I know I'm going to like him. He has talent. He's athletic. He's intelligent. He's going to work his ass off. I'm confident he'll be an above average player. He'll impact both ends of the court. He'll probably be a great teammate. He might even get some ROY votes this year.
I just doubt we will love him. I know there's a decent chance we could, i.e., a somewhat decent chance he'll make an All Star team, truly be a go to scorer, a top 25 player, maybe better, who knows. I just expect he'll cap out as a 15-20 ppg solid wing. And we already have that. He'd have made a fantastic pick at 7 or 8. He'd be a steal. But who here thinks that if our pick had been 7 or 8 that we'd still have made the pick? Nah. We'd have Noel right now. And that guy is something we don't already have, and desperately need, and only needs to improve a little to have an All Star impact.
not going by anything more than the eye test here. in the limited games that I've seen Noel (less than 10), he hasn't looked like he has a made a huge impact on the game. His highlight reel looks nice with alley oops and blocks, but actual live game tape- doesn't stand out to me. Am I the only one that thinks Noel might be overrated?
Noel is a nice player who does a lot of good things on defense, but he's not a star and he's getting maxed out next summer by someone, so any trade for him erases a big chunk (possibly all) of your cap room next summer. Given the looming glut of bigs on Philly's roster at both the 4
and 5 spots, there's a reasonable chance that you can just wait a year, play Amir as poor man's Noel in the meantime, and get Noel for nothing but cap space next summer (or at a discount at the trade deadline). Boston just posted the fourth-best defense in the league, so there isn't some huge rush to get someone to shore up that side of ball anyway.