Lonzo + 13 for #7? Come on Detroit, you know you want to.
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I’m told, not surprisingly, by a Pelicans source:
— Fletcher Mackel (@FletcherWDSU) November 17, 2020
“Expect us to be very active on draft night.”
Tonight’s Jrue Holiday trade may have just been the beginning of an exciting, unpredictable week. https://t.co/U072hTTLpB
It's Fletch so y'know, Fletch, but this plays into what some people expect in terms of more moves.
According to Jonathan Givony of ESPN, the Chicago Bulls are currently active in potential trade discussions for a veteran guard.
— Josh J. (@JoshJBullsHoops) November 16, 2020
Remember this? I can think of a team that might have some veteran guards on it.
Its kind of wild that for the second consecutive year we're coming in with a wildly different team.
Last year, we started the season with
- The Lakers trade guys coming in: Ingram, Lonzo both brand new starters, and Hart brand new backup guy.
- Favors and Redick both new acquisitions, both immediate new starters.
- Jax, Zion, and NAW: Jax ended up playing in the most games of any player for our team up until the all-star break, due to injury stuff. NAW didn't play much, but still. Zion's injury had him missing most of the year.
Just a complete change from the prior year.
Now, coming into this year
- Jrue's gone, has been converted into Bledsoe and Hill + picks: God knows if either of those guys are still here come opening night
- Favors, Frank, Kenrich, Moore, Okafor all free agents: there's a change that none of them come back. I'd be surprised if more than three of them did.
- Brand new coach and as a result, a newly refreshed coaching staff.
- There's going to be at least one first round pick, in all likelihood.
Just very different teams each year.
Wish I could tell you guys some of the stuff I’m hearing.
— Dave DuFour (@DaveDuFourNBA) November 17, 2020
Wild stuff coming between now and Saturday.
Obviously it sucks to lose Jrue, but IMO, this isn't it. He's not keeping all of those picks. There's someone out there Griffin and Langdon have their eyes on. It's just a matter of waiting for the right moment.
It's about the options. They may have their eyes on someone in particular, they may not, but the point is that when someone or something does come up that they want, it's very helpful to have the assets available to go and get it.
Let's say that, for example, next season goes disastrously for the Suns and Devin Booker decides he wants out: he can't takes it no more, he tells ya.
Well, Griff didn't make this trade today knowing that would happen, but because he made this trade, he's prepared for it when it does, and he can go to Phoenix and say ''listen, I'll give you X and Y, and five first round picks to get it done'', and he'd be able to do that without *any* of those first round picks being our own! That's the value of being prepared and stashing assets during the early stages of a retool like ours.
Kind of unsure exactly what to think about the Bucks at this point.
On the one hand, their starting five: Jrue, Bogdanovic, Middleton, Giannis, Brook Lopez.
4 of those guys are high tier defenders: like, top 5 at position defenders. 3 of them are elite shooters. At least 3 of them can do some self creation. That starting 5 is just brilliant. Tons of size, tons of scoring, tons of defense, good passing all around. Only one sub-par defender, you can live with that.
The problem is that they now have basically no bench whatsoever, and no real means of acquiring more quality depth through trade. So their team will be like:
- Giannis
- Jrue
- Brook
- Middleton
- Bogdan
- J. James
- Thanasis Antetokoumpo
- 7 minimum contracts.
So that's 7 guys, and at least one of them is not really an NBA player. Those minimum contracts are going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting. It's possible, of course, Lebron and AD just won a ring with a sub-par supporting cast, but it increases the pressure massively on the starters. Especially when the playoffs hit: Budenholzer's biggest flaw is that he doesn't like to just play his best players together a lot. Last year, there were games where the Bucks starters played a total of 2 minutes together in the 4th quarter of those Heat playoff games.
With the construction of this team, that just has no chance of working. He will need to put heavy minutes on all of the starters, and play them together a lot. He hates doing that. Will he?
They can bring guys back too. They can re-sign Robin, Connaughton, and Wes Matthews They can use the taxpayer MLE. And I am sure they can get some ring chasers that are better than the average minimum contract guy.
They should be able to put together a deep enough roster this year to win it. But I just dont get how they keep it all together long term. Lets say Giannis signs the supermax. Jrue's agent is gonna ask for the max or very close, knowing Milwaukee cant just let him walk after paying that much for him. Just between Giannis, Lopez, Bogdan, Middleton, and Jrue in '21-'22, they could be at 140 mil. It is unsustainable, and they just gave up their cheap young talent and their picks. So even if Giannis re-signs, this still all falls apart at some point eventually. And the picks are far enough out that we will benefit when they do.
There's some truth to that, but is RoLo coming back? He opted out of $5m, and Wes opted out of $2.7m. If those guys did that for any reason in particular - maybe they see their value being higher on the open market, which I can certainly see being true for Wes - they can't bring them all back.
I agree about the final thing. It's 3 picks guaranteed with 2 swaps. Now, as far as I've seen, we know that the first pick is this years #24, but the other two are unknown: it's possible that they're as far out as 2025 and 2027.
If that's the case, Giannis would be 31 by the time the first one hits, 33 for the second one. Lopez will likely be retired, or on the last of his legs: Jrue will be in a similar boat, floating around 36 years old during that span of time. That is, no longer ''lynchpin pieces on championship contenders'', most likely. Given that they've given away all their picks, and they don't have a ton of loose contracts anymore to work with, there's no clear way for them to improve during this time period either, unless they end up flipping Jrue for pieces later or something, and that just makes them worse in the short term anyway. The odds are that 5 years from now, the Bucks will be bad: they're fine with that, it seems, because they're accepting that now in the hopes of securing a ring or two now.
But it does mean that regardless of how good they are for 20/21, or 21/22, by the time the picks start rolling around they should be bad. Or at least on the downswing while we're on the upswing, which should mean those picks will be better than ours even if they're not stellar, and therefore worth the swaps and the value.
It's a good trade for us.
And of course a shallower team makes injury a much larger worry. I wouldn't really call anyone on that team injury 'prone' (yes, Jrue has had issues in the past but he's been just minor stuff really for a few years now) but anything can happen and if you're heavily relying on just dominating with a starting 5 and just winging it with the scrap-heap bench, you feel it a lot more when one of your guys goes down than a team which might have a slightly weaker starting 5 but a more robust backup unit.
You would always opt out of those deals. If you go back to Milwaukee, you can get a 20% raise over last year, as opposed to a 5% raise that came with the limits of the CBA. Even if you had no desire to go anywhere else, you would opt out of that deal every time
Charlotte and the Knicks are the only teams with verified trade interest in Russell Westbrook, league sources say ... interest with many caveats
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) November 17, 2020
We expound on it all in this week's @nytimes On Basketball newsletter. Sign up here for direct delivery today: https://t.co/4QSL0ZLSUh
Yeah, after the AD trade, most of us were certain LAL would fall apart because they couldn't put a roster around AD and LeBron. Ring chasing in the NBA is intense.
But lol at Houston.
Anybody else like to see us take a run at Christian Wood in Free Agency?
(Don't be surprised if he doesn't end up in LA)
You typically don't see this unless a) something is up, and b) the something involves both the team and the player. https://t.co/NPMcqlW9EX
— John Hollinger (@johnhollinger) November 17, 2020
Something's going down
Additionally, if Harden is indeed headed to Brooklyn, there's a strong possibility that Bledsoe is now the best player on the market after FVV.
Would it make more sense for the Pels to wait until after teams miss out on FVV?
Well... Superstars are trying to abandon the West. So, I guess that's a good thing.
So let’s’ say we look to make a big move for a player here. The two guys that come to mind are Beal and KAT. Who you got that you think are obtainable if we decide to go that route?
I dont even waste time thinking about this any more. Almost all players come available nowadays. Just a matter of when and if they are predetermined to only want to go to a certain place. For instance, I do think Booker and KAT will eventually request out but they are going to angle towards New York with Leon Rose and World Wide Wes.
So you just gotta be patient and have the assets ready for when a star opts out and will do you the honor of even considering you
There is no move to make now. Maybe not one next year.
But every year, multiple stars will be disappointed by how their team finished, its general direction, a coach, an owner, or all of the above. They all want out eventually.
And you just save up your assets so you can make the best offer when they do.
Buh buh buh... what about moving Bledsoe
The Rockets and Wizards have discussed a deal centered on Russell Westbrook for John Wall, sources tell @TheAthleticNBA @Stadium. No traction yet, Rockets are seeking more assets.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) November 17, 2020
One option that I find interesting is maybe flipping Bledsoe to Atlanta for Dewayne Dedmon and the #6 pick. Bledsoe fits with Atlanta for all the same reasons Jrue did. Dedmon isn't a great player or contract at this point, but not terrible and only has 2 years left. Plus he fills a position of need for the Pels and played well a couple of years ago, so the upside seems to be there. Obviously, the true return is the #6 pick, and we've evidently been working to obtain a pick in that range.
This would mean that Bledsoe is worth the equivalent of the 8th or 9th pick by himself. Which he isn't.
13 and Bledsoe for 6 and Dedmon woukd be "fair" in a vacuum but I was told last night the Hawks don't have interest in that. Apparently they think they can get Rondo or Dunn or a handful of other solid guards in FA and don't think the gap between those guys and Bledsoe is as big as the gap between 6 and 13
Trading up doesn't have a fixed cost that you either do or don't. The other team has to agree and it sounds like teams in that range love certain guys and they won't trade down if their guy is there. But if say Pat Williams is gone at 7, Detroit might trade down. Griff is trying but it takes two
Hawks trying to get Hayward.
https://sports.yahoo.com/sources-haw...233224425.html
So are we more than likely keeping Bledsoe to start the season? Bledsoe isn’t a trash player. He is still at least an average starting PG/SG.
This lineup would be solid and deep...
PG: Ball/Bledsoe/NAW
SG: Redick/Hill/Jackson
SF: Ingram/Hart/Bey
PF: Zion/Melli/Bey
C: Baynes/Hayes/Jalen Smith
He is working hard to move Bledsoe, with the priority being to move up in draft, but that is proving difficult. Lately, I have been wondering if it would just be easier to use Bledsoe to move up from 24 and get another pick in the 12-17 range. Basically double up on your lotto ticket and if you hit on one guy you are golden. Examples would be something like:
Bledsoe, #24 for Cory Joseph, #12
Bledsoe, #24 for Aminu, Khem Birch, #15
Bledsoe, #24 for James Johnson, Okogie,#17
Vassell, Poku, Nesmith, Kira, Maxey, Jalen Smith, Hampton, Precious, Terry -- you take two of those guys. Whoever you like most that is on the board. Get two from that tier and while you try to develop both, obviously, if just one of them hits as an above avg starter or better, its a big win