mjkvol wrote:ExplosionsInDaSky wrote:After that we draft Mikal Bridges and trade him for Zaire Smith. Can you imagine Bridges on this roster RIGHT NOW?
There may have been bigger and worse mistakes made by the clowns that followed Hinkie after that POS Silver decided to wreck the organization, but the Bridges trade stands out to me as the all time unforced error.
We finally draft the perfect fit, a hometown kid who is an NBA ready version of the type of player that teams are endlessly searching for (including us!), and we trade him for a "raw athlete with potential upside" and a pick that might be valuable if a league rule is changed. At the time I was flabbergasted that a 'win now' team would make that trade - it was like trading a blue chip stock for a speculative start up.
I'm not going to go as far as you and say that Bridges makes us a 65 win team, but plug him in the lineup at the 3 and this group is a much more legit title contender. The need to sign either Tucker or House would have been unnecessary, freeing up money to get a real backup center and point guard, or a rebounding PF, and also to trade Thybulle and Korkmaz for more useful pieces.
The bigger question than the trade is: what if they had just gone ahead and drafted SGA? I know he put it out there about LA… but he was the best player on the board at the time IIRC.
But the Sixers at that time thought they were going to use those pieces (16 and the Heat pick) to get Kawhi, or another star player. The Heat pick was unprotected and they weren’t very good at the time post LeBron.
No one was yet ready to give up on Ben. We were all wrong, but I digress.
It blew up in their faces, but the logic behind the Mikal trade was solid.
