Hoops Tonight - Warriors Trade Reaction: Golden State acquires Dennis Schroder from Nets

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Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bet must win to receive award. Bonus Bets expire one hundred and sixty eight hours after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources to dkang dot co slash b ball. All right, well, good hoops to night here at the volume. Happy Saturday, everybody. Oh, all of you guys are having a great weekend. You might not be getting to this

till Sunday. I'm actually on my way out to go to a Christmas party with my wife, like the seventh Christmas party that we have every single season. You guys know how it goes. But I know Dennis Schruder pretty well from rooting for him when he was with the Lakers, So I figured I'd just take ten quick minutes to give you guys my thoughts. Also our Monday Show is like just jam packed between the in season, tournament semi final games as well as power rankings and stuff like that.

One's going to probably come out a little later in the day, so I figured I could give you guys my quick ten minute synopsis on the Dennis Schroeder trade. So the gist of it is, the Golden State Warriors are sending d' anthony Melton's contract, now that d Anthony Melton is injured for the season, to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for Dennis Schroeder. The Warriors are also sending

three second round picks in the deal. Now is my first impression on this is don't overthink it, meaning like, is Dennis Shreder the piece that's going to lift the Golden State Warriors to championship contention? No, I don't think he is. That said, He's just a simple and obvious

talent upgrade. It actually reminds me a lot of a trade the Lakers made two years ago when they turned Kendrick Nunn into ruy Hachramura with three second round picks quite a ways before the deadline, a similar type of thing. It's like, here's a contract that's useless to us because Kendrick Nunn has been injured or bad the entire time he's been here. Is Ruy the perfect player? No? Is Ruy going to solve all the Lakers problems. No, but he's just an obvious talent upgrade at a position of need.

Let's bring him in and then we'll figure out the rest at the deadline. And that's kind of where these the Golden State Warriors are at. Yes, they've been in a really tough spot. The offense, especially with the bench unit, has really struggled. But even with Steph Curry on the floor, the offense has just struggled as of late. Right, So it's not that there's a big picture talent issue with

the Warriors. Had the Warriors done nothing, I think their offense would have eventually gotten back up off the ground and they would have been fine, and they would have been in that five to eight range in the standings most of the season. Right. This deal because it's at

such a specific position of need. As a ball handler other than Steph that can run coherent offense, it's just an obvious way to help improve your floor and give you a better chance of being higher in the standings throughout this middle chunk of the season, and then, like the Lakers did two years ago with the D'anzelo, Russell, Jared Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley, you can do something bigger at the deadline. I don't think it'll be that type of deal.

It'll end up being for a more high powered offensive player. But that's the kind of deal that the Warriors can make down at the deadline. And again, you'll have more

information at that point. Potentially Jonathan Kaminga could play himself into a position where he seems completely untradeable again, or maybe Andrew Wiggins plays himself into a position where he looks untradable, but Kaminga looks like he's struggling, and then it makes more sense to make a cominga deal right like this passes the buck, so to speak, of that process to the deadline, while at the same time addressing an immediate need, which is your offense sucks and you

gotta find a way to get that off the ground, especially in the units when Steph is off the floor. So a little bit about Dennis Schroeder again, like you know how it goes, like when you root for a player, you watch them more closely, right, like, I watch all the NBA teams around the league because it's my job, but I obviously watched the Lakers the most because they're my favorite team, and so as a basketball fan, even

when I'm not working, I try to watch them. And so I covered Dennis Schroeder extremely closely on two separate occasions with the Los Angeles Lakers in the twenty twenty one season and then in the final season that Russell Westbrook was there, the twenty twenty three season when they

made it to the Western Conference Finals. A lot of weird stuff happened in there, like the first time, Dennis Schroeder like turns down this massive extension, and then the Lakers end up deciding not to bring him back after bringing in Russell Westbrook, and so they let him walk, and then he can't find a deal and he ends up signing that mid level exception with the Boston Celtics,

if you remember. And then even last time, he was really good for them through the Western Conference Finals, but the Lakers wanted per like, they wanted somebody that was a little bit higher level of like an off ball score type shooter type, so they end up going for Gabe Vincent out of Miami and letting Dennis Schroeder walk,

which ends up being a complete disaster. So the Lakers have fumbled Dennis Schroeder away a couple of times, and now they have a bunch of guards who can't defend and it's frustrating, and that's why I'm kind of out on those guys, as you guys know. But again my experience rooting for Dennis Schroeder, he's just an He was one of my favorite players that I ever rooted for, and I am convinced that Golden State Warriors fans are going to love him. The main kind of like genesis

of that opinion is his competitive spirit. I think it's the number one thing that resonates with fans. Like you work your ass off all day and you sit on the couch and you want to watch a game, and when a dude's playing his ass off, I think it just immediately resonates with people on another level than the guy that It's like on any given night, he might look like he's the best player on the floor and when he's engaged, and then other times he's just yes

in his way through things. I think that can really be frustrating for fans, and so immediately Warriors fans will love him because he is a force of competitive nature. He is a guy that is going to compete on both ends of the floor almost every single night. He is a foxhole guy. He's a guy when, like when the shit's getting tough and it's physical and it's there's adversity, you want him in your corner. He's just in terms of his intangible basketball character, he is a awesome player

that Warriors fans are going to love. Now on the basketball level, let's start on the defensive end. As a defensive player, Dennis Schroeder is one of the better guard defenders in the league. He can defend the vast majority of guards at the point of attack very well. He's good with ball pressure, he slides quick laterally, he contains the ball well. He's very disruptive swiping at the basketball. He navigates screens well, he applies back pressure well. He

does all of that really, really well. Dennis Schroeder is an awesome point of attack defender that will help the Warriors right away. He does have some weaknesses with bigger power guards, so like, for instance, if he gets caught in a switch against a wing that can post up a little bit struggles to hold his own there. There are also like a half dozen ish scoring guards in the league that are big and strong enough to kind of withstand his ball pressure, and they can just easily

shoot over the top of him. Famously, in the twenty twenty three Western Conference Finals, Jamal Murray just kind of cooked him one on one a bunch or in ball screens a bunch, because he just his contest wasn't high enough long, whatever you want to call it, to bother Jamal Murray, and he was just big and strong enough to ward off his ball pressure. But again, those are smaller problems and the Warriors have other solutions for that.

The Warriors have other guys in house already that they can put on bigger, stronger guards, and so if anything, if there's a weakness in the Golden State perimeter defense, they've got a lot of guys like Andrew Wiggins, like Jonathan Cominga that they can stick on bigger wings. But when it comes to super quick laterally guards, it's like Gary Payton the second is the only guy you really like in those matchups. Everyone else is solid, like Lindy

Waters is solid. Brandon Pajemski's solid. Those guys can compete at the point of attack, some better than others, but none of them are like great at handling quick guards except for Gary Payton. Dennis Schroeder gives you another option in those types of situations on the offensive end of the four. I understand that there's going to be some initial commentariot. You'll see it around in a lot of the basketball media space surrounding the fit, and there's a

very basic reason behind that. Like Dennis Schroeder is very much a pound the air out of the ball, spread, pick and roll, pick on mismatches and switches type of guard. Like in ball screens, like he likes to reject the screen, especially against ice, and kind of shoot little fifteen footers along the baseline. He'll work into the mid range, and he's got an assortment of like little short mid range shots that he can make. He's a decent passer in

ball screens, he can run them. But then when there's switches, he's pretty good at getting bigs out into space and beating them off the dribble because he's got a really quick first step. So that's kind of like his style of play. So in theory in the Warriors five out motion, it doesn't seem like it would make much sense. But again, I don't think it's going to be that bad within the context of Steph on the floor, because one, every single motion concept is more or less a ball screen

in principle. It's just in the concept of ball and player movement, like Dennis's traits should still translate reasonably well there. And then two, he's not a guy you can leave wide open. He's actually a very good shooter. And this extended back to the Lakers days, Like if he was set and his feet were set and he had time to get through his whole release, he felt like it was going in. The issue is he's got a really long,

drawn out release. So like if he's let's say that you're trying to get his defender onto Steph, and so he's screening for Steph because you're trying to get that weaker defender onto Steph Curry so he can attack a mismatch and instead of switching the hedge and Dennis has to like slip out of it quick and make himself available for a jumper. He's not a guy that can like shoot on the move. He's not a guy that's gonna come flying off of a screen and knock down

a jump shot. He's a standstill jump shooter who also when defenders who tend to duck under picks against him, when they duck under screens, he can kind of settle behind the screen and find his timing to knock down the shot. And then he's got a couple of nifty like release angles and stuff for short to mid range stuff. But he's not like the most dynamic movement shooter, which is a little bit of a clunky fit with the

Warriors offense. But again, because he's so good defensively, and because you can't leave him wide open, and because he does have a good amount of offensive skill, he should still be workable in the stepf on the floor units and then it's all about the units. When STEP's off the floor, Well you have to play a different style, yeah, probably, But we've seen the Warriors have to go to that style even with the steph led units at times, including

most recently their last playoff run. Right. So like the spread pick and roll thing is something that Golden State has been willing to go to at times. They and they used to do it in the past with Chris Paul in the context of bench lineups without Steph on

the floor. So like, again you really dig down into it, the Warriors were hoping that that kind of strength in numbers offensive skill coalition would get the job done, and it ended up being like Pajemski kind of had a bad year, you know, the Anthony Melton gets hurt all of a sudden, that just doesn't materialize the way they were hoping. Insert Dennis Schroeder. He can help at least command those bench units at a better rate then at

a better rate than what they were getting before. And again, like they don't have the sh that in those bench groups that Brooklyn has, so like it's not going to be the same type of look, but it should be a better defensive group than what Brooklyn had, and so they should be able to they should be able to play a brand of basketball with Dennis on the floor and step off that is conducive to winning those minutes.

So in short, again number one, don't overthink it. You're flipping three second round picks in d Anthony Melton's contract to Brooklyn, meaning one you didn't waste Jonathan Minga or any of the young players that other teams want. Two, you didn't waste any of your first round draft compensation. Three, even if you liked the d Anthony Meltin fit in the context of the future, he's got a player option that he can just reject and then go back to

Golden State next year. So all you're really giving up is three second round picks, right, which can be recruited in other ways. Right. And then the second piece of it is it's an obvious talent upgrade. You're just turning a useless contract into a very good NBA player who also plays a very specific position of need, which is a shot creating guard that can also defend, which should in theory, help stabilize those bench groups for Golden State.

It's not a move that is going to vault the Warriors into top tier championship contention, but it is an obvious step in that direction that also maintains the flexibility to do something bigger as they get closer to the deadline, which fingers crossed because I'm hoping to see Steph playing some big, high leverage games this year. Hopefully they end up doing something a little bit more splashy as they get closer to the deadline. All right, guys, that's all

I have for today. As always, as sincerely appreciate you guys for supporting me in support in the show. I'll be back on Monday late afternoonish to cover the n Season Tournament semi final games as well as our weekly power rankings. I will see you guys then the volume. What's up guys. As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second

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