u/devilmaskrascal

Due to the terrible history of both authoritarian state socialism/Marxism and the economic malaise of attempted democratic socialism in places like Scandinavia in the 1960s-70s, the word "socialism" is a dangerous word for political candidates to identify as in America, the breadbasket of capitalism. It works in some far-left leaning pockets and some of the popularity may be an overreaction to both the ambiguous impotence of mainstream Democrats and the lurch towards fascistic plutocracy by Republicans (to whom socialism is an anathema), but Democrats risk losing the center and center-left in winnable elections and helping MAGA continue down their path if they continue nominating far Left candidates.

"Don't look at the name, look at our policies" is a common refrain from people on the internet, and then they and every Democrat Socialist candidate then goes to list a bunch of social democratic policies like public healthcare, free college, green initiatives and progressive taxation, gesturing at social democratic Scandinavia -- while promising they're not actually going to seize the means of production from Wall Street and destroy our 401ks, just tax billionaires 5% or something.

Let's define these terms. First the dictionary definitions:

Democratic Socialism - Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that seeks to replace capitalism with a democratically run, socially owned economy.

Social Democracy - Social democracy is a political and economic ideology that combines a market-based capitalist economy with a democratic political system and extensive state intervention to promote social justice and general welfare.

So basically social democracy is where the state mitigates all the shortcomings, perverse incentives and negative effects of capitalism while preserving its underlying architecture, which is what our entire society and economy is built upon, and has proven to be a great engine of wealth and job generation.

Capitalism, for instance, fails to provide affordable healthcare to everyone because the cost of care is often inversely proportional to ability to pay - the sick, the handicapped, the elderly and children can't work; even able-bodied people are not guaranteed jobs, to which health insurance is mostly tied, healthcare they can't afford if they are unemployed. Health insurance is not guaranteed to pay for care. Patients don't have medical training to make educated decisions and have to trust their providers - the ones profiting and billing their insurance. Patients may not even be conscious when bankrupting financial decisions are made for them. While the free market can stimulate innovation in healthcare and specialized treatment for those who can afford it, healthcare is a basic human need and should not be dependent upon affordability in the richest country in world history.

By having ample safety nets, market interventions, monopoly busting, labor and environmental protections and coherent monetary policy, social democracy allows capitalism to thrive and be self-sustainable and competitive.

When you have built a strong social democracy, what does socialist revolution do for us besides making the wealthiest expatriate or stop creating businesses and risking the cash cow that allows you to fund this ample safety net? Social democracy takes away the ability of employers to exploit their workers by holding basic needs over their head, so social democratic capitalism will be a substantially better system. There's a reason social democracies rank as the happiest countries on earth. It's the best of both worlds.

The DSA platform itself says things like:

>If we lived in a classless society and governed ourselves, we could freely build a world without war or poverty.

>Establish public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.

So there are likely actual socialists in the DSA, but these kinds of statements are so extremely vague on details and timeline, which should be concerning if we are being asked to trust them to overturn our entire economic system, which their candidates consistently deny they want to do? "Tax the billionaires and make them pay their fair share" is not socialism.

Add in the fact that self-identifying as "socialist" instead of "social democrat" gives right-wing media red meat propaganda about how the cities are on the verge of Maoist purges of business and property owners to motivate Republican voters to turn out and scare centrists to break right, and it is unclear how they are benefiting with this label if none of their candidates are going to advocate for socialism honestly and are just using social democracy to protect themselves from any criticism?

Is it possible they are accelerationists who are perfectly fine with losing and the plutocratic slide continuing in order to further radicalize the Left (not considering the backlash against them)?

Or are they just trying to babystep their way to public acceptability, priming the public for more radical future moves, even though it seems social democracy they are pushing would undercut all reasons for any major transition to socialism?

What is the end game here? Why should we trust them to transition away from capitalism when they refuse to give more than vague details?

Our roster is stacked with 16 guys who could be NBA rotation players and we have to cut one. Even Caleb Martin is a vet who is probably our best POA defender at the wing and a decent 3 point shooter.

With an experienced NBA coach or a clearer mission statement (ex. all-in contending or all-in tanking/full youth movement), this abundance of talent would be a good problem to have. With a rookie coach coming from the college game and trying to both make the playoffs AND develop our youth, I worry we are putting too much weight on his ability to balance egos and deal with players who might get angry about not getting enough minutes.

Guys like PJ, Naji and Gafford have earned starter minutes and are paid as vets, and we need to showcase them if we want to attract trades at the deadline (same goes for Martin and Klay if we keep them), yet none of them are good shooters and they stand directly in the way of youth we need to develop for the future.

Lively and Max are playing for their next contracts.

Flagg is guaranteed to get 32+ minutes a game. This doesn't leave a lot of time to split between a lot of forwards who need minutes.

Risacher is playing for guaranteed money and to repair his reputation as a bust. He already felt like he was getting ragdolled in and out of the rotation in Atlanta and didn't get consistent time to show what he could do, so he pouted and threw towels. I understand the frustration, but that doesn't look like a guy who we can ask to just sacrifice and stay ready on the bench and wait for someone to get injured. He's also not really a 2 even though a lot of Mavs fans keep trying to pencil him in there because of the forward overload.

Aldama is arguably the best fit between Flagg and a center as a stretch big. Will PJ come off the bench? Or will having Kyrie and Sergio in the lineup bring PJ back to being a great starter again?

Morez is a top 10 draft pick and Dusty's guy. Yet on paper he looks like the 3rd string PF and 3rd string C?

Biberovic took a pay cut to start on a contending team in Europe and is likely our best shooter. Is he going to be happy with mostly spot/garbage minutes?

Buying out Klay is an easy option to clear up some of the logjam, and keeping Klay to be arguably a third stringer instead of letting him go chase rings on a contender is kind of greedy. On the other hand, Dusty has also openly said Klay is one of his favorite players of all time...

On paper if we take the human ego and financial considerations out of it, this team looks pretty stacked and a massive improvement over last year, having lost no major rotation pieces and adding a bunch of new faces who solve the major problems we had. It does look like a good balance of youth and vets, shooting and defense, lots of length.

In reality, we likely need consolidation trades because pretty much all these guys deserve minutes and the locker room may not be a happy place unless we are winning a lot. The easy route is to play the vets heavily the first half of the season to showcase them for the deadline, and then build packages for the players we really want. Young guys can generally be asked to be more patient about playing time. However, the primary mission for the season should be to develop our longer term core around Flagg -- and where guys like Risacher, Morez and De Larrea actually fit into a fully healthy rotation is still a bit of a question mark.

I think this year is going to be a very good test of Dusty May's NBA coaching chops and ego management. If he succeeds at getting the most out of this team and keeping the locker room relatively happy, it's going to be a good sign of things to come. But if he is dealing with multiple guys disgruntled that they are only playing 10 mpg when they deserve 25+ because they are vets or high lottery picks or playing for contracts, and fans second guessing him every time we lose because he didn't play players X and Y enough, I'm worried it could be a tougher road for him.

The Kahwi Leonard scandal is beyond slaps on the wrist - the NBA needs to send a message that there is zero tolerance for this kind of salary cap cheating. Ballmer should have two choices:

1.) He can re-sell the team to the league for 10 cents on the dollar for his share of the ownership and he renounces all legal claims against the league or new ownership. The league re-sells the team to new ownership and distributes the proceeds to the other 29 teams as compensations for the Clippers' cheating. In this case the player's contracts all continue except for Kawhi's which is terminated and he is banned from the league for a year.

or

2.) The Clippers and Steve Ballmer are permanently banned from the league altogether. Ballmer can take the shell of his brand and start his own league if he wants, but they will never be allowed in the NBA again. The NBA immediately begins a one-team expansion to replace the Clippers, probably Seattle. Ballmer has to deal with the full cost of player contracts if the players and their union sue Ballmer and the owners for non-payment. From the NBA perspective all players are now free agents who can sign with any NBA team or be signed by the new expansion team, but the NBA will not pay to buy out salaries from the Clippers or any competing domestic league Ballmer creates. Kawhi is also banned for a year from the NBA.

Steve Ballmer, Uncle Dennis and Kawhi Leonard can all go screw themselves. In fact, I think Kahwi should be required to return all the illegal money he made with these salary cap subversions before he is ever allowed back in. If it was any other team besides the Clippers I would feel bad for the fanbase, but they're never going to be their city's team anyway so I have zero qualms about selling and relocating the team at all. I'd rather that than a league expansion.

We've all been on Reddit enough to have seen the conspiracy theories that the whole GOP and Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chao are brazenly lying to the public that McConnell is still alive with staged photos, false statements, claims of phone call conversations, etc. I do consider the circumstances and the general refusal to provide any clarification highly suspicious and have no clue why the press hasn't been able to figure out a location and confirm whether he is or isn't alive, given it has been a question at the forefront of politics for almost two months.

However, I'm not clear exactly: what would the GOP gain from staging McConnell's...life? It would make sense if Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear could appoint someone temporarily to the position, as he would likely appoint a Democrat to replace him. However, Kentucky's legislature took that power away from the governor and now all he can do is call a special election.

Are they really afraid that a Democrat would win a special election in Kentucky? Beshear got elected statewide, but he's an exception as his father was a popular governor - and I doubt he would put his name in the hat for the seat, but I guess it's possible?

Or maybe they're afraid of Republican Thomas Massie, who lost his House race after becoming a thorn in Trump's side over Epstein, spending, corruption and the Iran War?

Basically it sounds like the GOP would have to prefer McConnell being MIA from votes (when they need every vote to pass their agenda in a tight Senate with several GOP members increasingly exerting their independence) over the slim risk of a temporary election electing an anti-MAGA candidate in a blood Red state that voted for Trump 64% to Kamala's 34%?

And Elaine Chao, the first Cabinet member to resign after January 6th, whom Trump has publicly called "Coco Chow" and "crazy" would be going along with this ruse besmirching her husband's memory because...why?

As much as I think there is no bottom to the current GOP and they absolutely would prop up McConnell's corpse for a photo out of craven political gamesmanship if it gained them an advantage, doesn't the risk-reward here beg more skepticism? The behaviour and vagueness of everyone around him is absolutely suspicious, but also entirely possible he is in a private rehab facility somewhere after he had a stroke or something and he isn't ready to give public interviews and doesn't want to be bothered by the press?

EDIT:

Just for further context/extrapolation: Andy Barr (R) is leading Charles Booker (D) to replace McConnell 49% to 39% in polls. That's still a safe Republican race. The special election if held would take place in November, the same day as the general election, and it is likely the general candidates are the names on the special election ballot too. Most likely the special election means Barr gets into office two months early, meaning Trump has one more ally in the Senate during a brief window before the Democrats elected in the November election take power. Trump's already lost a lot of retiring votes like Tillis and Cornyn (and McConnell) and moderates like Collins and Murkowski, and even Majority Leader Thune is not completely in his pocket, so having Barr during this brief window is one more consistent vote he can rely upon vs. having slimmer margins. Thus it doesn't make much sense for MAGA to cover up McConnell's death.

If Massie really wanted to get into the Senate badly enough to risk spoiling the race for Republicans and handing it to Democrats, he likely could have sought the Libertarian Party nomination for the general all along. I don't think Massie gains anything by doing that (I think he has eyes on being the LP nominee in 2028). Since Barr would be on the general ballot on the same day, how many Republican voters would vote Massie over the permanent Senator who Trump backs? How many Democrats would stray from Booker to vote for Massie?

If there is a conspiracy and McConnell is actually dead, it's because McConnell camp doesn't want to help Trump potentially get his agenda passed easier, and also doesn't want to hand the seat to the Democrats or Massie either. However, if McConnell's staffers are lying, couldn't they get charged for essentially taking a salary as active Senate staffers under a fraudulent circumstance?

I live overseas and pay taxes in Japan, but work for a US company. The IRS owes me a big refund. I filed my taxes well before the deadline back in March. When I filed (with HR Block Expat) I applied to get direct deposit to my US bank account.

They sent me a letter in mid April saying they needed time for additional processing and that they were sending me the refund in the mail. However, the address was wrong - they left out my full room number (which was correctly written on my return). I guess this letter came through somehow.

I've waited for over three months and no return came. I checked the IRS site and it said "Status Not Available: Your refund check was mailed to you and returned by the post office as undeliverable." before noticing the address on the letter was wrong. The address on the IRS site is wrong too. This is an IRS side error, as again, my tax return was correct. I updated my bank account on the IRS site several weeks ago, but that hasn't changed any status.

I've tried calling the number on the letter at least ten times and every single time "due to the high volume of calls please call back later or on the next business day" - even if I call in the morning EST.

Do I need to hire a lawyer simply to have somebody with access to contact someone real at the IRS? HR Block is useless after verifying on their end the didn't mess anything up. I can snail mail an address change form to Texas from Japan (what century are we living in again?), but I don't even know if that will change anything at all on my status. I'll keep calling every day but any advice on how to get through to a freaking human? I wouldn't have minded waiting hours if need be but they tell you to check the website and hang up...

This is so ridiculous. Their website is useless...there's not even a chatbot I can talk to.

I totally get the people who oppose the idea of trading PJ for Jrue Holiday. PJ's about to turn 28, Jrue's 36. For people who think PJ can get us a 1st round pick, I totally understand your thinking - why trade for a guy who is nowhere close to our timeline and will hit an age wall within the next 2-3 years? 95% of the time I would agree with you.

The fact of the matter is this team is full of young guys who need to be set up and are short on self-creation outside of Kyrie, Flagg and Naji. Both Flagg and Naji are secondary ballhandlers - not primary guys who should control the offense. Because we did not have real point guards last year, guys like PJ and Gafford arguably lost value, and Flagg had a harder adjustment than he would have had.

Now we have more guys who can hit open shots, and more guys who can finish lobs - play finishers.

Kyrie coming back will be huge for us, as will adding De Larrea but those are the only two guys I trust to run the offense. Kyrie is coming off major injury and should rest a lot to stay healthy. De Larrea is a rookie who can't play 48 minutes when Kyrie sits. Sasser can fill in in a pinch but he is more of a small 3&D who guards 1s, not a "point guard" - he will be useful vs. small PGs next to De Larrea or Naji.

Jrue is a true PG with length who averaged 6 assists per night last year. He's also an extremely good shooter. Between Kyrie, Jrue and De Larrea, with spot help from Naji, Sasser and Flagg in the event of injuries, we should have 48 minutes a night with guys who can set up the offense, which will truly maximize the value of all these new players we've added, and the players we may want to trade at some point.

Because of this, there is immediate developmental value for the whole team by adding Jrue. We maximize our chances to do well this coming year and hopefully give our young guys their first NBA playoff experience.

Jrue makes all the puzzle pieces fit, provides multi-position injury insurance, plays on both ends of the court and can play with or without Kyrie at the same time. I wish he was 10 years younger, but if he were, there's no way he'd be available to us without giving up the farm.

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but I haven't really seen any evidence of any elected self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists fighting for actual democratic socialism. Mamdani is not trying to shut down Wall Street and seize corporations and divvy their stock up amongst the workers. The Squad and Bernie seem more focused on taxing the 1% and new government initiatives and expansions of existing programs. None of this is socialism, no matter how much Fox News and right-wing talk radio want to claim any government program is such.

Things like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, free colleges, free public buses, public housing/rent control and progressive taxation -- while preserving the overarching framework of a capitalist economy -- is just full-fledged social democracy.

Social democracy is a form of capitalism where the government offsets the basic needs the market fails to provide to everybody, incentivizes the market to build a better future and steps in to prevent capitalists exploiting labor or destroying the environment. Scandinavian countries and much of Europe are social democracies. Social democracy has been shown to work well, especially in developed nations with the means to provide basic services for everyone, and these services complement capitalism.

Capitalism is good at generating wealth and jobs and innovation, and social democracy's purpose is to remove as many of the bad parts of capitalism as possible while keeping the good stuff. By making sure basic needs are met, social democracy removes the incentives or need for most people to want to overthrow capitalism (democratically or otherwise), allowing it to persist permanently as the status quo.

Socialism on the other hand is the complete disruption of capital markets and private property ownership. In a democracy, basically things have to be so awful and dystopian that most people have nothing to lose by supporting economic revolution and the redistribution of wealth. It is highly unfeasible in a developed country with a large middle class where most people have retirement savings tied up in the market and high employment rates.

Calling yourself a socialists in a country like America naturally scares a lot of people in the middle - the swing voters you need to win elections. These people do not want the capitalist system destroyed and their jobs, investments and life savings to be put at risk or go out the window. It's not propaganda to see that attempts to implement socialism throughout history usually did not go well - including in Scandinavia in the 1960s and 1970s.

These voters could, on the other hand, be convinced through logic and reason that social democracy is necessary and good for the country and the economy. Mainstream Democrats have been weak social democrats with a strong neoliberal streak, whose fight for providing basic needs is corporate lip service more than policy. America is a pretty center-right country and Democrats have mostly felt the need to feign concern for "fiscal responsibility" and "low taxes" to keep winning elections.

Trying to market social democracy as democratic socialism is a fool's errand that diminishes both the Democratic Party as a whole's chances of winning elections/implementing social democracy, AND even if you do win elections, social democracy decreases the incentive for democratic socialism by making capitalism's status quo more palatable.

Am I wrong about the intentions of democratic socialists? Are the elected Democratic Socialists like Mamdani, AOC and Bernie trying to make social democracy a stepping stone on the way to eventual actual democratic socialism? Or is this an attempt at opportunistic radicalization in the age of Trump that either works, or fails and leads to dystopian accelerationism? If MAGA wins and turns America into a fascistic kleptocratic plutocracy of evil billionaires immune from the law, people finally see why capitalism is bad and turn to socialism, right?

As a social democrat and not a socialist, it drives me crazy that the far Left try to claim things like Social Security or Medicare or progressive tax rates are "socialism" -- literally the exact same thing the right-wing is saying in bad faith to try to make Democrats unappealing to moderates. Social democracy's success at making better and happier societies and taming capitalism is their ideology's death knell, so they have to smear the Left with the failures of (often authoritarian or totalitarian) socialism historically to keep the moderates in their pocket. And now the far Left is helping them -- why?

Right now only two teams have only one player making over $20M: Dallas and Detroit. Every other team has two or more. Assuming Detroit retains Jalen Duren on a full deal instead of the QO and we don't make any big moves taking on a bigger salary player, we're going to be the only team with 1 or fewer players on high salary this year.

$20M isn't what it used to be - that represents only 12.2% of the salary cap, so I don't actually think this is an inherently good thing - it means we are shorter on high end veteran talent you need to win, and have too much middle-tier depth that should probably be consolidated into better starters - but it does mean we don't have any heinous overpays, have a lot of guys on rookie deals and we have lots of flexibility to construct trade packages with combinations of vets and young players over the next few years.

I was a big skeptic of the AD trade and still think we might regret it, but Masai and Schmitz have leveraged the limited return from that about as well as could possibly be expected. I'm optimistic we will be able to build a strong young core within a short period of time even if we don't already have one, which we might.

(I can't post the link to the Russian site or it will be removed by Reddit's filters. This is the main sports news site in Russia, but I can't attest to the accuracy of the report. Below is a translation.)

Vsevolod Ishchenko to Receive Two-Way Contract from Dallas (Spivak).

Ishchenko is reportedly set to sign a two-way deal with the Mavs.

According to sports commentator and journalist Vladimir Spivak, Dallas intends to offer guard Vsevolod Ishchenko a two-way contract.

The Mavericks reportedly valued the Russian player's Summer League performance highly but believe his current level does not yet warrant a spot in the main rotation. The guard will play in the G League while receiving periodic call-ups to the first team.

Notably, the issue of buying out his rights from Lokomotiv-Kuban is not an obstacle to the deal, as the Mavs were fully aware from the start that these negotiations would be necessary.

Ishchenko played five games in the Summer League, averaging 9.6 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 3 assists in 27.5 minutes of action.

EDIT: Reporting today from sports.ru says Ischenko is set to sign a two-way contract with us and the buyout is no problem. I can't post the link to the Russian site or Reddit will filter my post but Google "Всеволод Ищенко получит от «Далласа» двусторонний контракт". So hopefully everything I wrote can be disregarded!

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"Seva" Ischenko had a very intriguing showing in Summer League, including running the offense in our final win with 15 points vs. the Knicks without Morez or Sergio, and averaging 9.6 points, 4.4 rebounds, and 3.0 assists in 27.5 minutes per game including double digit points his last three games. He's still raw and needs a lot of development as far as finishing and shooting, but his smart passes and cuts offball displayed a high BBIQ -- and he was a solid POA defender, given the tough assignment of defending 3rd pick and college player of the year Cam Boozer in the Grizzlies game.

I think a lot of us are hoping he gets a contract but the main roster is at 16 already and all three two-way spots are taken. A lot of people thought he would get Tyler Smith's two-way spot, but we signed Jett Howard instead.

The fact of the matter is, we don't really know the terms and conditions (or even the salary amount) of Seva's contract with Lokomotiv Kuban. He is still listed as active on the team on the team's site, while new additions for next season are already being added, so it seems the contract may still be active through at least the next year.

In Europe there are generally buyout clauses where if a player wants to change teams or go to the NBA they have to pay the team a certain amount of money for breaking the contract. We saw this with Biberovic already this summer. He had a $2M buyout with Fenerbahce, and NBA teams can only cover the first $900K separately from the salary cap, meaning Biberovic had to pay the last $1.1M out of his new contract -- post-tax I'm assuming.

While VTB League/Lokomotiv is a lower tier league than Turkish Super League/Fenerbahce and has been removed from Euroleague due to the Russia war, given the reality of Russian financial weirdness, Seva might have a similar or even worse buyout clause than Biberovic had, in which case, the two-way (limited to $678,882) will simply not cut it. He would be paying more than he was making to come over.

If we can't give him a real roster spot that pays him more than enough to cover the buyout, cost of living and salary, he'd be better off staying in Russia and playing out however many years are left on the contract until he becomes a free agent and then he will be free to sign with us for whatever amount. The alternative might be pushing him to sign with a higher level Euroleague team that will pay him better than we can right now, where he will get better development and we will be able to monitor his progress easier the next few years.

From my understanding (and people can correct me if I am wrong), signing Ischenko to an Exhibit 10 contract to come to training camp and then waiving him without offering a contract does NOT mean we lose his draft rights or that he becomes a UFA. However, the VTB United League's training camp apparently starts in August so unless he gets an exception to their rules or something, he likely has to decide before then.

He has said playing in the NBA is his dream, so hopefully he accomplishes it sooner than later, but we shouldn't get our hopes up too high for a two-way being enough money, or that we would cut multiple guys to open up a spot. If we make trades and end up with 14 guys on the main roster, and there's a spot open it might come down to Ischenko vs. Powell vs. some other free agent left on the market late.

A lot of folks are scratching our heads at the construction of this team from an on-court fit perspective and wondering how this can possibly work.

Literally all 16 guys on the roster, including Caleb Martin and Moussa Cisse, can be NBA rotation players and bring something important to the table. All deserve minutes, some will get definitely be shafted and underutilized without injuries or trades to consolidate talent and open up spots. Minutes will be extremely competitive and with May as a rookie NBA coach asking vets and high upside prospects to sacrifice and stay ready while keeping good vibes in the locker room is a heavy ask.

We arguably had enough rotation forwards and wings for a typical team BEFORE drafting Morez, De Larrea, Lawal and Ischenko and trading for Aldama, Biberovic and Risacher.

The thing is, we don't have our own draft picks the next four years, which means we have to be extra creative in how we build a young core around Flagg and also not be a bad team. If we can get our hands on versatile, long, high upside talent under 26, fit should temporarily be the last thing on our minds until we rebuild our asset base through any means possible. Every team in the league can use young 6'7-6'10 guys who can defend and/or shoot and play 2-4 positions. Err on the side of optimal size and talent and tradability, figure the perfect fit out later and see what magic May can work in the interim (as he did with the guard-loaded teams in FAU and the big-loaded team in Michigan.)

We can keep the ones who fit/pan out, and be opportunistic and build appealing trade packages with the ones who don't for the right players while still having a stacked team after trades go down.

My assumption is they are now trying to shop PJ, Gafford, Klay and Naji for either a higher upside guard or for taking back bad contracts with picks attached -- players who we don't necessarily have to prioritize over developing our youth. If we don't make a deal, fine, we go into the year a little too overloaded and see how we are playing, who is healthy and what opportunities present themselves when the trade window re-opens.

I'm most looking forward to watching Vselovod Ischenko, the man of most mystery in the NBA draft. Nobody has seen him against Euroleague-level competition given the Russian sanctions, and he was not in the 70-80 prospects invited to the Draft Combine, but the footage we have suggests a ton of potential. A very boom-or-bust play that if he pans out would be a result of Schmitz going the extra mile to find diamonds in the rough.

Schmitz went out of his way and got him on purpose to make sure he didn't go undrafted and get picked up by someone else. I haven't heard or seen anything in interviews or practice footage yet. Is he going to deserve a roster spot? A two-way? Does he need more seasoning overseas? We'll know soon enough...

I feel like we kind of know what we're going to get with De Larrea and Morez and even Lawal, but with Ischenko almost no idea.