Andrew McCeltic wrote:fallguy wrote:Andrew McCeltic wrote:Fine, but explain why. I'd say it's possible that deal, plus the follow-up trades it enables, makes us a fringe contender this year and has a 50/50 chance of leaving us better positioned than max cap space + BKN pick.
I've written it elsewhere. Boston will not use its single best asset in the pursuit of anything less than a title-team-headlining player. They will make that pick or they will ship it out for a far, far better player than anyone you want from Denver.
Yeah, ideally either we draft a future star -Fultz, Ball, Jackson, Tatum, whoever comes out of the college season and pre-draft looking legit, and is available - or trade the pick in a package for a title-team-headlining player.
That's exactly the conventional wisdom I'm trying to put on the table to look over again. You can just restate it, but that doesn't actually dismiss the counter argument that we might be better off with a trade like the one I just suggested.
One question: who's the title-team-headlining player we're going to trade for?
Butler? Davis? Cousins? Carmelo? Paul George? Jabari? There aren't a lot of those guys, and they're "sticky" - George, Jabari and Butler will probably be in the mix this summer.
Do you want to trade Jaylen, Smart, and both BKN picks for Paul George? That's going to be the asking price.
My hypothetical deal still keeps us in the mix for George, Butler, etc. - we still have Smart and Brown and Rozier and the BKN '18 to package.
Maybe Indiana decides that if George wants out, Gallo and Bradley for George, and Monta's money, is a good deal. Maybe Chicago decides Crowder/Chandler/BKN 18 gives them plenty of value to stay competitive.
Then we've got:
IT/Rozier
Butler/Harris/Monta
George/Jaylen
Horford/Olynyk/Yabu
Nurkic/Zizic
Concerns with current strategy:
It assumes teams want cap space, draft picks, and/or blue-chip young players, whose value is connected to cap space and cost effectiveness.
That's sort of true, but-
1. Cap space isn't what it used to be.
Everyone has it, or can get it. Maximum contracts are 4-5 years, players like Rondo and Wade are willing to sign 1-2 year deals to play themselves into a bigger payday, and so right now even a team like Washington isn't remotely stuck, even with money sunk in Mahinmi and Gortat, and probably Porter next. They're stuck with Beal, but as long as there's plenty of breathing room in the league, there are very few truly "bad", untradeable contracts. John Henson's is the only one springing to mind.
When Ainge was one of the GMs to recognize the value of expiring contracts, this was before we'd been through a couple of rounds of amnesty, when some teams were in cap hell, especially from overspending. On a couple of occasions (Cleveland taking Baron Davis' money, I think), you could get a lotto pick just for absorbing salary. There isn't any cap hell right now.
2. Rebuilding isn't what it used to be.
There was a kind of script teams were supposed to follow- a star would be unhappy and demand a trade, or a player would leave in free agency, or be too expensive to keep, and then the team would dutifully tear itself down, or trade the dollar player for three quarters, while other GMs flocked to the carcass. Garnett, Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol, Chris Paul, Carmelo, Harden, Kevin Love all switched teams that way.
But look at some more recent, post-Love examples:
Aldridge leaves Portland, they keep Lillard, bet on McCollum's improvement and load up on role players.
Chicago slips to the middle of the standings, and instead of trading Butler, they sign Rondo and Wade.
Houston loses Dwight, and that bet on a championship duo, like TMac/Yao, so they reload around Harden, as a point guard, instead of trading him.
Memphis, with an aging core, on the edge of the playoffs, does the same thing Dallas tried and gives big money to a still mostly unproven Chandler Parsons.
Sacramento has wasted years in the lottery with Cousins but keeps signing guys like Lawson, Afflalo, Belinelli and Koufos to bail out the sinking ship.
And Oklahoma City lost Durant, thought about trading Westbrook to Boston, and then gave him a giant extension.
It's very possible we have a kind of faux parity in the league right now, and a GM like Presti, Bird or Divac might start to think a BKN pick and/or Brown or Smart is a nice return for their star, and a head start in rebuilding.
It's also possible Presti thinks he can sign Gay, Hayward, Milsapp or even Griffin in the summer, and can put Payne on the Reggie Jackson development plan; and that Bird can calm down PG by reminding him Myles Turner is going to be a star.
There are a lot of teams like us who can convince themselves they're a move or a signing away.
So I'm not inclined to think the strategy we have is the perfect one - play out the string, work the phones on draft night, and send flowers to Hayward and Griffin at midnight.
It may work, it's a swing for the fences, but there are other moves that could work, too. Like, if Orlando offers Aaron Gordon for Avery Bradley I have a tough, tough time saying no. If Denver caves and offers Gallo/Nurkic for Amir/Jerebko/Olynyk/Young I have a tough time saying no.
