Rafael122 wrote:payitforward wrote:JAR69 wrote:...I thought Winger and Dawkins wanted to do things the OKC way. They mostly have. This move seems to run counter to that on many levels. I don't get it.
That is my reaction as well to a trade that seems to want to leapfrog the tank.
As far as the terms of the trade go, well... given that we were speculating whether we'd have to buy out CJ, it's fair to say that the deal comes down to Kispert for Young. I.e. we didn't give much for Trae.
That said, like everyone here, I wish we'd managed to come away with some advantage in the coming draft. I'm sure we tried.
What I wonder is why Will wanted to do this trade at all. Where is the long-term benefit for a franchise that should certainly be focused on the long term?
This will be Will's 4th offseason with the team. I think it's a move for next year because at some point, the rebuild will have to end. You're going into '26-'27 with Young, hopefully a top 4 guy, an improving roster and $45 million in cap room. That doesn't scream "we're gonna tank another year!" That screams pushing for a play in spot/potential playoff contention.
The fact that the '27 class is supposed to suck on a similar scale to the '24 class going in probably underlines it. This was their last deliberate tank season, '27 will be accidental suck unless we land a mega stud who stays healthy in '26-'27.....
I don't know how to feel about this because I just don't think he's a winning player period so I'm trying to figure out what they actually are trying to do here.
Are they trying to just get to the salary floor with the best possible asset to flip, or move on from.
Are they doing this in part because there is no answer for PG on the roster, and depending upon where we land in the draft, we may not be able to get Peterson or Mikel Brown and if not, the only avenue to get a PG would be via trade, or FA.....
The '27 class as previously mentioned sucks, so it's not really worth tanking for, and they can shut down this dude to keep the tank back on trap after trading the sabotager to Atlanta (CJ was absolutely killing us the past month).....
This isn't a situation where I see no reason for it, much like the Deni trade, I understand what they're doing, but its quite possible this just ends up a chairs on the titanic move w/the potential to really ---- up the tank if Trae plays serious minutes in the second half of this season....it probably is a deal that doesn't matter with a small chance to be a benefit in assets returned.
Much like the Deni trade, it's probably not a reach to suggest that part of the reasoning is simply to limit potential damage to the tank, and where with Deni it was speculative, but largely realistic that Deni would hurt the tank, to some degree, getting CJ the hell out of here, and benching Trade for injury bs would 100% help the tank....
So its really, really difficult to have a secure, confident tank here when we don't know, yet, what the teams plan is for the final 45+ games with/without Trade....if we knew they were gonna play him like 5 out of 45ish, then it would be easy to say its a net positive, but if this dude is rolled out for half or 2/3's or more of the games, it moves into the foolish category unless, and that's the other layer, Trae is inherently a natural tank commander? Is he one? I don't know, I just know that he's highly skilled, and productive, but also in a usually team neutral or actively negative way, whereas CJ was actively harming the tank.....this is a argue oneself in circles scenario in the end. We just don't know....We'll know over the next 3+ months.
I just hope we don’t use Trae as a shortcut to having a starting PG because Bub didn’t work out. If Trae gets a Beal/Wall type contract, or we re-structure and extend his current contract, then we know that Ted got involved.
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