Before anyone starts blaming his playing on his current predicament, he's been playing like trash since the season started. Absolute destroying his contract year.

I'm no expert on the nba but some of Australia’s low draft picks have been not sensational, Simmons, Exum, Maker and now Giddey. It’s nearly like a curse.

I've been wondering why Giddey seems to have regressed this year. He is fortunate to have an excellent coach who recognises that Giddey is being guarded differently now, and needs to learn how to respond, just as Golden State had to as they grew towards maturity (there's a great video floating around of the coach explaining how teams are mercilessly guarding/non guarding Giddey this year).

I hope that he can grow this, because the Houston video is making Giddey look like the non-athletic version of Simmons... no jumpshot and teams sagging off him to double team the stars off-ball.

Personally, I don't understand how an NBA player can shoot so badly... especially one that's got Chip England as their shooting coach.

He's +6.7 in wins, -10.4 in losses on a team that's 13-7 and second in their conference, so it's a stretch to say he's the least valuable in the league.

Interested to know if people think that difference between wins and losses is his effect on team performance, the team's performance impact on his game or a bit of both?

Green is playing well. Daniels ok too.

I think OKC won't make any brash moves. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they decide to use their draft pick hits and the odd vet FA pickup to tweak their roster over the course of the next decade.

I would love to see Giddey’s passing skill set be in San Antonio though.

Yeah SA are doing so well that would be a great spot to land

Well, as a Spurs fan, that linking up between Giddey and Wemby would be something to behold.

Clearly the Spurs are more focused on trying things then winning games, evidenced by making Sohan be a PG and not signing veterans in the offseason.

I think Giddey's minutes and production were bound to regress, with Chet coming back into the picture this season as well. Obviously a top 3 draft pick, he’s bound to have more touches and more plays called for him as well. Should be taken into account too.

I think the off court BS is getting to him and I think he's probbaly spent more time "living the life" than we expected, and now he's doing a Ben Simmons, turning up half cooked and expecting to talent his way through things. He needs to stop meeting floozys at bars and concentrate on what is paying his bills.

Challenge for the Thunder is if you bench him, you risk killing his confidence. If you trade now, you're selling low.

For all the criticism, they're second in the Western Conference, and with the second best points differential in the league. Time to push chips in, or are they still a year or two away from fleshing out the roster?

He needs to stop meeting floozys at bars and concentrate on what is paying his bills.

The NBA being what is teams need to pump value into their players even artificially so rather trading him for cents on the dollar, which would be mad given he's still a better than average player, I would not be surprised if OKC give him a max extension in the off-season and then at the earliest opportunity look to try and trade him for a decent haul like Philly did with an 'untradeable' player/contract Ben Simmons. That will also buy time to allow Giddey to rehab his stock as this season looks like a bit of a wipeout for him.

If Giddey is on say $30M a year that's a very tradebale contract in the current NBA, it's the $50M a year ones that are hard to trade. NBA teams always bet on themselves being able to turn players around and whatever so even if Giddey keeps treading water there will be teams willing to trade for him at $30M a year. Right now on his rookie contract OKC couldn't really get anything of value back for him.

i wouldn't be pushing chips in right now if i was OKC, another year or 2 of solid drafting and organic growth.

Media are gonna nit pick but at the same time he's got some work to do

I think we are seeing the honeymoon is over and he really isn't that good. He can play but there are plenty of people who could play NBA and produce the same numbers that aren't Australian.

I can't see him getting any better and in fact, I reckon the constant booing is going to finally get to him (if it hasn't started to already). I don't even think if he gets found to be officially "in the right and nothing to see here", the fans aren't going to let up for at least the rest of the season. And the booing is going to get to his fellow starters who won't want to be playing with that distraction. He could get moved on sooner rather than later......

He really f-ed up there. Could be a career-killer but I certainly hope not.

As George Best said, " I spent a lot money on booze, girls and fast cars the rest I wasted “
This was his answer to what happened to his money. Giddey life, his choices.

OKC don't really have major salaries to move alongside their picks. Bertans at $17m is about it? Kevin Porter is listed as on their books for $15m+ but not sure of his situation.

Who would give up a win-now player in exchange for picks? Washington? Chicago? At what position is OKC's greatest need?

Giddey and Mills need to limit time together on floor for Paris unless something changes. Giddey off the bench.

Starters:
Mills
Green
Ingles
Simmons
Landale

Bench:
Giddey
Exum
Thybulle
White
Reath

Daniels
Cooks

Reath and Exum are potential starters too but difficult to get the right balance. Interested in other's thoughts based on current form and implications of styles.

A couple of notes. I don't think we can start Ingles any more. He is probably off the bench for a 10 minute limit per game. We have to get rid of our biggest liability in Brian Goorjian as it doesn't matter how much talent we have if it is not coached effectively in the FIBA game.

My thoughts too, AP

In my personal opinion, Mills should play on the bench.

Will be interesting go see how Exum goes after somewhat of a (re)breakout game yesterday. Lets hope he stays healthy (there, I've officially jinxed him).

My team for Paris:-

PG: Simmons
SG: Green
SF: Exum
PF: Landale
C: Reath

Bench
------
Daniels
Giddey
Mills
Ingles
Thybulle
White
Cooks

I don't think we can include Simmons until we’ve seen a good solid 2-3 months of him playing night in, night out for Brooklyn.

I don’t know the answer as to who, but, we we need reliable 3 point shooters to spread the floor - relying on exum, green etc to suddenly become high percentage catch and shoot shooters didn’t work at the WC.

Whoever is selected, the offence also needs to change - WC was too P&R centric and relying on Mills coming off multiple screens to shoot or play out of yet another onball.

DJV doesn’t get much love at the moment, but a catch and shoot microwave player might be useful (2- minutes a Q of shooting is needed)?

I just want some Aussies in the league that can shoot the ball. Are they not developing such a vital skill as juniors in Australia? It just seems like Australia is producing athletes who just happen to play basketball, Patty and Joe to a lesser extent are the last hoopers, and they came through the junior pathways decades ago. What are we doing here? Surely kids coming through admire guys like steph and kd, are they being stifled by the team first, unselfish mentality that is drilled into them, leaving them lacking any sort of offensive bag?

Giddey and Dyson both have excellent shooting coaches to correct their broken shots, and yet they both rank almost dead last in true shooting %

Both of them like Simmons are so bad in the half court and zero threat they get the worst defender who sags right off them. Which will only be more pronounced in the half court during playoffs. I had to laugh before the season when Dyson was asked what he'd focused on in the off season, he mentioned a few things, none of them being shooting. We are absolutely no chance in the Olympics with our spacing issues and lack of talent.

No one takes DJV ahead of Goulding. I'm hoping we don’t get sucked into nba guys first and only, you need a balance.

Gazza, you can thank the CoE for that. There have been many threads on here along the line of what you say about NOT developing shooters.

Basically, the CoE priority seemed to be athleticism and height, with shooting ability somewhere down the list. European academies and clubs seem to put more emphasis on shooting, some spending hours a day on it, from what I've read.

Having said that, I thought that Daniels had a reputation as a high-percentage shooter before he went to the NBA?

Toohey prolly not ready

Reath and Landale starting together is an interesting concept...