Bernman wrote:German Athens wrote:We had two different debates, and I think you’re combining those into 1.
The bigger thing we got into was when I asked what you were worried about if we continued to trade future 1sts.
The Dame part you brought up was a hypothetical. You mentioned even if we won the title this year with Dame, you’d trade him in the off-season. I thought that was a wild take considering the team who wins it one year is usually the favorite to win it the following season, and that the only way I’d consider that is if Dame wasn’t really a contributor to that title which seemed even more far-fetched.
Clearly, that’s not our present situation.
In our main debate, we eventually reached an impasse which I think likely had to do with what we value. I see the entire point of playing the game as winning titles, and maximizing what you have when you have a top talent that can get you there, and you see it as building sustainably good teams even if that never means you really sniff a title. Something like that anyway.
I was all for trading that ‘31 1st to maximize what we have now, and you didn’t want to do that out of fear of the dead period to come post Giannis, and the potential for the team to get moved if we enter into basketball hell in the late 2020’s early 2030’s.
The only argument I saw as credible in that take was the potential for us to be moved, but I still saw that as unlikely, and when weighed against the opportunity at hand, I wanted to continue to push to compete for a title now.
I thought you could still re-tool around Giannis, by using Dame (I’ve posted a ton of potential Dame trades over the past multiple months), future 1st + swap, and heck even cap-space if we ever found it again, to build a team in a drastically different way around Giannis.
Even if we won a title w/ Dame, he'd still be 35-36 next yr. You run out the clock, & the cupboard is bare around Giannis like now. Plus you have no picks. I'd have been good w/ continuing to go in that direction if it wasn't the case. Or maybe if we were in a hot climate/big market.
Indeed, that would have been awful if we traded our picks beyond '30 as well. More years of total irrelevance/hopelessness.
And it's a bit of a word twist that I said even if we never sniff a title. We actually didn't sniff a title this way. And have a lot less shots. But what I always value is consistent contention, even if you don't end up getting to the very top of the mountain. You still have cause to believe at the time. Make a Finals, could win it all once, or more. I'm not for selling out and exhausting all resources to maximize your chances in the now. It's not what OKC did/has done. They haven't won a title yet, but they have much cause to believe, even if they haven't yet. The Spurs didn't go all out, had a borderline dynasty, while being consistent contenders surrounding. If you have the right process for sustainability you may achieve both goals.
The ‘this way’ part is true, but it’s also pretty far from what I had in mind. We traded Middleton and a future promising prospect for a bad player now. A middle ground move, one with an absence of a direction, that made us worse. An all-in move would’ve looked more like trading that ‘31 1st for Jimmy. I didn’t want to give that cheaply away, but I was also happy to use it for a needle mover now.
I get lusting over OKCs direction, but we also never had their position to begin with. We never had a wealth of assets when Giannis started to ascend, and instead of organically being bad for the 2015 draft, we pushed to get results. Who knows, maybe we have Booker right now if we play that season how many of us wanted.
We then blew too many picks after that in the middle rounds - Rashad, Thon, DJ.
I think we probably agree on a number of asset blunders over the years, and in particular, I think we may agree that our biggest one may have been the Jrue trade which probably isn’t a popular opinion.
We gave up assets for 5 drafts to go from Bledsoe to Jrue. The proper value was probably 2 firsts and no swaps to upgrade, but we timed it terribly and got bent over.
Phoenix, that same off-season, gave up 1 first for Chris Paul if I remember correctly.
The Jrue trade was the one that put us significantly behind the 8 ball.
We did things inorganically, and you can run into problems with that, but the organic parts (the sustainable ones) we also **** up. The combination of both those has us where we are - bereft of young, foundational talent, one future pick and swap in our cupboard, and no cap space.
The player that’s papered over so man of our warts is still here, and that’s still where all the hope lies.
