Quote:
Originally Posted by SMC0007
Definitely looking forward to JJ. I don't see how he end up end of bench guy, even with Rick-rick doing rick things. DFS better stay on it or he will be coming in with Brunson off the bench.
How do you mean other teams play Luka different with JJ on the court? Not sure the direction of the question, but I'll strongly suggest people should take it easy on the idea that we have enforcers to keep Luka or anyone else from getting hard fouled or yelled at etc. With all due respect, No one in the league gives a shit about us getting tougher players. These guys don't fight, the NBA is soft and the refs are unpredictable.
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I hope JJ(Johnson) is in the same mold as Draymond Green, the Morris twins, Harrell, Pat Beverly, and Steven Adams. More like Charles Oakley/Joakim Noah than “Bad Boys” Rick Mahorn/Bill Laimbeer. These guys are irritants to the opposition and tend to draw a certain amount of attention away from superstars because of their physical play. They get under your skin and hopefully trigger you to complain incessantly to the refs. They are a distraction. Irritants are not a necessity, but if you have one amazing superstar that draws 95% of the attention from an opposing team, it seems to me a player like JJ can be valuable. It may only be for a short episode in the game when Luka is getting beat up and his emotions are starting to unravel a bit, inserting JJ into the game gives the other team another player to think about because he will physically insert himself into the flow of the game by leaning on, hacking, pushing, and trash talking the opposing players as well as diving for loose balls and drawing charges. So, it’s not being a “bodyguard” or an “enforcer” but more of providing a "hard-to-ignore" element to the game that the Mavs have lacked since perhaps Deshawn Stevenson (Rondo should have been another).
The fact is, I have not seen JJ play all that often and he might not be the player I just described. That is why I am not sure if he is an end of the bench guy, a starting PF, or a rotation player that gets 10-12 minutes a game.