Bruce Thornton

They have eight players that you have to protect, right? They have eight on, under contract that you have to protect.

Bruce Thornton, uh, Steven Adams, Reed Shepherd, Tari Eason, Jabari Smith, Amen Thompson, Alperen Sengun, Kevin Durant.

You're not gonna leave any of those players unprotected.

The Clippers, [lip smacks] Brad Beal, Isaiah Jackson, Janiene Broom, Cam Christie, and Grady Dick, the newly acquired Grady Dick All available.

That spot

seems open, but it's not going to be Clint Capella, Bruce Thornton, Jay Sean Tate.

Yeah.

I would say Bogdan.

Um, but like, you know, for me, like even, even if it's not, you know, Carr or Quaintance, in that grouping, guys that I had ahead of, of Carr-- or sorry, had ahead of Graves that were still on the board was like guys like De La Reya, um, who I really, really liked.

I thought Bruce Thornton would be a really good player here.

Obviously, it's a little too high to draft Bruce Thornton, but just as a player, I, I was, I was very, very high on him.

Um, [lip smack] I thought for sure that, that we were gonna get one of my guys.

But a- again, I think that, uh, Allen Graves is a very useful player.

I think S- Sergio de la Rea is really, really good.

I had him ranked number 20, um, so I'm very, very high on him.

I think Bruce Thornton is awesome.

But it's kind of funny that, like, we're nitpicking on, like, his efficiency metrics there with just, oh, he took a 2.5% dip in his free throw shooting.

I do think that the, the hope and optimism, right, for this year, uh, uh, when you look at last year and so many of the issues of what, what happened last season is you get the return of Fred VanVleet, you get the addition of Marcus Smart, you have another potential ball handler in Bruce Thornton, TBD on what he looks like at the NBA level.

Another year older for Amin Thompson and Reed Shepherd.

All of these guys should theoretically be able to take more pressure or take a lot of the pressure off of Kevin Durant and allow him to get back into more of that, a bit more of that off ball role.

They've got a lot of players I really like very, very, very low.

John Blackwell, I think, will end up climbing up draft boards and end up being next year's drafts like Bruce Thornton.

Solo Ball, no. Meyer, no. Silas Demery and Cadeau, aren't those guys? Flan, no.

Yeah, there's not really a true lead guard, but I think that they're in pretty good shape in terms of their wing room and their big man situation.

A lot of turnover, a lot of additions.

Uh, they pick up Marcus Smart, Bogdan who cares, Marcus Thornton, a fun summer league story.

And perhaps most importantly, Fred VanVleet didn't play last year.

So you've got those guys in.

But, um, any sort of big takeaways with Fred VanVleet coming back into this offense? We'll talk about Re-eventually, but just in Fred VanVleet in the, the handling and all that good stuff.

Yeah.

You had said, I think you misspoken, said Marcus Thornton, which put me in a full-blown panic of, like, there's no way-

Oh, yeah