facothomas22 wrote:There's 2 sides to salary filler. Not all salary filler = negative value. The players you mentioned like PJ Tucker and Chris Boucher are negative contracts and need assets attached to them in order to move them. Some salary filler players can actually have good contracts and Austin Reaves is the perfect example of this. Dwight Powell was an example of this a couple of years ago. Good contract, but not a good enough player where you give up a pick or good players for him straight up. The reason why teams were asking for Austin is because he's viewed as positive salary filler, while everyone the Lakers been trying to trade were negative salary filler, not because Austin Reaves himself had any real value. If Austin really had positive trade value, the Hawks wouldn't asked for 2 1st round picks attached to Austin Reaves in exchange for Dejounte Murray this off season before they decided to trade him to the Pelicans for 2 1st round picks and salary filler.
Filler by definition means their inclusion is one because CBA rules require matching salaries. If he's a fringe role player like you've claimed multiple times in this thread, his contract isn't a filler because it'd be a bad contract. Guys like Boucher and Tucker are ONLY considered negative IF they're being traded into cap space, but if you're trading two equally useless expiring than neither team needs to add incentive. So you're all over the place with your argument with Reaves. Either he's a good rotational player and the contract is a value contract hence his value is derived from that OR he's not a core rotational player and he's on a bad contract. Can't have it both ways. Comparing Reaves to Powell is just odd. Powell averaged just over 18 MPG in his 10 seasons in Dallas, and averaged 25 games started over his career there. Reeves has averaged almost 29 MPG in his 3 seasons, and he's started on average 33 games. That's a very broad stroke if you're arguing they're similar in anyway. And guys like LNJ, Reaves, and Dyson Daniels while might not be pillars of a big trade, they contribute to the trade package. It's not like the reported demand for the Lakers' package and the package the Pelicans ended up getting were substantially different.
facothomas22 wrote:Comparing Austin Reaves to Alex Caruso is a misinformed opinion. Alex Caruso is a elite defender and can make 3pt shots. He's basically a perfect 3 and D player, which is highly valuable in today's NBA.Even then, the Bulls manged to only get Josh Giddy straight up for Caruso, tho they could've gotten a good bit more if they played their cards right. Austin Reaves on the other is a meh offensive player while being a total liability on defense. He's more of a 8-9th guy off the bench than even a true 6th man because his offense isn't good enough to justify that true 6th man role.
I said the "offensive version" of Alex Caruso. Not Alex Caruso. And I was talking more in the sense that he's a complimentary piece. He's not a top 3 guy on any championship team. Teams aren't going to win with either one of them as a top 3 guy. I would agree that Caruso has the more unique skillset, which is why I'd say he's inherently more valuable in that sense. But when you factor in age (26 vs 30), contract status (3 years vs. 1 year remaining), etc. the gap actually closes more than you care to admit. There's legitimately NOTHING to suggest that the Reaves is an 8th/9th guy off the bench. He was 4th in MPG last year for the Lakers, and 5th the year before that. Either he's better than you're crediting him for OR you think the Lakers are a borderline G-League team outside of LeBron and AD. I'm sure I know the answer already.
