Grant is the furthest thing from an iso player. Actually, he was one of the best compliments we had to play alongside Dylan and Ace. He didn’t try to do too much and moved well without the ball to exploit opponents overextending to cover the two stars. He was also a frosh. Not a mistake to have him on the roster.
J Mike was also fine. He was the back up PG. Someone needed to play that role behind Dylan. While J Will wasn’t a great fit, we didn’t have very much continuity from the returning roster and he did put up good numbers at the end of 2023-24 (considering he didn’t play the cupcakes) - solid defensive player - so even in his case, keeping him wasn’t the worst decision ever at the time. Spending our money on Dercack and Acuff was the bigger problem. And PJ was just a complete waste. We needed to target defense and we did the opposite.
I kind of agree. Not even because he was an awful player (he’s “ok” - we’ve certainly had worse), but because he was an addition that we almost certainly paid too much for given he couldn’t really do things to help us. On paper - defensive conf player of the year who dropped 17 ppg (good efficiency outside of 3 pointers) while averaging over 2 steals a game and 4 assists. But we failed to read the fine print. Everything good about his stat line related directly to his (and his teammates) anticipation skills as a zone defender which was meaningless for us since Pike knew (or should’ve known) he wasn’t going to be deploying a zone defense.
