I'm giving the Pels a C+.
FO kept the faith with Lonzo, I'm happy about that.
Getting something in return for JJ.
Moving on from Melli.
A couple of guys who could add toughness and defence.
Shame we couldn't move Bledsoe.
What do you guys think ?
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I'm giving the Pels a C+.
FO kept the faith with Lonzo, I'm happy about that.
Getting something in return for JJ.
Moving on from Melli.
A couple of guys who could add toughness and defence.
Shame we couldn't move Bledsoe.
What do you guys think ?
Would’ve been a B if we could’ve moved bledsoe, but it is what it is. I think our future at center right now is jaxson Hayes and her a Gomez. We should phase out aqua man and give them 2 more Playing time. I like the toughness that James brings and we can match him up against bigger 2-3’s. Lonzo and NAW should be the starting guards. Let hart and the rookie/bledsoe back them up.
quite honestly, I would not be surprised if JJ found his stroke again to the point of helping them somewhat.... Melli is a mystery to me and I have always expected much more because of his form.... anyway, time will tell and I think a very average grade might be in order here....Johnson is a tough guy who will bring a rep with him, but we will have to see if his game translates over here....Iwundu is still very young and not sure how much of a chance he will be given.... that leaves a Magic second round pick....
Hard to rank the moves given that we made basically one.
- Kept Lonzo, bad decision in my opinion that only sets us up for more failure later on, so it's a 1-2 punch of a bad move.
- Kept Bledsoe, which isn't optimal. Could either be a neutral move or a terrible one depending on how they play it: if he keeps eating minutes and then we don't move him in the offseason, it's a dreadful move. If he gets benched and then moved in the summer I don't care.
- Got off JJ's contract which is fine, but did it a year late and consequently got basically nothing of value back from it.
D grade. No atrocious value plays but some bad long term decisions and an inability to recover from earlier mistakes means that the team isn't in a better place than it was before the deadline, and we've managed to create a sword of Damocles for ourselves later on.
Hard to look at today as anything but a failure state. Either we set our price unrealistically high or we were getting extremely low balled. But for me, compounding the failure by dumping heavy salary just so we don't lose Lonzo is the worst possible move we can make. I doubt we can work a sign and trade now of any import unless some unforeseen changes occur to shift power balances and a team suddenly really needs a guard.
But letting him walk? I say that's preferable to Lonzo at like $22million a year with player options and trade kickers or whatever poison pill contract someone might tab.
A monkey could 100% do a better job of asset management than David Griffin
I don't even care anymore. It is what it is.
At this point, it is what it is. Let's see what the off season has to offer us. If Lonzo leaves, whatever, what decent players can we add that'll be beneficial to what SVG wants to run? If Lonzo stays for a reasonable amount, how can this core grow together? Will we be able to off load Bledsoe? What will we do with these picks? All I know is, I'm mainly looking forward to the growth of Kira and NAW.
EDIT: Also look at the possibility of a sign and trade for Lonzo. Let's see what happens.
I’m disappointed we didn’t trade for Reddish. Maybe we could have gotten him for less than Lonzo but I thought he’d be the perfect buy low prospect. Plus he has some size which is something we need. Other than that very uneventful so I give it a C.
We got a team that is growing. Melli and JJ cannot play defense. Their shooting has been terrible. I?m glad they?re gone. We were getting low balled big time most likely and so we couldn?t move Lonzo. It?s better to finish the season to get a big picture view of who should be our starting guards. We might have something special in Kira.... if he plays incredible for the rest of the season then we might just let Lonzo go....
Grade: B-
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What was the market for Lonzo? Grif can't create offers from other teams; this is a matching problem, to use the proper economic theory term. Are you grading the lack of a trade down because the Pels were not willing to give him away?
What was the market for Bledsoe? Why give away FRPs which may get us an asset later? And if we could get rid of Bledsoe with a FRP why can't we include Bledsoe in a trade over the summer to match salaries with an attached FRP to make the trade happen?
JJ spent time with NAW working on his game. From his podcast remarks JJ seems personally invested in the future growth of Zion, BI, Zo and NAW. It is true that JJ's production on the court hasn't been what anyone expected. But now you're expanding the time period of the evaluation from the trade deadline.
I agree that Lonzo is a 5th best player on a contender. So where do we get the #3 and #4 to go with Zion and BI? If they exist, why would anyone trade them to us?
You can't always get what you want. That doesn't warrant a D grade.
grade A....
we moved JJ and melli......if we keep johnson then he is an upgrade from melli.....the other player 6'6 so thats a plus for me in the back court even if he never play..
didnt think lonzo was going anywhere and im glad because i want to see him,,zion and ingram push for a playoff spot...
knew bledsoe was not going anywhere....
I'm really looking forward to Zion, BI and Lonzo pushing for playoffs too. I also like with Johnson as a Melli upgrade, at 6' 7", that Hart can spend more time defending guards his own height .
JJ was never a long term answer and fell off a year earlier than we hoped.
Melli was a project that didn't work.
Nothing inspiring about what we got in return but it's something.
Just a meh move so a C grade I guess.
What I want to know is how Miami hustle so much...
Look at what the Knicks have done in a year.
This is, I feel, a very unreasonable response.
1) What was the market for Lonzo? I don't know, but it was almost certainly better than absolutely nothing which is the likeliest ''good'' option left on the table now.
2) What was the market for Bledsoe? Also don't know, but as I put in my actual answer, the grading on this is yet to be seen. It depends what we do next with Bledsoe whether or not keeping him now was good or not - if we use him as an excuse not to invest time into our actual future players like Kira, and then still can't move him in the summer without attaching stuff, it's clearly a bad move: it's cost you the same in assets but it's also got an attached opportunity cost. By contrast, if he's benched and we develop the guys in place of him and then the cost is the same in summer, it's not a bad move but it's a lateral one - you can't grade up on that.
3) I don't heavily believe in the idea that individual players act as mini-coaches for younger players. I buy some degree of improvement based on it, but not enough to derail asset collection: JJ should have been moved either last deadline or in the off-season when his value was highest.
You can't always get what you want but when you can't get any of what you want and the things that you do manage to get are just kicking the can down the road, that's not very good at all.
:hihi:
Grading in general for any sports is just a waste of time in drafting. It is unpredictable enough that grading gives the air of more prediction than fact and is fun for fans.
Didn't realize we have so many Negative Nancies on this forum!
1) you set a price for Lonzo. If it is not met you wait and see.
2) You don't want to give away a first round pick just to move Bledsoe now so you keep him and hopefully do something in the offseason or next year (while at the end of the bench)
3) You turned JJ into something rather than buying him out for nothing and you might have something in Wes Iwundu for the future cheap next year at a position of need and Johnson to add something to the frontcourt.
Nancies are as bad as Karens!!!
B-
I won’t grade Griffin until I see what he does in his 2nd full “normal” offseason.
I just hate the overcompensation of trying to "remain positive" and if you don't agree you are a negative nancy take. Lonzo being a side and trade option is going to be pretty difficult to pull off.
Also we have to factor in off season bias where most teams "like what they see " from their teams and believe they can make the playoffs. The trade deadline for the most part is when desperate teams usually pay more.
The Rockets got Avery Bradley, Kelly Olynyk, and a pick, right? In that case it's a little bit more sketchy, it depends on the pick since neither of those players is really positive value at this point.
While I see no reason to take his word for it, MM was in another thread saying that Duncan Robinson may have been on the table for Lonzo. If that was the case, then we absolutely should have pulled the trigger on that.
As for me, the maximum score is D. We didn't do anything big, we even weakened the team. Sometimes the lack of transfers is the best transfer, but this time we needed changes ... Serious, not cosmetic xd
if Johnson earns/gets any playing time to speak of, I guess we can still have a JJ if we want it....
Griffin on Ball:
"He's made it very clear personally, one to one, that he wants to be here," Griffin said. "Yet what you will read is, 'This is a player who doesn't want to be here. He's not in our plans. So you should trade him for a ham sandwich.' That doesn't make any sense when we know the actual, real story behind Lonzo Ball."
All I'll add is now the rational evaluation is most likely keeping Lonzo at a big number or using that cap space to sign someone who is a better fit--both financially and skill set wise (maybe like upcoming RFA Duncan Robinson!). Maybe a sign and trade presents itself as an option, but there are going to be several teams with big money available to make a run at Lonzo, making him prohibitively expensive if you opt to match, which might be the worst outcome of all...
At this point I think he could do a better Daniel Plainview than Daniel Day himself. The entire press conference I was waiting for him to transition into "I have a competition in me...." Very disappointed that didn't happen.
This team is leaps and bounds better than last year. As proof, I'll refer you to your glut of Zionisms you have a propensity to post ad nauseum. And to your chagrin, I'm sure, BI has continued to improve and has proved you dead wrong. JAX and NAW are not Gentry's JAX and NAW by a longshot as they are contributing in the rotation....so there's improvement there. I still think its a bad fit, but there's little doubt that Adams is a vast improvement over Favors, plus we ended up maximizing Jrue's return. Kira is certainly an improvement over one of your all time hate players, Frank Jackson. no?
Wanna talk about Lonzo's shooting or defense?
Really, dae, your blanket claims are getting old and stale.
I give the Pels a solid F.
Imo Trajan Langdon/David Griffin failed to make any significant changes to improve this flawed roster.
When you think about Optics. Its much better for Lonzo to leave this team due to being paid higher than we can afford, than to trade him for scraps just to say we got something. Lonzo is loved by all of his teammates. He is playing really well this year. Its better to finish out the season and make the playoff push. What message are you sending to the rest of the team to trade a guy who is playing well, liked and wants to be here for scraps? Not a good one at all.
If we don't resign Lonzo its because he got a Godfather offer that we couldn't afford and that would be understandable. We would still have cap space and a draft pick to add a couple players or 3. Maybe we can trade Bled and/or Adams.
I'm not really worried about finding a "3rd guy". I trust the development of Kira, NAW, Hayes to develop into really good players and great compliments to BI/Zion. Hart is fantastic. When you have 2 25+ ppg scorers do you really need a 3rd superstar? Especially one as great as Zion who likely will be leading the league in scoring for years to come once he develops a pull up jumpshot and continues to gain more experience. We just have to continue to build the team around those guys, we don't need 3 max players. We need depth.
We have Didi coming over next season who is looking promising. Our first rd pick this year. 4 2nds, where we may be able to combine to move up, or pick up some stash and dash international players. Our future is bright.
I for one loved the James Johnson pickup. He brings much needed versatility and toughness that this team was lacking a bit outside of Zion and Hart.
I would give it a B since we didn't move Bledsoe
In general, I agree with you, but you shouldn't dismiss the importance of finding a "3rd guy". Guys like Lonzo, NAW, Kira and Hayes may (and I think probably) will develop, true. However, another team may have someone around Zion and BI's age who is already better than the highest ceiling of our guys. The Pels have the FRPs to make a trade at least possible. Though this scenario is unlikely (because it would be unlikely that another team would trade such a person), it is still possible and something for fans to speculate about. After all, we got Hart, Lonzo, BI and FRPs in a single trade.