ORL gets offensive, PHX gets big, POR gets pix

[Scoot McGroot]

ORL sends Wendell Carter, Jr
PHX sends: Tyus Jones (SnT $12m x 2+TO)
PHX, effectively gets what they need for a failed experiment…Tyus’ paycheck (and role) gets corrected, unless he had a secret handshake for $20m for coming over for only $3m for a starting featured role…something PHX would now regret.

By sign and trading a player away for a player contract in return, Phoenix would hard cap themselves at the 2nd apron. They’ll likely be under by waiving Martin and declining Micic, but that still leaves them pretty tight up against the hard cap to fill out the roster.

Also, I doubt Phoenix would have access to the full MLE necessary to give Tyus that salary. They’ll only have non bird rights on him, which only allows a 20% raise on his vet minimum salary. The max they can pay him without using the taxpayer MLE is $3.6m. If they can use the taxpayer MLE, they’re at a projected $5.685m, but they may not have room under the hard cap to fit that entire salary.

[Skybox]

This felt very unnecessary. Not liking a proposal means I should leave the thread you started? You may not have liked my position, but I was actively involved in the discussion.

My apologies...the gist I got (from your non-proposal) was that there was not much worth discussing or speculating about which players might make sense based on the early mocks.

I’m totally fine with speculation. I was just indicating that with the info currently presented, I prefer the speculative value of what we have over that of what we receive. I’m even open to changing that stance, but that requires a bit more info, which is why I asked if you had specific targets in mind. If this conversion has done anything on my end, it got me going to some mock drafts to start reading up on some players who may be available to us, but I’m very early in that process as most of the season I’ve just hoped to be bad enough to land a higher pick to land one of the players who have gained more attention.

...and I told you that I didn't have any specific targets that made significantly more sense than others for POR. That's the whole point from POR's pespective. I don't see anybody at around 9 that's significantly sexier to POR than those likely to land a few slots later...which is why they'd consider adding significant future draft equity and still draft one of a group of guys with similar appeal to them.

"More picks is better than Less picks" is as true, generally, as "High picks are better than Low picks" ...especially if the lower picks aren't much lower and the guy that rates the spot you have isn't any more appealing to you than others behind him.

[Skybox]

ORL sends Wendell Carter, Jr
PHX sends: Tyus Jones (SnT $12m x 2+TO)
PHX, effectively gets what they need for a failed experiment…Tyus’ paycheck (and role) gets corrected, unless he had a secret handshake for $20m for coming over for only $3m for a starting featured role…something PHX would now regret.

By sign and trading a player away for a player contract in return, Phoenix would hard cap themselves at the 2nd apron. They’ll likely be under by waiving Martin and declining Micic, but that still leaves them pretty tight up against the hard cap to fill out the roster.

Also, I doubt Phoenix would have access to the full MLE necessary to give Tyus that salary. They’ll only have non bird rights on him, which only allows a 20% raise on his vet minimum salary. The max they can pay him without using the taxpayer MLE is $3.6m. If they can use the taxpayer MLE, they’re at a projected $5.685m, but they may not have room under the hard cap to fit that entire salary.

I was thinking that could be the case...perhaps assume this comes after they move KD and there's a bit of breathing room after some big, convoluted deal

[Myth]

My apologies...the gist I got (from your non-proposal) was that there was not much worth discussing or speculating about which players might make sense based on the early mocks.

I’m totally fine with speculation. I was just indicating that with the info currently presented, I prefer the speculative value of what we have over that of what we receive. I’m even open to changing that stance, but that requires a bit more info, which is why I asked if you had specific targets in mind. If this conversion has done anything on my end, it got me going to some mock drafts to start reading up on some players who may be available to us, but I’m very early in that process as most of the season I’ve just hoped to be bad enough to land a higher pick to land one of the players who have gained more attention.

...and I told you that I didn't have any specific targets that made significantly more sense than others for POR. That's the whole point from POR's pespective. I don't see anybody at around 9 that's significantly sexier to POR than those likely to land a few slots later...which is why they'd consider adding significant future draft equity and still draft one of a group of guys with similar appeal to them.

"More picks is better than Less picks" is as true, generally, as "High picks are better than Low picks" ...especially if the lower picks aren't much lower and the guy that rates the spot you have isn't any more appealing to you than others behind him.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you. I don’t see how that is much different from my take when I said to “not make the trade UNLESS we really don’t like the options at 9 much more than multiple lower quality swings.”

[DeBlazerRiddem]

Way too early for me to have any sort of informed opinion about dropping back in the draft.

In general I am very much a "quality over quantity" believer. I think in the draft you pick the player you believe in the most and go get them so my tendency at this point is more to look at moving up than moving back. Portland has a lot of young players but still lacking that real difference maker so moving back would have to depend on a complete inability to get the guy we actually want (either too expensive or just not in this draft) and its too early for me to know that. Say the guy we want goes at 6 or 7, it's a lot easier to get there from 9 than it is from 15.

The closer we get to the draft the order players are going to go might become much clearer (at least to teams, not necessarily to us fans) and maybe the calculus changes. Maybe a win-now team moves into the top 4 and is open to dealing a pick and moving back and Portland should look into that first, although the chances of them wanting any of our vets is pretty low so not counting on that. In any case a trade like this would be a draft day trade based on having much more concrete information.

At a quick look the top 5 seem pretty set across a couple mocks and then there is a fair bit of the usual uncertainty around the next 5-10 players. To be honest no one from that 6-16 group really seems to jump out at me which is kind of what it would take to lead me to looking at trading down. I get if Orlando wants to move up and ensure they get someone like Maluach maybe Portland would play ball. Based on the current tankathon mock, the 3 guys who kind of appeal in that 15 range would be Murray-Boyles, Demin and Essengue and maybe we don't see a huge drop off with those guys between Newell or Knueppel. So it looks possible that the cards fall such that Orlando can convince us to trade back but again it is way too early for me to say that would happen with any confidence.

[DiegoChara]

Without having done the research on specific draft targets, simply assessing the value, this seems pretty bad for Portland, especially given how bad KCP has been. If you want to unprotect that ‘27 first (or maybe just make it top 1 protected) so Portland at least has the upside of a lottery ticket to gamble on, that might make it mildly intriguing.

[Malapropism]

Portland trades the better player and the better pick to get....a worse player and worse picks? Haha, I don't really care what kind of mental gymastics you're doing here to try and justify that but on purely value Portland could do A LOT better. If they simply shopped 9 on draft night they would likely field more competitive offers depending on who is there. The premise of this deal just doesn't exist. 15+27 doesn't move you to 9 in any draft. Adding a future protected first might get you there depending on who is available, but then why is Portland swapping the better player for the worse one? Makes absolutely no sense.

Portland is also ripe with mediocre depth. If anything, they need to consolidate assets, not the other way around.