Walton1one wrote:Yeah, I just disagree with the keeping the vets for now is fine mentality.
One of Grant\Ant needs to go before training camp. Otherwise you are going to be sitting Scoot or Sharpe on the bench, and as stated above Sharpe is up for an extension, and you have a draft next year that has some high quality guards in it, so I would think you would want to know whether or not one of the two players that you hope are a key part of your future are worth Investing in, or if you need to pivot to address that in the draft.
So having those vets on the team next year, taking up valuable minutes\shots, is a detriment to the team IMO.
To be clear, the idea isn't that we hold onto them at all costs, just until the right deal is on the table. If we are passing up on first round picks + filler type deals then that is a problem, but I get the sense we are more being offered some pretty lateral moves like Wiggins for Grant straight up or a bunch of Laker's scrubs with years on their contracts left that we have to make roster spots and only maybe a couple second rounders coming our way. There are a ton of great options that fans keep talking about, I'm just not convinced the actual offers out there right now are as robust or plentiful.
Honestly I don't even know how much worse those make us to achieve this goal but it guarantees we are never getting a 1st rounder out of that capspace instead of someone like Grant that I think could bring that back in the next year or so if we are patient. And so we shouldn't rush to take a lesser deal now until our fears are actually realized and the team is winning too many games. I don't think this period between free agency and training camp is the best time to find offers.
(Although to be fair, if the team found itself with a serious hot start to the season my worry is that they would not have the fortitude to say that is actually a problem and would instead change their goals for this season and move up the timeline prematurely.)
I think deals like that, where we dump them for basically nothing and possibly have to juggle around some of our roster spots and even dump young players we might have liked to continue developing, deals like that will always be there. But its smart to wait as long as we can for the "right" deal to arrive before taking the "OK we need to course correct" meh deal.
So what I really mean is that I don't think we need to take a loss on them simply to move them before the season starts, it would not hurt to start the season looking a little decent and not just a bunch of youth thrown into the fire. Follow up moves are essential this season but I think a target for a December trade or two is really where we could maximize our trade asset return. I don't think this point in the season is really a great time to make trades, teams are looking for easy/cheap solutions. They are more likely to give us what we want mid-season when inevitably some teams with expectations start out the gate struggling.
We can be the ultimate sellers this next season, but not if we get antsy and start offering bargains on day 1. If the team is actually passing on solid offers because they want to maintain a level of veteran play that is definitely backwards thinking.