Jon Krawczynski

That's like the inverse Keon Ellis.

You don't want to be on this side of that.

Like, he's still on the team.

Wasn't he once, like, not untradeable, but a sticking point in several different trade negotiations that they couldn't bear to give up Devin Carter?

I mean, it seems like they're actually playing defense again, which is nice.

The post-Franz is out indefinitely magic, to me, look and feel just dramatically different.

That's no indictment of Franz, obviously not his fault, but not dissimilar to the Lakers.

I think there is a certain clarity to

The Paolo Bancaro-led version of this team, which I also need to add, it's weird that the constant existential crisis around Paolo Bancaro seems to have quieted as the team is now just like rattling off win after win after win.

And the guy who's 6'10 and can theoretically get to any shot he wants looks awfully good in the process.

Their team just feels like it makes a little more sense.

And some of that is honest, like Tristan Da Silva has played really well.

Wendell Carter has played really well.

Not for nothing, the swap of Tyus Jones for Javon Carter, I think it's like a meaningful difference in like tenor for their bench, like giving them like a little bit of backbone in a way that they kind of needed.

And someone who will shoot the basketball.

I mean, it does help.

It's hard to know just because I didn't expect them to be as bad or inconsistent as they were.

So how am I to make sense of them being good randomly other than a stretch of schedule?

It just feels like there's a fracture with reality.

This is a very talented team that doesn't always translate, that hasn't quite found itself yet.