2022-23 Season Discussion and Speculation 5 - The KD era begins

[Ghost of Kleine]

It would be funny to see Bazley try to guard Luka. It's funny trying to watch anyone guard him, but Bazley would be really funny. I doubt Bazley gets minutes outside of garbage time.

IF we're obviously going "ALL IN" with Durant, And we're already commited to spending a gigantic LT bill for a championship, Then why didn't we even consider this: (even now with Durant playing at the 3)!!!

Phoenix/Portland

Ayton/Craig for Jerami Grant/ Nurkic.
Play Durant at the 3, and Grant at the 4 defensively. Grant comes off the books in the summer, and Nurkic is a cheaper slight downgrade to Ayton. But I can't imagine any team would've beat a starting 5 (IF Healthy) of:

Paul/Booker/Durant/Grant/Nurkic?

Dang ! You should be a GM. Want me to get you an interview with Ishbia. I actually know the guy personally

Thanks!
I have fun here....lol

[matt131]

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[Qwigglez]

We going for the most injury prone team of all time? Nurkic is always hurt and I think a literal orange cone would be a better defender than he is in the paint.

I'm also not trading Ayton for scraps. We are going to see just how good Ayton is with KD in town. I think his numbers will look better.

[Ghost of Kleine]

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Total Class act!!!

[matt131]

Clippers and Nets both made similar deals as this one and didn't get the Larry O. Lakers probably don't get theirs with AD without the covid stoppage. But we think we're special...

Worked for the Raptors. Bucks got one after everyone freaked out that they overpaid for holiday. COVID or not it did work in LA and the runner up that year was Miami who had just went all in on Butler and endlessly chases stars. Hell the warriors peaced out Barnes and Bogut the minute they could get Durant even though those guys were key contributors to a championship. Why because they knew stars win, and they probably don't win those next two without KD.

Even for how big of a dumpster fire Brooklyn was they were still inches away from sending the Bucks home in game 6. After that they very likely smoke Atlanta and who knows against Phoenix.

Clips have also had their issues but also made the conference finals for the only time in franchise history after that trade. Heck even with the injuries and SGA getting good I bet they would still go the KW/PG route today if they had it to do over again.

There are 30 teams and always multiple good ones so yeah it's always hard and nothing is certain. But stars give you the best chance.

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I think Simmons has brought this up in the past, but when trading for a superstar or making a super team as some say, it’s really important to have a home grown super star already in place. It provides stability, a connection to the entire fan base, there’s a culture already set, and it allows for better chemistry and cohesion all around.

Instead of super friends joining up, we have a superstar joining our 3 stars and we have a franchise player already in Booker.

Worked with GSW and worked with Milwaukee.

The nets are a prime example of how shuffling through players with zero connection to the city or team or fans feels rather flimsy and fake. Same thing with the clippers. Suns fans LOVE the suns and love Booker and while Ayton is polarizing, he’s still ours. Even CP has become one of us. I know Mikal and cam were the heart of the team, our best player was drafted here and brought the stars to him.

I’m not doing a good job of explaining it, but Simmons did a good job lol. I think this situation in that regard is different. No guarantees by any means. I’m not delusional, but I do think the player (KD) and the situation line up for pretty quick success (barring healthy players which is a massive contingency)

[Sunlight]

We will see next summer that many quality free agents join the Suns with a cheap short term contract just because of Booker and Durant. They want play with those Twins and win something special. Ishbia is wise by far.

[bwgood77]

Dang ! You should be a GM. Want me to get you an interview with Ishbia. I actually know the guy personally

I kind of thought the trade ideas might stop after the trade deadline at least until after the season.

Just trying to change the topic a bit from the ever depressing non stop discussion on what we lost in Bridges and Johnson since ya' know what's done is done and maybe just maybe it would be better to not dwell on sad subjects which can't be undone now and it might just be time to move forward? But perhaps everyone would just rather keep discussing sad topics and need to vent more?

Go from sad topics like losing some of our core to talking about losing more of our core?

[bwgood77]

Clippers and Nets both made similar deals as this one and didn't get the Larry O. Lakers probably don't get theirs with AD without the covid stoppage. But we think we're special...

Worked for the Raptors. Bucks got one after everyone freaked out that they overpaid for holiday. COVID or not it did work in LA and the runner up that year was Miami who had just went all in on Butler and endlessly chases stars. Hell the warriors peaced out Barnes and Bogut the minute they could get Durant even though those guys were key contributors to a championship. Why because they knew stars win, and they probably don't win those next two without KD.

Even for how big of a dumpster fire Brooklyn was they were still inches away from sending the Bucks home in game 6. After that they very likely smoke Atlanta and who knows against Phoenix.

Clips have also had their issues but also made the conference finals for the only time in franchise history after that trade. Heck even with the injuries and SGA getting good I bet they would still go the KW/PG route today if they had it to do over again.

There are 30 teams and always multiple good ones so yeah it's always hard and nothing is certain. But stars give you the best chance.

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I think Simmons has brought this up in the past, but when trading for a superstar or making a super team as some say, it’s really important to have a home grown super star already in place. It provides stability, a connection to the entire fan base, there’s a culture already set, and it allows for better chemistry and cohesion all around.

Instead of super friends joining up, we have a superstar joining our 3 stars and we have a franchise player already in Booker.

Worked with GSW and worked with Milwaukee.

The nets are a prime example of how shuffling through players with zero connection to the city or team or fans feels rather flimsy and fake. Same thing with the clippers. Suns fans LOVE the suns and love Booker and while Ayton is polarizing, he’s still ours. Even CP has become one of us. I know Mikal and cam were the heart of the team, our best player was drafted here and brought the stars to him.

I’m not doing a good job of explaining it, but Simmons did a good job lol. I think this situation in that regard is different. No guarantees by any means. I’m not delusional, but I do think the player (KD) and the situation line up for pretty quick success (barring healthy players which is a massive contingency)

It is kind of true...it definitely makes the fans feel more connected. If we didn't have Book and just had KD, and couple other FA signees it would feel even worse. Simmons is a bit biased with his Paul Pierce superteam. But you need fans vested in at least one homegrown star.

It's rare to have rabid super fan bases who get teams full of homegrown stars that win it all without adding some other star like how SA did it multiple times or GS before adding KD...especially in this day and age. The NBA has now turned into big egos and super teams.

[schnakenpopanz]

Trade Nash - later sign as FA
Trade Dragic - later sign as FA
Trade Bridges -

Don't get my hopes up!

[TeamTragic]

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WOW

[Ghost of Kleine]

We going for the most injury prone team of all time? Nurkic is always hurt and I think a literal orange cone would be a better defender than he is in the paint.

I'm also not trading Ayton for scraps. We are going to see just how good Ayton is with KD in town. I think his numbers will look better.

I hear you on injury potential man. But wouldn't that have been a factor with this team regardless? As for Nurkic's defense, Isn't that mostly handled by having Grant at the 4? Lastly, I'd think the scraps perspective is overplayed a bit when you look at the big picture premise cumulatively here! IF it's truly CHAMPIONSHIP OR BUST this year with KD, then which lineup would you honestly rather have in the playoffs and finals competition for a title??

Paul/Book/Durant/CRAIG/ Ayton.

Or Paul/Book/ Durant/ JERAMI GRANT/ Nurkic. Overall positionally in terms of value, it comes down to would you rather have Craig or J Grant defending players like Ingram, Doncic, Kwahi/George, JJJ jr, Giannis, Bam, Tatum, etc? IF in the finals, against the majority of these teams, which frontcourt would you honestly give the edge too? Now I will say that clearly we're going to get to see a Durant/ Ayton lineup. And this was just a topic variance to get the subject off of the sadder topics we would be best served accepting and moving on from, as what's done is done and we need to be focusing on other things going forward. Also, anyone here who knows me, and can simply look at my avatar should easily know that I'm one of Ayton's biggest supporters and always will be! But this is just a hypothetical premise for an OBJECTIVE discussion to take the focus off the depressing recent loss of beloved players and to hopefully move thoughts forward onto other things with my typical outlier postulations. So please don't consider this personal interest or a promotion of wanting to see Ayton moved.

The objective discussion premise here is solely based upon the hypothetical premise that IF the front office's/ new ownerships intent is in fact to trade (move Ayton regardless of being a bad move or not) Ayton by the summer for a more cost effective value option, How could we reasonably extract value in a trade? The only way (to me personally) would be to clearly upgrade our defense in support of Durant/ Booker with Jerami Grant for this this season's all in championship run! Then this summer once Grant's 20 million comes off the books, and Nurkic's salary being only 16 million in contrast to Ayton's 32 million, and with Paul's partial 15 million buyout, we'd be able to cut around maybe close to 51 million from our books to give us a little bit more wiggle room to pivot and reload. I know it's not much, But at least that'd give us around 22 million to use to fill out the roster, And if you can dump Shamet's contract, then that becomes around 32 million for roster changes?

** Heck, Maybe.......just maybe you instead use Grant's bird rights to resign him, and then flip Jerami Grant and Paul to Brooklyn to get Bridges back? Then you go full "point Book" with:
Booker/Bridges/ FA / Durant/ Nurkic?

[Ghost of Kleine]

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Not to point out the obvious here. But in considering this information, This is why you have to do the Durant trade quickly. Even at the high cost! You just have to make a quick decision here because:

1- Even if Durant wanted to only play for the suns, he's still under contract for multiple years. And the Nets could pivot to getting the best value for him rather than to lose him for lesser offers or just sitting him and having him be a malcontent and the ensuing media circus attached to the situation too. So they might have just chosen to move on from him with the Grizzlies offer instead of waiting to see if the suns upped their offer.

2- You just can't let a conference rival get that much stronger overall by beating you in competing for the same player and pushing you further down in the standings. Especially not when so many other conference rivals significantly improved already on players we missed while waiting on Durant.

3- You have to go all in as much as possible given Paul's closing window if your going to keep Book happy right? That's been the ongoing argument here! So to do that, and maximize our chances while Paul can still offer impact, You have to make tough choices to legitimately take that jump to title contention.

We just weighed the two available paths and the other factors with other competing teams and made the tough choice to try and remain relevant and in contention!

[Qwigglez]

Spoiler:

I hear you on injury potential man. But wouldn't that have been a factor with this team regardless? As for Nurkic's defense, Isn't that mostly handled by having Grant at the 4? Lastly, I'd think the scraps perspective is overplayed a bit when you look at the big picture premise cumulatively here! IF it's truly CHAMPIONSHIP OR BUST this year with KD, then which lineup would you honestly rather have in the playoffs and finals competition for a title??

Paul/Book/Durant/CRAIG/ Ayton.

Or Paul/Book/ Durant/ JERAMI GRANT/ Nurkic. Overall positionally in terms of value, it comes down to would you rather have Craig or J Grant defending players like Ingram, Doncic, Kwahi/George, JJJ jr, Giannis, Bam, Tatum, etc? IF in the finals, against the majority of these teams, which frontcourt would you honestly give the edge too? Now I will say that clearly we're going to get to see a Durant/ Ayton lineup. And this was just a topic variance to get the subject off of the sadder topics we would be best served accepting and moving on from, as what's done is done and we need to be focusing on other things going forward. Also, anyone here who knows me, and can simply look at my avatar should easily know that I'm one of Ayton's biggest supporters and always will be! But this is just a hypothetical premise for an OBJECTIVE discussion to take the focus off the depressing recent loss of beloved players and to hopefully move thoughts forward onto other things with my typical outlier postulations. So please don't consider this personal interest or a promotion of wanting to see Ayton moved.

The objective discussion premise here is solely based upon the hypothetical premise that IF the front office's/ new ownerships intent is in fact to trade (move Ayton regardless of being a bad move or not) Ayton by the summer for a more cost effective value option, How could we reasonably extract value in a trade? The only way (to me personally) would be to clearly upgrade our defense in support of Durant/ Booker with Jerami Grant for this this season's all in championship run! Then this summer once Grant's 20 million comes off the books, and Nurkic's salary being only 16 million in contrast to Ayton's 32 million, and with Paul's partial 15 million buyout, we'd be able to cut around maybe close to 51 million from our books to give us a little bit more wiggle room to pivot and reload. I know it's not much, But at least that'd give us around 22 million to use to fill out the roster, And if you can dump Shamet's contract, then that becomes around 32 million for roster changes?

** Heck, Maybe.......just maybe you instead use Grant's bird rights to resign him, and then flip Jerami Grant and Paul to Brooklyn to get Bridges back? Then you go full "point Book" with:
Booker/Bridges/ FA / Durant/ Nurkic?

Sorry man, I'm taking DA over Jerami Grant and Nurkic all day. Grant isn't some super stellar defender, he's probably a couple notches below Bridges, and... he wants to get paid more than Bridges. Offensively I think Bridges is better too.

We also don't need to think about retooling by trying to cut cost, Ishbia has already decided to eat the luxury tax for now. Suns can cut cost when Shamet's contract isn't guaranteed after the following season, and then can restructure Paul's contract.

Suns won't have any kind of cap space too with Booker and Durant eating $100 million by themselves. Just have to maintain roster flexibility by using the MLE and signing guys to vet minimum contracts. It's a standard copy and paste recipe for success when you multiple stars on your team.

And Nets wouldn't take Grant and CP3 for Bridges, come on

[GreatSunnyNorth]

Brooklyn thought the same thing when they traded for Harden and got Aldridge and Blake....

Buyout players will go where they know they will get playing time. I think the best we could guarantee is someone like Love now that Saric is gone.

There is no guarantee the guards or wings out there would get playing time over ours.

That and we’ve been getting effective minutes out of two-way players who would need to take a roster spot to be used in the playoffs. Ish in particular has already earned his way onto the postseason roster once, and there’s a good chance he’d be a higher priority than most buyouts.

[Tha King]

While your team doesn't have an established starting 3&D wing, with KD in your lineup don't be surprised if one or more of Okogie, Craig, Bazley, etc. go up a level and play a lot better than they have in the past. On the Nets, KD would get double and triple teamed basically every possession which created so many open looks for players like Bruce Brown, Yuta, Jeff Green, etc. who all had great seasons with Nets after coming in with little to no expectations. Okogie actually reminds me a little bit of Brown.

The other thing with KD - spacing is irrelevant. He was putting up points like nothing with lineups that had Simmons and Claxton or Brown, Claxton, James Johnson, and Bembry, etc. So I think that fifth player in the lineup just needs to bring solid defense.

[GreatSunnyNorth]

This **** trade could have been done this summer. I'm so goddamned pissed.

Based on what exactly? The Nets traded him here because he said SUNS or bust.

This is the price for KD and you have to counter the Kyrie trade with a huge move.

The reporting today said the Nets’ ask was the same this summer - if anything they added the demand for Crowder at the deadline (once it was clear he’d bring in a haul of picks). There may have been a chance to send Saric or Shamet instead as the third departing player this summer and keep Jae as the fifth starter.

But then Warren couldn’t have been part of the trade, and the other offseason additions would have looked a lot different. And on the balance it was likely worth waiting to deal now - both to see how the previous core would play, and to test whether the Nets would implode enough to accept a deal without Bridges.

[BobbieL]

Brooklyn thought the same thing when they traded for Harden and got Aldridge and Blake....

Buyout players will go where they know they will get playing time. I think the best we could guarantee is someone like Love now that Saric is gone.

There is no guarantee the guards or wings out there would get playing time over ours.

That and we’ve been getting effective minutes out of two-way players who would need to take a roster spot to be used in the playoffs. Ish in particular has already earned his way onto the postseason roster once, and there’s a good chance he’d be a higher priority than most buyouts.

I think Ish has earned a roster spot. Still need a wing - Barton or Holiday maybe

[bwgood77]

Dude Mikal is a great guy. But he’s not going to win us a ring or draw great players to come here . Realize that and move on. Cheer him on from the sidelines and now you have another reason to watch an EC team

We don't know what Mikal would do. He was just breaking out. I always said he would/could probably be like Paul George or Kawhi lite. I still believe that...and we keep Cam who was improving every year too. KD is awesome...we will see how long he stays healthy and plays and if we win it all. KD won one playoff series in Brooklyn playing with Kyrie and some with Harden.

Alright . If he’s PG or Kawhi lite - he should make Brooklyn Nets a contender . Lets see if he does or if he folds with a bigger role

I said he could become a PG type player or Kawhi lite. I do think the Nets will stay in the top 5, exactly where they already were with KD and Kyrie.

[TeamTragic]

This **** trade could have been done this summer. I'm so goddamned pissed.

Based on what exactly? The Nets traded him here because he said SUNS or bust.

This is the price for KD and you have to counter the Kyrie trade with a huge move.

The reporting today said the Nets’ ask was the same this summer - if anything they added the demand for Crowder at the deadline (once it was clear he’d bring in a haul of picks). There may have been a chance to send Saric or Shamet instead as the third departing player this summer and keep Jae as the fifth starter.

But then Warren couldn’t have been part of the trade, and the other offseason additions would have looked a lot different. And on the balance it was likely worth waiting to deal now - both to see how the previous core would play, and to test whether the Nets would implode enough to accept a deal without Bridges.

Exactly. Not only that but other teams including the Grizzlies were making a push.

[lilfishi22]

Lots of risk talk but let's not act like there wasn't risk in not making the move. Keeping moving forward with a core of Booker, Cam, Bridges and Ayton could have slowly faded from contender relevancy (could argue it already had this year). Injuries could happen to any of those guys and their contracts become anchors overnight. Yeah you have draft picks, but we've all witnessed how that doesn't assure **** either.

There's risk in any path you take team building.

Personally I've been preaching since this summer they needed to find a second star to pair with Booker if they want to be real contenders now and in the near future. I simply did not believe Ayton, Bridges, or Cam could be that guy. If you do believe that then I get why you wouldn't want this deal.
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Totally agree you need to make big time gambles to put yourself in the best position possible to win it all. I understand why we gave up what we did to get it done, completely understand.

I also agree that I didn't necessarily believe in my heart that a core of Book/Cam/Mikal/DA would win it all and I also believed that DA was on his way out sooner or later. So given that perspective, I understand the deal more now than when it happened. My view before was that KD doesn't guarantee a deal so giving up all of those assets and Mikal wasn't worth it to me. But what I failed to take into account was just how good KD is, like not just good but game-breaking good. I am a Mikal super fan so that certainly hurt but I am slowly coming to terms with what needed to be done