NatP4 wrote:maybe we could steal will barton for a 2nd. we acquired Okafor, Ariza for a bad contract and a 2nd, Andre Miller for a 2nd, Sessions for Andre Miller....
Think again on that Okariza trade. We had a $13m buyout on Rashard Lewis. Instead of buying him out, we traded him for:
1. Okafor -- @$28m in salary obligation, every penny of which we paid (see below). He played 2000 minutes for our (at the time quite bad) team, & then had a career-ending injury. He had been injured previously, btw, as many of us who hated this trade pointed out back then.
2. Ariza -- $14m in salary obligation; he played two years and left as a FA. Personally, I'd have been happy to acquire Ariza on his own in a different deal. & I'd have wanted to keep him too, which - in fairness - we did.
That R2 pick we sent along with Lewis was the #46 in 2012. I was very high on Kyle O'Quinn; he's the guy I'd have snapped up (he wound up going #49, so he'd have been available).
After Okafor was injured, we had no one to start at Center. Ernie had no back-up plan. Hence, we were stuck & made an opening-day trade under duress. We acquired Marcin Gortat. Now I love Gortat: I wanted him in 2010 when he was expiring at Orlando. He's a good player. But there is a difference, a big one, between a good
player & a good
trade for that player.
Phoenix was looking to trade Gortat, b/c he was expiring & they'd just drafted Alex Len, whom they saw as their Center of the future, & also traded for Miles Plumlee. Under ordinary circumstances, we'd have been able to sign the following Summer w/o giving up any asset at all.
Instead, because Ernie had left us stuck, Phoenix got us to hold our socks in that trade. We got a one-season Gortat rental, & we also had to take on every single bad contract on the Suns' roster -- about $6-7m worth -- all of which players we proceeded to waive immediately, paying all their salary obligations! Oh, & we gave our R1 pick in 2014 in the deal as well.
In short, the Okariza trade cost us $42m, Kyle O'Quinn, & a mid-R1 pick (how about Clint Capela or Nikola Jokic?). It got us 2000 minutes of Okafor, 2 years of Ariza then bye bye, & 1 season of Marcin Gortat. It was an awful move.
