I still can’t believe Ausar is out-rebounding 7 and a half foot giants.

What is the backstory to this? Is the Kings’ owner Catholic?

2 of our 3 best players (Duren and Bojan) are injured. Duren played some of these games in the losing streak, but the ongoing ankle injury meant he wasn’t looking right and probably shouldn’t have. Both of those players should open up Cade. For a while we didn’t have a single player over the age of 24 in the rotation (because we’ve had up to 7 players injured; and haven’t had a game without 3 rotation players injured). For reasons that aren’t clear, the coach was starting Killian Hayes, whose skillset is redundant with both Cade and Ausar. We had a brutal start to the schedule with almost nothing but back-to-backs.

All of that compounds together. Plus we make the standard issues you expect from a young team: too many fouls and turnovers, defensive lapses, letdowns in clutch time. There’s also a new coach implementing a fast decision-making system that likely is generating a lot of turnovers until the young players acclimitize to it.

It’s a perfect storm of bad things that aren’t necessarily longterm issues. We’ve yet to see Detroit’s best lineup on the court together.

2 of our 3 best players (Duren and Bojan) are injured. Duren played some of these games in the losing streak, but the ongoing ankle injury meant he wasn’t looking right and probably shouldn’t have. Both of those players should open up Cade. For a while we didn’t have a single player over the age of 24 in the rotation (because we’ve had up to 7 players injured; and haven’t had a game without 3 rotation players injured). For reasons that aren’t clear, the coach was starting Killian Hayes, whose skillset is redundant with both Cade and Ausar. We had a brutal start to the schedule with almost nothing but back-to-backs.

All of that compounds together. Plus we make the standard issues you expect from a young team: too many fouls and turnovers, defensive lapses, letdowns in clutch time. There’s also a new coach implementing a fast decision-making system that likely is generating a lot of turnovers until the young players acclimitize to it.

It’s a perfect storm of bad things that aren’t necessarily longterm issues. We’ve yet to see Detroit’s best lineup on the court together.

That’s what he thought about Giannis, too.

As of right now, Duren is averaging 18 points on 80.5 TS%, 15.3 Rebounds, 4 Assists, 2.7 Blocks

For what it’s worth, Ausar was the MVP of Overtime Elite. It’s not like there’s a clearcut case for one twin being better than the other. Rockets and Pistons both got the twin that fits their needs better.

Oddly enough, Christian Braun is the closest comparison in the league right now I can think of for Ausar (Amen doesn’t count). Both have that lanky size, strength, and ballet-like agility; both bring a lot defensively; and both are best utilized on offense as cutters with a shot diet of layups.

He actually shot well in the preseason, so that might be part of the rationale.