stormi wrote:
This long winded copium of a response would only hold weight if the Spurs went on to get an actual good deal elsewhere. They got fleeced even worse by the Raptors.
Excessive draft capital? nope
Star potential prospect? nope
Near 30 year old empty stat merchant? yup
The return for a 26 year old with a ridiculous resume to that point including 2 DPOY's a (fraudulent) FMVP, multiple allstar berths and All NBA nods - that was the best player on two 60 win teams was... Poeltl, Demar and ONE PROTECTED frp. Just really really bad.
But also karma I guess for the way the organization and Tony Parker led that witch-hunt against a player that was genuinely battling injury crisis.
It's not Billy King levels of bad, but this one will go down as one of the worst trades of the modern era.
To complain that the Spurs didn't get a "good deal" is meaningless unless you're judging it against what was actually out there. I will elaborate on that in a second, but first let's look at the actual context that you completely ignore when describing Kawhi as an all-star, DPOY, etc.
Kawhi was dead-set on leaving to LA. In the lead-up to the season he had ceased all communication with the Spurs. When the Spurs sent doctors and officials to check on him his handlers literally ushered him into another room until they left and refused to let them speak with him. Kawhi then milked an injury to sit out until he was traded (more on that in a second). Kawhi's uncle Dennis during this time was leaking story after story about how Kawhi wanted a trade to the Lakers, while Kawhi continued to refuse to return calls to the Spurs front office. Kawhi and his uncle fired his previous agent (who is winning a lawsuit against them for owing him money) because he was not on board with the plan to force a trade. The lid was kept on all this because the Spurs front office doesn't let stuff out easily, and they have a very supportive local media. Kawhi was not more hurt in 2018 than he was on the Raptors and Clippers. The diagnosis the Spurs gave him, of a degenerative condition that he would need to load manage moving forward, was proven correct which is why both the Raptors and Clippers load managed him. Kawhi needed to go to 7 other doctors before he found one who would give him a different diagnosis, and that diagnosis has been proven wrong. Kawhi needs load managing moving forward, which the Spurs were happy to provide. They basically invented load management.
Kawhi refused to even work out with his team mates. He was killing it in private workouts, where it was obvious to all he could play, but refusing to let the Spurs either activate him for the roster, or rule him out for the season. His team mates, understandably annoyed, finally had a team meeting with him to ask him what was going on. During it Kawhi told them "I'll do anything for you guys, but not for this organisation". Kawhi then left the locker room, got on a plane, and flew to LA. That was the last time he was ever in San Antonio while under contract. He did not ask the teams permission to leave, he just left, and the Spurs had to roll with it. In the offseason Kawhi continued to refuse to meet the Spurs management, despite being under contract, and his uncle continued to leak his demands for a trade to LA. His Uncle had also made alot of other ridiculous demands, of much the same sort as the Raptors confirmed he had made before leaving in free agency (such as illegal shares in the team, jobs for all his family, etc, to even consider staying). Kawhi wanted us to pay J.Simmons $50 million dollars for eg, and to give his Uncle GM powers, during his time here (the first point should give you an idea of how bad the second idea would have been). Finally, the Spurs told him they were not even going to entertain a trade until he met with them. The meeting lasted less than 10 minutes, and Kawhi finally told them to their faces that he was set on a trade to LA.
So that's the context. Kawhi and his uncle were determined he would go to LA. He was willing to milk and injury to stay off the court to get said trade, and he refused to talk to non-LA teams. After Toronto traded for him they confirmed he hadn't agreed to talk to them, give them a medical, nothing. Understandably his value was extremely low, because of the above facts. He had to be treated as a rental for 27/29 of the other teams.
So what were the actual offers. Aside from the bad Lakers one I mentioned above, which never even got finalised because the Lakers weren't even negotiating seriously (so sure were they that Kawhi would go there for free in the offseason), here were the offers:
1) The 76ers offered Covington, Saric and the Heat pick. They explicitly refused to include Simmons, Embiid or even Fultz (which sounds ridiculous now, but should tell you where Kawhi's value was).
2) The Clippers offered Tobias Harris and one of their two late lotto picks. Rumour was the Clippers were "entertaining" offering the other one as well.
3) The Celtics by all sources "refused to include any of their 5 best players". Their offer was Marcus Smart (who the Spurs would have needed to pay the max to make the money work because of base year compensation issues), and "some picks". As Bontemps said "given the way the Celtics have carried themselves in this and recent negotiations, you can be pretty sure they weren't very good picks. If this had been an offer of J.Brown and the Kings pick obviously the Spur would have done it". It was speculated the best pick in the deal was the Memphis one. Blerg. The first thing Kawhi asked when he met the Lakers in free agency was "why didn't you trade for me", and Magic told him (and the media to whom he leaked it); cos we're not crazy. The Spurs wanted like 4 picks for you. So Magic himself is admitting there was no godfather offer.
That was it for serious offers. Bontemps was one of many objective journos who confirmed "they would have preferred OG or Pascal, but those guys weren't even on the table" (and this is before they even broke out the following seasons).
The Clippers deal isn't good. While SGA turned into a nice player, that's hindsight bias. The trade was not for SGA, it was for a late lotto pick that had no guarantee of being anything other than a run of the mill meh prospect. It's like us saying "well, we got Keldon, so the deal wasn't so bad". We got the 29th pick. We had no way of knowing it'd turn into Keldon. Harris we'd have lost that offseason, he was massively overpaid, and we wouldn't have been dumb enough to pay him that much. He's only an ok player.
The 76ers offer isn't good. We'd have gotten 1 good role player and a meh pick. The Celtics offer gave us a back-up guard, the position we least needed, on an overly rich contract, and some meh picks. Against that, the Raptors package, as flaws as it was, was actually the best option. Poeltl is a starting big who is fantastic on D. He's worth more than a late lotto pick. We got a 1st thrown in anyway, and we got DDR. I am DDR's harshest critic. I wanted him traded after the 2019 playoffs, but he has his uses and he achieved his purpose in the short term. He helped the team make the playoffs, tying the all-time playoff record, which was important to the Spurs franchise. If not for the Morris debacle in 2020, and White's injury in 2021, the Spurs would still be building that streak; but dem's the breaks. Sometimes the ball doesn't bounce your way. He still gave us a useful if frustrating player, and we managed to turn him into Thad and a good 1st. Overall that is better than anything else being offered; and no amount of waiting would have produced better offers, because Kawhi would just continue to sit with his phantom injury and leak how he wanted a trade to LA and the Spurs would have had another season disrupted by it.
Before Kawhi left to LA so many fans were chirping about how Kawhi would stay with Toronto and the Spurs had done him wrong. The Raptors won the title and treated him well, he would stay for sure. Raptors fans now realise he was never staying. Ever. And other teams weren't offering us much because they knew this too. The guy lost alot of money forcing his way to the Clippers and passing on the super max, etc.
