Jimmy Butler Traded to Philadelphia (Discussion Continued)

[theGreatRC]

Embiid talked with KAT & Wiggs about Jimmy

Read on Twitter

[Wolves21]

This trade pushed all the right button as far as building around KAT and WIGS. Spacing, defense, and another playmaker. Something I always desired since we draft Towns was a player capable of blocking shots from the 3 or 4 position. Covington provides that. Wiggins was always a SG in my opinion because he lacked girth, so we needed another playmaker at the 3 or 4 to offsets Wiggin’s limitation in this skill. Saric will provide that. Lastly, we needed more rebounding and 3 point shooting. Between Covington and Saric, we get an additional 12-13 rebounds per game and 38% shooting (4.5 made) from the 3pt line from the forward spots based last years numbers. Insert that into the starting lineup with Gibson going to the bench, and our overall chemistry looks much better, thought probably not as efficient initially. However, we still have opportunity for significant improvements from the 3 young guys, Towns, Wiggins and Saric. I like the future look much better now with a slim chance of making a push this year if we can right the ship quickly.

Agreed

Still don't get the hate on the trade and adding Covington & Saric.At worst we add to starting caliber players for and all-star,pretty much the most you can ask for.I view this trade kind of like the trade the Nuggets did years ago with the Nicks for Melo.Where they got and all star caliber player that help them turn into a playoff team while Denver got some solid players not on a all-star level but good enough to keep them in the playoff mix.

[derek360]

I guess your vision is to go the pure tank method. Try our hardest to be as bad as possible in the hopes of getting lucky in the Lottery. IMO that is a disgusting way to run a franchise. RoCo and Saric are good young players that should help us for the next 6-10 years. They are both on excellent contracts. This was an amazing deal for a player who was on an expiring contract and was making a complete a$$ out of himself.

RoCo is not "young" he is in his prime. Additionally if presented with middling and tanking, tanking is the only smart option. With how our roster is constructed, having two soft players that have a lot of maturing to do, your best bet is to build for the future where your future is not dependent on thoes players making massive leaps as well as middle draft picks overachieving.

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27 is young. He should be good for 6 more years. That's young to me. Saric likely has around 10 good years left. Chances are if we tried for draft picks from other teams we never would have got a player as good as either RoCo or Saric. If we tanked for years sure sooner or later we would have with our own pick if that's the way you want to play it. I will never respect that.

Should be good for 6 more years. You really think Covington can sustain this production (2nd in combined steals and blocks) into his 30s? Highly unlikely. Wiggins should shoot more 3s (which he has, but 37% of his shots are still from 10ft to the 3 point line, as opposed to only 18% from 3, per basketball reference; these are his career numbers btw) and Wiggins should pass a lot more...Dude has only averaged 2 asts per game his whole career. Towns should learn how to defend. Some nights he just flails around like he has no idea what he is doing. ESPN SportScience measured the defendable area Towns could cover because of his size and length and it is around ~130 square ft (you can youtube this if you don't believe me), which is a really big area...so he should be a beast defensively. He sometimes can't even defend the guy in front of him, regardless of size.

Saric likely has 10 good years left. It seems like he has benefited from great players around him (obviously Simmons and Embiid). Is he likely to have 10 good years left with the Wolves (or any other team for that matter)? Maybe. His offensive game is clearly better than his defensive game, and with how Thibs uses his starters, if Saric doesn't play the D Thibs is looking for, that will not end well for Saric. Saric's defensive numbers are not good and watching him on tape doesn't really excite me either defensively...So while Saric is likely to be the starter (I hope), is he likely to be better than the potential draft picks the next three years, on this team? Who knows...

[Jedzz]

The only bad thing you can do in sports is middle. If you don't understand that, that is on you not me.

I don't believe this thinking myself. Not as someone who likes to enjoy competitive hard working players. Only one team wins every year. You can have a good franchise competing near the top all the time and never quite getting there. I would be alright with that.

Tanking to build some kind of mega team is not just wrong, but you need to do it more than one year in a row. Like PHilly did. That means forsaking your fans for years, and hoping you make the right choices in the draft. Now, don't get me wrong. If you're team is a mess right now and you and everyone knows there is a Lebron-type player coming out in the next draft, well. Race to the bottom. Last one there is a sorry sap. But I would never really forgive the team I follow for doing it multiple years in a row on purpose. I would stop following them. That's just me. Don't let us figure out you are doing it on purpose each year.

I disagree, and there is a difference in being competitive and middling. Being competitive is fine, middling is not.

Fans hate middling btw. You have a better chance selling tickets when tanking. There is at least the promise of hope. So you are wrong on that front as well, though I think some of that was not differentiating the difference of being competitive and middling.

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I don't think you're selling more tickets while tanking multiple years. You think a few thousand philanthropists are going to buy up your seets because they believe in your long term plan after tanking? Naw. Guarantee the team feels it in more ways than one when they tank. But this team in this state. Watch the team be contracted or moved for such a thing.

I would agree highly competitive and barely middling has a difference. But they only way to go from one to the other is by taking steps toward being better. You don't get there if you quit and tank.

[MN7725]

There is a differnce between being young and old, Covington is not young, it is so obviously false you need to keep repeating it. If you are to fairly represent his age it would be the equivalent of middle aged. He is just starting to enter his prime years.

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He should have at least 6 very good years left. To me that is young. I'm not all that worried about trying to project what players can do for the next ten years. The next six are plenty good for me. I don't consider Butler old either. If he wasn't an a$$ I would have been thrilled to have him for the next six years.

Generally your prime years can range from 28 to 33, that would be about six years. Some players decline sooner, some later. There is no way to know when that decline will start with Covington, for all we know it could start soon and be within what is considered normal.

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??

There are only like 50 players in the league over the age of 32

https://stats.nba.com/players/bio/?sort=AGE&dir=1&Season=2018-19&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&PerMode=Totals

[KGdaBom]

The only bad thing you can do in sports is middle. If you don't understand that, that is on you not me.

I don't believe this thinking myself. Not as someone who likes to enjoy competitive hard working players. Only one team wins every year. You can have a good franchise competing near the top all the time and never quite getting there. I would be alright with that.

Tanking to build some kind of mega team is not just wrong, but you need to do it more than one year in a row. Like PHilly did. That means forsaking your fans for years, and hoping you make the right choices in the draft. Now, don't get me wrong. If you're team is a mess right now and you and everyone knows there is a Lebron-type player coming out in the next draft, well. Race to the bottom. Last one there is a sorry sap. But I would never really forgive the team I follow for doing it multiple years in a row on purpose. I would stop following them. That's just me. Don't let us figure out you are doing it on purpose each year.

Thank you. I feel exactly the same way.

[Jedzz]

He's 28 next month, this year. I'm not sure why we need to claim he's any younger. Saric is young, Covington is in his prime years. One for now, one into the future. If Saric works out really well, he's taking everything left of the cap one or two years before Covington's contract ends. If Towns and Wiggins are still going strong here, that's three players and Covington will be the old man sent packing for certain by then or before then. Half the fans thought Jimmy was old at 28. Covington at 30, people will want to put him in a elderly home.

[KGdaBom]

This trade pushed all the right button as far as building around KAT and WIGS. Spacing, defense, and another playmaker. Something I always desired since we draft Towns was a player capable of blocking shots from the 3 or 4 position. Covington provides that. Wiggins was always a SG in my opinion because he lacked girth, so we needed another playmaker at the 3 or 4 to offsets Wiggin’s limitation in this skill. Saric will provide that. Lastly, we needed more rebounding and 3 point shooting. Between Covington and Saric, we get an additional 12-13 rebounds per game and 38% shooting (4.5 made) from the 3pt line from the forward spots based last years numbers. Insert that into the starting lineup with Gibson going to the bench, and our overall chemistry looks much better, thought probably not as efficient initially. However, we still have opportunity for significant improvements from the 3 young guys, Towns, Wiggins and Saric. I like the future look much better now with a slim chance of making a push this year if we can right the ship quickly.

Great Post. I like everything you said. The problem with this idea of making the playoffs this year is that even if we are good enough to be a playoff team we won't be good enough to overcome the 5 games below .500 that we already are.

[Jedzz]

This trade pushed all the right button as far as building around KAT and WIGS. Spacing, defense, and another playmaker. Something I always desired since we draft Towns was a player capable of blocking shots from the 3 or 4 position. Covington provides that. Wiggins was always a SG in my opinion because he lacked girth, so we needed another playmaker at the 3 or 4 to offsets Wiggin’s limitation in this skill. Saric will provide that. Lastly, we needed more rebounding and 3 point shooting. Between Covington and Saric, we get an additional 12-13 rebounds per game and 38% shooting (4.5 made) from the 3pt line from the forward spots based last years numbers. Insert that into the starting lineup with Gibson going to the bench, and our overall chemistry looks much better, thought probably not as efficient initially. However, we still have opportunity for significant improvements from the 3 young guys, Towns, Wiggins and Saric. I like the future look much better now with a slim chance of making a push this year if we can right the ship quickly.

Great Post. I like everything you said. The problem with this idea of making the playoffs this year is that even if we are good enough to be a playoff team we won't be good enough to overcome the 5 games below .500 that we already are.

If things really clicked there is no reason they couldn't overcome the 5 games. Remember Utah and their 20 game streak or whatever it was? What an amazing flip that would have to be though.

[KGdaBom]

Embiid talked with KAT & Wiggs about Jimmy

Read on Twitter

With Butler it is possible they could, but a lot of things need to go right for them. Because of their disgusting to me tanking ways I hope the 76ers don't realize any success until all the fruits of their tanking days are gone.

[King Malta]

Maybe tanking would be slightly more attractive if we hadn't been absolutely awful for most of the past 15 seasons. If we'd had some kind of sustained success or competitiveness for the last few years I'd be ok to tank for a few seasons, but we haven't, and regardless of whatever faults he may have at the moment, our current centre is the kind of player that very, very, very few picks in the draft ever turn out to be.

I don't want to be a middling team either, but I think Saric is young enough to be part of this team's long term core and Covington is at an age where he can still be an effective defender/shooter for the rest of his very fair contract. Not taking on any MORE additional crappy contracts is also a bonus, as far as bad contracts we're stuck with for the long-ish term we've only really got Dieng and Wiggins (who hopefully can improve).

[KGdaBom]

RoCo is not "young" he is in his prime. Additionally if presented with middling and tanking, tanking is the only smart option. With how our roster is constructed, having two soft players that have a lot of maturing to do, your best bet is to build for the future where your future is not dependent on thoes players making massive leaps as well as middle draft picks overachieving.

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27 is young. He should be good for 6 more years. That's young to me. Saric likely has around 10 good years left. Chances are if we tried for draft picks from other teams we never would have got a player as good as either RoCo or Saric. If we tanked for years sure sooner or later we would have with our own pick if that's the way you want to play it. I will never respect that.

Should be good for 6 more years. You really think Covington can sustain this production (2nd in combined steals and blocks) into his 30s? Highly unlikely. Wiggins should shoot more 3s (which he has, but 37% of his shots are still from 10ft to the 3 point line, as opposed to only 18% from 3, per basketball reference; these are his career numbers btw) and Wiggins should pass a lot more...Dude has only averaged 2 asts per game his whole career. Towns should learn how to defend. Some nights he just flails around like he has no idea what he is doing. ESPN SportScience measured the defendable area Towns could cover because of his size and length and it is around ~130 square ft (you can youtube this if you don't believe me), which is a really big area...so he should be a beast defensively. He sometimes can't even defend the guy in front of him, regardless of size.

Saric likely has 10 good years left. It seems like he has benefited from great players around him (obviously Simmons and Embiid). Is he likely to have 10 good years left with the Wolves (or any other team for that matter)? Maybe. His offensive game is clearly better than his defensive game, and with how Thibs uses his starters, if Saric doesn't play the D Thibs is looking for, that will not end well for Saric. Saric's defensive numbers are not good and watching him on tape doesn't really excite me either defensively...So while Saric is likely to be the starter (I hope), is he likely to be better than the potential draft picks the next three years, on this team? Who knows...

What Wiggins or Towns should or shouldn't do has nothing to do with what is likely for Covington. As for us getting Draft picks that may or may not be better than Saric or Covington I was talking about picks acquired by trading Butler. Not picks that we may acquire by tanking.

[KGdaBom]

This trade pushed all the right button as far as building around KAT and WIGS. Spacing, defense, and another playmaker. Something I always desired since we draft Towns was a player capable of blocking shots from the 3 or 4 position. Covington provides that. Wiggins was always a SG in my opinion because he lacked girth, so we needed another playmaker at the 3 or 4 to offsets Wiggin’s limitation in this skill. Saric will provide that. Lastly, we needed more rebounding and 3 point shooting. Between Covington and Saric, we get an additional 12-13 rebounds per game and 38% shooting (4.5 made) from the 3pt line from the forward spots based last years numbers. Insert that into the starting lineup with Gibson going to the bench, and our overall chemistry looks much better, thought probably not as efficient initially. However, we still have opportunity for significant improvements from the 3 young guys, Towns, Wiggins and Saric. I like the future look much better now with a slim chance of making a push this year if we can right the ship quickly.

Great Post. I like everything you said. The problem with this idea of making the playoffs this year is that even if we are good enough to be a playoff team we won't be good enough to overcome the 5 games below .500 that we already are.

If things really clicked there is no reason they couldn't overcome the 5 games. Remember Utah and their 20 game streak or whatever it was? What an amazing flip that would have to be though.[/quote]
Anything is possible, but like you said it would have to be an amazing flip. I just think overcoming that deficit is very unlikely.

[KGdaBom]

He's 28 next month, this year. I'm not sure why we need to claim he's any younger. Saric is young, Covington is in his prime years. One for now, one into the future. If Saric works out really well, he's taking everything left of the cap one or two years before Covington's contract ends. If Towns and Wiggins are still going strong here, that's three players and Covington will be the old man sent packing for certain by then or before then. Half the fans thought Jimmy was old at 28. Covington at 30, people will want to put him in a elderly home.

The thing is he is 27 right now. If we start referring to him as 28 right now that leaves open the possibility of him turning 29 very soon. He's 27 and that's the fact Jack. I see 6 good years for him with hopefully at minimum four of those years for us.

[twix2500]

The Wolves will still be capped out, so they gain no caproom. So I would assume more trades on the horizon? 110 mill commited to next season.

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[LibertyPrime]

The Wolves will still be capped out, so they gain no caproom. So I would assume more trades on the horizon? 110 mill commited to next season.

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Teague is likely to be next.

[Jedzz]

He's 28 next month, this year. I'm not sure why we need to claim he's any younger. Saric is young, Covington is in his prime years. One for now, one into the future. If Saric works out really well, he's taking everything left of the cap one or two years before Covington's contract ends. If Towns and Wiggins are still going strong here, that's three players and Covington will be the old man sent packing for certain by then or before then. Half the fans thought Jimmy was old at 28. Covington at 30, people will want to put him in a elderly home.

The thing is he is 27 right now. If we start referring to him as 28 right now that leaves open the possibility of him turning 29 very soon. He's 27 and that's the fact Jack. I see 6 good years for him with hopefully at minimum four of those years for us.

Naw man. Saying he's 27, or continuing to sell this 27 number is just selling a story.

You might have a better argument about his age being only 27 if he were to not be turning 28 until March of 2019 when the season is almost over. But that's just not the case. Our new baby boy will be 28 in a month. I'm sort of happy about that. I've had my fill of developing hopefuls.

[SharoneWright]

Man this is upsetting.

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You guy killed this trade. Congrats

2 young starters on team-friendly contracts for a guy who was never re-signing and was sitting every other game in protest. Starting lineup is now crystal clear. Extra size and D on the wing with RoCo. Saric a perfect modern PF who can shoot. Both new guys also willing to share. Grabbed a flyer 2nd rounder as well.

Maybe most important,,, the new mix is very likely going to help re-enforce the identity of your 2 big contract players. I think they can both "fit" with this mix. Literally, it's now up to Thibs to systemize what he signed and traded for. He finally has potential for harmony.

Peace.

[MN7725]

He's 28 next month, this year. I'm not sure why we need to claim he's any younger. Saric is young, Covington is in his prime years. One for now, one into the future. If Saric works out really well, he's taking everything left of the cap one or two years before Covington's contract ends. If Towns and Wiggins are still going strong here, that's three players and Covington will be the old man sent packing for certain by then or before then. Half the fans thought Jimmy was old at 28. Covington at 30, people will want to put him in a elderly home.

The thing is he is 27 right now. If we start referring to him as 28 right now that leaves open the possibility of him turning 29 very soon. He's 27 and that's the fact Jack. I see 6 good years for him with hopefully at minimum four of those years for us.

Naw man. Saying he's 27, or continuing to sell this 27 number is just selling a story.

You might have a better argument about his age being only 27 if he were to not be turning 28 until March of 2019 when the season is almost over. But that's just not the case. Our new baby boy will be 28 in a month. I'm sort of happy about that. I've had my fill of developing hopefuls.

As always, the best way to refer to a player in terms of age is the way BBREF does, the majority of games they play at an age in a season


This is RCov's age 28 season, Teague's age 30, etc
This is Wig's age 23 season even though he turns 24 in Feb
This is KAT's age 23 season even though he turns 23 next week

Keeps it simple

[MN7725]

The Wolves will still be capped out, so they gain no caproom. So I would assume more trades on the horizon? 110 mill commited to next season.

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Hoping Taj+Bayless can be turned into something, but so many players are on 1 year deals or deals from 2016 that are ending, actually isn't a ton of options to take on salary next season, fairly clear books across the league

Wolves can probably take on $15 mil of next year's $$ without issue