Jalen Bluntson wrote:
They could have dumped Gobert/other players though. They took the wrong path to cut costs IMO. I can't speak to what was available to them but, this trade hurts championship hopes just to save potential money in the future. What are they gonna do moving forward? You can't replace what KAT brings with Randle and he's due an extension soon. DDV was great for us as a starter but, his value as a bench player his whole career was not that high. I fail to see what Minnesota does moving forward to make sense of this trade. Not saying they can't figure something out but, Ant/KAT makes more sense to me than Ant/Gobert to build around.
Good luck moving forward but, I think this trade will hurt more than help you guys in the long run. If Ant man gets frustrated and wants to leave........
I think there were a couple of reasons the FO didn't go with the path of keeping KAT and moving Gobert.
1. Keeping KAT hasn't brought us any success in past, because you need a very specific PF to accompany him in order to maximize his output and there have only been two instances in the last decade where we had that: KG's corpse and Taj Gibson. At PF KAT's defense is not as bad as at the C, but his offense at the 4 is severely limited. So trading Gobert and keeping KAT would be rerunning the team from three years ago and probably playoff troubles unless the team would be able to trade for a guy like OG, JJJ or Siakam.
2. Goberts return wouldn't haven been as good as KAT's and like I said, it should have brought back a very competent 4.
3. Trading Gobert by the same FO that brought him in would have meant to admitting they made some mistake. Paying 4 1st round picks and then trading him again for a lot less is not something a FO can sell easily.
Not trading KAT and going all in this year could have been an option, but I think the FO though that last year was the maximum that squad could achieve and running it back with the same guys would have not resulted in a Finals appearance, so pivoting was the least bad choice.