2021 Free Agency News & Discussion Part 2

[Harcore Fenton Mun]

I'm going to laugh if we have a better record than the Sixers this year, Morey's a putz.

if we flip our wins and losses around, for sure.

He's doing a home lobotomy, most of the heavy lifting is from him.

[LBJKB24MJ23]

knowing FVV is a competitor and wants to win, how many losses in before he demands a trade

[wayoftheroad]

Lol @ drummond and Embiid. Remember the taunting of Embiid to Drummond and owning him and real estate in his head lol. Drummond such a cuck for being his backup damn how sad that is

[mtcan]

Lol @ drummond and Embiid. Remember the taunting of Embiid to Drummond and owning him and real estate in his head lol. Drummond such a cuck for being his backup damn how sad that is

They moved in together!!

[rocky_da_best]

After being initially frustrated, I can see the outlook of the front office:

1.) There were no really awesome free agents to be had (that we could actually get) in free agency as a whole that could seriously change our trajectory as a team.
2.) Thus, committing cap space to crap players just to make moves (ahem, see Knicks, New York) wouldn't be sensible.
3.) In that case, sign and trading Lowry to recoup some assets was the smarter way to accumulate talent (and a smart way to treat the best player ever.)
4) Unfortunately, Darryl Morey is still a sore loser who won't cough up any assets of real value. There are other point guards available who limit Lowry's already shrinking list of opportunities (see Ball, Lonzo).
5) Kyle ends up choosing Miami --after living there for a year and a half with his family and his buddy on the other team (and us not really having a spot for him any more)-- we realize we will need to take what we can get.
6.) We end up with Achiuwa, who is a nice piece for the future.
7.) We also get Dragic, who is an expiring contract. If we wait until the trade deadline, he is probably worth a late first. We don't have a backup 2 anyway due to Harris getting himself kicked out of the league and it would be nice to have some veteran depth anyway.

In the end, we didn't overpay anyone we don't consider to be outside of the core (yes, that includes the new signee) and got/will get some assets (a young player and a pick/another young player (probably).

If they add Birch or another competent center/scorer with the MLE or by trade I am content with the direction they are going.

Yep, it's called rebuilding/retooling. This is the hand the FO has been dealt. Yet some posters on here don't understand. It's like they legitimately thought we were gonna tank for half a season, draft the next Lebron James, and be instant title contenders again. I wasn't on board with tWo last year and I'm still not a tanker, but it's obvious we aren't competing for a title for several years at least.

[ash_k]

Could have signed DeMar if we had cap space, I expect he'll wind up returning to the Spurs. Oh, BTW he's coming off the best season of his career, 21.6 PPG, 6.9 APG, 4.2 RPG, 2.0 TOV, 59% True Shooting, +7 Net Rating, +3.2 Box +/-. Even just signing him to flip him to another team at the trade deadline for rebuilding pieces would have been a win for us, he's twice the player Dragic is at this point.

Love him but we only do elite defenders now (even GTjr has that potential)

DeMar DeRozan 2020-21: Defensive Box +/- -0.2, Defensive Win Shares 1.2 Defensive Rating 115
Gary Trent Jr. 2020-21: Defensive Box +/- -2.1, Defensive Win Shares 0.7 Defensive Rating 118

So Gary Trent Jr. was worse last season in all 3 of these defensive stats, but you think he can be an elite defender? He's worse than DeMar, even DeMar's career numbers are better than Gary's and DeMar has been considered a bad defender for basically his entire career.

DeMar is actually a really good player, we have the 3 point shooting and defenders to put around him to make him successful. Pump his value for half a season, then trade him to a team desperate for scoring. And we even could have kept Gary Trent Jr., that was the whole point of trading Norm.

DeMar moves slowly laterally. The analytics wont tell you that.
GTjr can physically move much better than DeMar on the other side of the court and has that competitive edge on defense/mental approach that you need to become elite. The analytics can't tell you that either.

[ItsDanger]

I just hope we get Birch back, he played hard for us down the stretch. Plus, he wants to be here.

[nowayguy]

Yeah, this looks like it will be more of a fun year with some new faces. Hopefully the young guys get a lot of playing time and we finish somewhere in the lottery avoiding the play-in.

[Brinbe]

robin lopez come on down

[Rapsfan07]

So letting Hood go now is likely a sign we will be using the full MLE - we needed to not pick up his option to not be over the tax apron. So now using the full MLE for someone like Markannen becomes possible. Same may happen with Baynes, Boucher, etc - but for now those decisions haven't been made since they can also be used for a sign and trade or regular trade.

If all Markkanen is going to get is the MLE, why wouldn't the Bulls just match?

[traps#10]

I just hope we get Birch back, he played hard for us down the stretch. Plus, he wants to be here.

Wonder what the hold up is? I liked what Birch brought to the table

[DonDoolie]

knowing FVV is a competitor and wants to win, how many losses in before he demands a trade

Hopefully 1. He needs to go asap

[Live Free]

So our big $20mil pickup is Goran dragic.. tuff

[Spida888]

They played themselves. How the hell do you agree to a sign-and-trade without finding a home for Dragic first?

Totally agree.

Wasn't expecting much coming back from the Heat for Lowry. Yet, not a fan of us taking the deal before finding a suitor for Dragic.

There should be pressure for Miami to find his new home too because they wouldn't have cap space to sign Lowry at 90M. Seems like we're taking on all that responsibility ourselves and might just be stuck with him.

Didn't realize you guys had all the connects and knew exactly what was going on in our boardroom lol

Basing it off all the rumours/news coming out. If there was a suitor for Dragic from the start, don't see why that wasn't announced already.

This tweet earlier further solidifies that theory:

Read on Twitter

We'll see what happens but not looking great at the moment.

[Mr.Raptorsingh]

I just hope we get Birch back, he played hard for us down the stretch. Plus, he wants to be here.

Wonder what the hold up is? I liked what Birch brought to the table

He might be getting a better contract than the Raps offer, particularly if they planned on just giving him the BAE.

[RapsFanInOhio]

Gasol was such an anchor on defense at center that it’s shocking to me how low they value that position now. Achiuwa is like Harrell size, so you really don’t want him and Siakam playing together. There is absolutely no way they can justify bringing Baynes back for another go around, and the only other center on the roster is Gillespie who is a borderline NBA player. The only non-trade options left are Baynes-like signings that are just gap fillers. Even Birch, who was competent at the spot last year, is looking elsewhere. I don’t get it at all. Did they forget how to team build? Surely not, but if that’s the case, what are you doing? This roster isn’t competing for anything but a treadmill, which goes against everything you’ve been preaching since Kawhi went to LA. There is no logical answer to it, unless they’re going to move Siakam and they know Wiseman is coming back. I just don’t get it, and I don’t want to hear about “they’re still working on it” - no, they’re working on fixing their Dragic mess that they were clearly not prepared for.

It just feels like a disaster off-season to me. I get it’s been two days into free agency but They seem to have no logical plan at all.

[WuTang_CMB]

Hanging onto Dragic for now makes sense imo, unless there's a value deal available or there's an F.A in waitng worthy of the extra cap space (looking at the remaining FAs, nobody jumps out). He's still good and fits a need as a bucket-getter; plus he'll have value as a trade asset up until the deadline. Worst case, he's a big expiring.

I dont even think we could leak his new team to be traded to since Friday is the official day.

I think the wait until Friday actually helps us as teams know hes available there will be a few suitors

[alan_156]

Totally agree.

Wasn't expecting much coming back from the Heat for Lowry. Yet, not a fan of us taking the deal before finding a suitor for Dragic.

There should be pressure for Miami to find his new home too because they wouldn't have cap space to sign Lowry at 90M. Seems like we're taking on all that responsibility ourselves and might just be stuck with him.

Didn't realize you guys had all the connects and knew exactly what was going on in our boardroom lol

Basing it off all the rumours/news coming out. If there was a suitor for Dragic from the start, don't see why that wasn't announced already.

This tweet earlier further solidifies that theory:

Read on Twitter

We'll see what happens but not looking great at the moment.

I actually don't mind keeping him, we need scoring off the bench. Hold on to him for half a year and trade him at the deadline.

Just re-sign birch and get another scorer off the bench.

[Brinbe]

vanvleet/flynn
trent/dragic
og/yuta
barnes/
pascal/precious

yay

[alpngso]

vanvleet
dragic
og
barnes
pascal

yay

that is terrible rebounding team but in this day and age who cares about rebounds, right?