« Reply #94 on: August 16, 2018, 10:55:02 AM »
Some players just fall off a cliff earlier than others. Noah hit that wall right around age 30, which is unusual for a player who had recently been of All-Star caliber, but it happens. Same thing happened to Gerald Wallace. All-Star at 27 (and probably should have been at 25 or 26), and washed up by age 30. Never would have seen it coming for either. Sure, they could have been past their peak, but to go from star level to unplayable in 2-3 years, without having experienced a major traumatic injury like an ACL or Achilles, was quite surprising for a player turning 30. Same thing happened with Luol Deng too.
Just something to keep in mind when signing players to long contracts who’ve reached 30. You’re starting to reach the danger zone, even if the odds are still in your favor for the early 30s.
Didn't Deng and Noah both get run into the ground by Tibbs? Makes you wonder how Jimmy Butler will hold up.
People hypothesize that, but in the case of Deng he had two healthy and productive years in Miami after Thibs, and then his game went off a cliff in LA. There are other examples too (Roy Hibbert) to remind us that even in this generation of improved training and medicine, some guys just crater about 5 years earlier than you might expect.
I dunno. Is Luol Deng's game really that bad? He literally never sees the floor so there is hardly any basis to say if his touch is gone or not. For one I suspect he still has decent enough defensive chops to help LeBron out on undesired defensive assignments. He may not be worth the 18 million a year he is owed but he is worth something
The fact that he never saw the floor for a bad team last year is, in itself, reason to conclude he's lost it.
But the year before, he played 26 mpg and was awful in those minutes.
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