutes with three guys who could collectively play 65 post minutes that are somewhere between OK and very good, but we can probably only use 40 of those minutes on any given night.

Doesn't mean it won't work. And maybe Keita or someone else will turn out to be closer to Veesaar than we thought. But the whole "players are somewhat fungible" thing only works if there are actually players on the market worth spending on, and those players happen to fit what we're doing.
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Agree that you can only take the analogy so far. You can't replace 1 player with 3 players, when you are only allowed to have 5 on the court at any one time.

But what you could do is significantly beef up the four slot and let Jarin play some 5 next year and then add more back up depth in a way you could not if all your resources were dedicated to HV (Rell has been suggesting that we were around $5 million for HV).

We aren't going to get a 5 who can lead the team in 3FG%, blocks and offensive efficiency. But, maybe we can get a more physical and more athletic 5 and beef up other parts of the team so that the HV money makes us a more diversified team. That is at least theoretically possible, but we need to see how it all plays out.
 
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