Hugi Mancura wrote:UnbelievablyRAW wrote:Hugi Mancura wrote:
Idea of this trade is that Portland will start rebuild. Which means they trade everyone who is good away to other teams and start to suck. Off course this is awful trade if you want to have competitive team, but that was never the goal of this trade idea. Goal for Portland is to tank. So players coming your way doesn't matter. Lousier the better. Only picks matter.
Btw it was 3 firsts, and you can probably add 1 more or pick swaps to make it fairer, but if you want to rebuild would you want good players back? Do you want to go Utah's route or Detroit/Houston/OKC route?
Rebuilding as a concept is fine, but getting zero quality assets back for a guy not explicitly asking out is another thing. I'm pretty sure the Blazers would rather take J. Brown directly and build around him and Simons than trade for 3 non top 10 picks and filler to tank in an already small market. Even D. Mitch and Gobert brought back real young assets in return (with Markonnen really hitting) along with picks.
Problem with building with Brown is same as with Markkanen. They are not on the same age group as rest of the team. If you pick a player this year, it will take 3-4 years before they become good, if they become good and that means you will lose Brown's prime years in the tanking years. So I rather build a team same way OKC did by having lot of picks in 3 year's. With those picks you can get 4-6 player group who can grow up together. Maybe 2 of those will actually become good, so then you will have a base in where all the players are in same age group. Negative side of that is you will be really bad 2-3 years and that will be tough for fans.
Building with Simons and Brown. Age difference is acceptable, but again comes the problem, they need more and if you want to have more then with Brown you don't have time to get those players from draft cause it takes that 3-4 years to grow those picks to real players. And to be honest team probably would be too good to get early picks anyway. So only way to improve is to find those really good 24-26 who are in trade market and those players aren't available very often. Maybe once in two years those player are available. That is pretty much the situation where Utah is right now if they want to build with Markkanen. They need to find these few available 25 year olds. So I find this route little bit riskier than going all in.
So if I would build with Portland I would trade Lillard, Nurkic and rest of the older players for picks and maybe couple younglings. But not get anything really good back.
Maybe Knicks would be better option than Utah cause they can throw in some of Barrett, Toppin, Quickley or Grimes with picks, even though I personally think Barrett is fools gold. And I would think Knicks would like to have Brown too.
Bottom line: if POR decides to rebuild, they will want young talent + picks for Lillard, not old trash + picks. Lillard to any of the current top 6 teams comes as close to a guaranteed championship as you're going to get. Knowing that, wherever Lillard goes, vet min ring chasers will follow.
Yeah, he's 32, but in spite of POR's poor record (I blame their crap coach), he's having the best season of his career. He's still a top 4 offensive player (3rd in scoring at 32.2 PTS/G, 2nd in Offensive Win Shares, 2nd in OBPM) and top 10 overall player (4th in EPM, 6th in Win Shares, 6th in WS/48, 6th in VORP. 8th in PER, 10th in BPM). Should POR decide to trade him, they will demand, and get a king's ransom for him - not old, broken down players and middling 1st round picks.