lilfishi22 wrote:Ghost of Kleine wrote:lilfishi22 wrote:After a hot start ot the season, he's fallen back to being a pretty inconsequential role player. He hasn't really improved his 3PT shooting, and we think Book turns the ball over a lot but Kuminga has an even higher turnover % and he's not some elite defensive player to make up for his poor offense.
Quite honestly, I think his worst trait is his attitude. The guy just wants to do his own thing on the court, thinks he's way better than he actually is and I'm super glad we didn't end up trading for him in the offseason. For clarity, I'm not trying to be precious with Royce either because I think he's a good role player but he's not special. But he is on a value contract, he's been a fantastic contributor for us this season and whether he starts or comes off the bench, he's going to give you the same effort no matter the role. You ask him to be a playmaker, he'll do that, you ask him to defend anyone on the court, he'll do that, you ask anything of him and he'll do it for you.
I find way more value in that than the on paper talent upgrade that is Kuminga and his terrible attitude. And I think his injury history is something to consider as well. He's has a pattern of lower body injuries going back to the preseason of his rookie season when he had a strained patella tendon and last season missed 35 games in total due to a bad ankle sprain and now has knee tendinitis in both knees. I do think there's way more of a chance he stays healthy and becomes an impact player than Zion but I'm still not particularly interested in him. Unless again, we're looking to offload salary and just not pick up his team option next year ie let him walk.
I think given our very limited situation in terms of both overall talent as well as cap flexibility (important towards resigning/ extending both of Gillespie and Williams) realistically we have little options short of unguaranteed salary towards resigning both if their market value escalates significantly.
So I'd think you contemplate the potential value of both outcomes. The same idea applies to the Zion discussion in that you'd either get the benefit of his talent and production paying off for us and Booker to play off of in a better situation.
Or if he doesn't, and he can't play within the threshold of his contractual clauses, then you'd have the option of waiving him and clearing an additional 39- 44 million towards resigning Gillespie and Williams.
Or looking towards options in the very deep 27' free agency summer? Both carry obvious risks. But both also carry the flipside of that coin being the potential to create more cap flexibility in the event of things not panning out.
Calculated risks for a team that has been projected as a play in/ lottery team. But has exceeded expectations so far. It'd suck to have to move some depth from our team in the form of Allen and/ or O'neale. But ultimately, it might he unavoidable in order to resign Gillespie and Williams anyways.
That's the price we're paying for buying out Beal instead of finding a trade for him as an expiring contract heading into the 2027 season. Either that or we'd likely have to lose one of Green's or Brooks salaries to create cap space to resign them both??
You keep bringing up our limited situation as the reason we NEED to do something major like trade half of our key contributors away for Zion. I just don't see that at all.The only reason to trade for Zion is if we're guaranteed we can waive him for nothing next season in order to take full advantage of the cap space he opens up for us. But doing so means we're trading away key role players from this competitive team. Which is fine if it means keeping CG/Williams but the moment there's any hint that Zion can play and we might want to keep him around, then you're right back at square one of not being able to afford CG/Williams AND you're swapping places with the Pels on that 7 season long merry-go-around ride of hoping he stays healthy enough to matter. That's not an enviable situation to be in and I'd argue if you ask any Pels fans if they've enjoyed the Zion experience, the vast majority would say no.
I have slightly more patience for Kuminga because he's less damaged good in my books and while I think both guys could benefit from a change in scenery, only one guy isn't limited by health. But just saying the words calculated risk doesn't mean it's a good gamble work taking.
You're really only looking at things through a negative lens while downplaying or dismissing the probability of success as the alternative. First, I'm not talking aboytbtrading half of our key players man, maybe one or two ( if not a J Green swap for value and salary matching purposes). As currently Zion only makes 39 million.
So even if you packaged Allen/ O'neale and Richards (does anyone currently consider him a key piece given what he's shown this season)?? So maybe our two rotational shooters. But even then in that framework, we'd still have Gillespie, Brooks, Dunn, William's, Livers, our rookies (for the future).
And most importantly, a starting 5 of:
Booker/ Green/ Brooks/ Zion/ Williams.
Gillespie/ Livers / Dunn/ Flemming/ Ighodaro.
Goodwin/ Brea/ NHD/ draft / Maluach.
And you're also not considering that the salary exchange in a Zion trade essentially changes nothing to our current cap situation because we'd still have those salaries for Allen and O'neale on our books even if we didn't do a trade for Zion or someone else.
To generate more cap flexibility in interest of resigning Gillespie and Williams, we'd have to dump salary regardless man. In any form of saying goodbye to one of J Green, Brooks, or some combination of Allen and O'neale unfortunately.
So either way, short of some anomalous miracle, our roster is going to have to change as a result of buying out Beal and carrying up to 22 million in dead cap. Accepting the inevitability of that scenario, I'm looking to try and maximize our overachieving for now and add talent to take the pressures off of Booker while potentially raising our projected postseason outcome.
Because you're also overlooking that if Zion does in fact play enough to justify his contract, then not only would our projected competitive outcome become better, but Zion would become a curiously desirable trade asset that could be flipped for other assets and cap space to resign both players!
Because if he at all shows improvement in a different situation/ environment, then teams will have interest in trading for him. So we could flip him to not only recoup some draft assets but also clear that salary towards resigning those two players and possibly another in free agency for 27'.
Bottomline is there really isn't only one lens to look at and consider potential outcomes. I'm for my part choosing to look at the potential outcomes optimistically instead of negatively.
