Trade Talk (Part 16): Early Season Anxiety Edition

[winforlose]

He's kind of a perfect fit in that he excels in the areas that Finch preaches. He's fantastic pushing the ball in transition, something Finch has been imploring the team to do. And he's a quick decision maker in the halfcourt that doesn't hold onto the ball. Perfect for Finch's ideal free-flowing offense.

Mike Conley in the Monday win had 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 steals, 1 TO, and played 31:22. He also shot 1-9 on 0-5 from deep. This type of night is not super helpful. Mike has similar issues with minutes, and injury risk.

So your argument is that Mike Conley is not a fit in Finch's schemes?

My point is that you don’t trade Randle for anything less than an upgrade over Mike. If Ball gave me those same numbers I would not be pleased. Randle is not a toss in, he has real value, Ball is a waste of that value. We don’t know how Ball’s knee holds up long term. We don’t know if Ball can perform in playoff intensity basketball (minutes being a big factor, but physicality and pace are also factors.) At this point I would play Mike and Dilly over ball, and that is a good reason not acquire Ball. Help me understand why you think Ball is significantly better than Mike that you would lose Randle’s trade value to acquire him.

[BlacJacMac]

Question (sorry if allready asked).

Julius Randle had the trade kicker in his contract.
Does it kick on every trade or does it expire after the NY-MIN trade?

If their is still a trade kicker, can it be used to increase Randle's salary and make it higher than Fox's salary and make a Randle-Fox trade legal without the need to go back under 2nd apron?

Its a 1-time thing.

A trade kicker bonus is paid to the player when he is traded the first time, but not upon any subsequent trades.

[Klomp]

My point is that you don’t trade Randle for anything less than an upgrade over Mike. If Ball gave me those same numbers I would not be pleased. Randle is not a toss in, he has real value, Ball is a waste of that value.

All I've heard all season long on this forum is that Randle is a horrible chucker, horrible defender, horrible teammate, horrible contract. How do you expect to get an incredible return for someone who is so poorly thought of?

[wolves_89]

Why would the players union agree to this CBA nonsense associated with the aprons? What was the league hoping to accomplish with this?

Owners were scared that for super-rich owners like Steve Ballmer, luxury taxes weren’t serving as a strong enough deterrent to keep him from simply trying to buy a championship. They instituted rules outside of salary to make teams less functional if your payroll was high. You’ll note that these rules don’t prevent you from re-signing your own free agents (what GSW was whining about, having to “break up their team.”) but it removes most of the other ways teams can continue to add payroll if they are willing to ignore what it costs them in lux taxes.

The Player’s Union probably agreed because of other beneficial things for them in the deal (like teams forced to bring their payroll to league minimum before the start of the season). Keep in mind, the Players as a whole are always going to get 50% of the BRI regardless of the rules.

In my opinion though, the apron rules exceeded what they aimed to do, tying the hands of half the GMs in the league. The NBA wants trades, because it generate fan interest. The impact has been so great, I expect that the apron rules will be modified before the next CBA comes into effect in 5-6 years. For instance, the rule that doesn’t allow teams to take back more money in trade should be a second apron rule at worst, and certainly not a first apron rule. The frozen pick rule is just being mean.

My guess is that Connelly was somewhat caught off guard by the severity of the 2nd apron rules. Based on how he was building the team I believed that they were planning to play out Gobert's contract and pay any necessary taxes to keep the core together. When the 2nd apron came into being, I think the plan changed and the team felt pressure to move off of KAT's money even though it hurt the competitiveness in both the short and long term. It's frustrating that it took nearly 20 years to build a good team and as soon we do a CBA rules change hurts us more than any other team.

[Klomp]

My guess is that Connelly was somewhat caught off guard by the severity of the 2nd apron rules. Based on how he was building the team I believed that they were planning to play out Gobert's contract and pay any necessary taxes to keep the core together. When the 2nd apron came into being, I think the plan changed and the team felt pressure to move off of KAT's money even though it hurt the competitiveness in both the short and long term. It's frustrating that it took nearly 20 years to build a good team and as soon we do a CBA rules change hurts us more than any other team.

We are nowhere close to where we were the past 20 years, this is honestly one of my biggest frusrations with the doom-and-gloom movement.

[winforlose]

My point is that you don’t trade Randle for anything less than an upgrade over Mike. If Ball gave me those same numbers I would not be pleased. Randle is not a toss in, he has real value, Ball is a waste of that value.

All I've heard all season long on this forum is that Randle is a horrible chucker, horrible defender, horrible teammate, horrible contract. How do you expect to get an incredible return for someone who is so poorly thought of?

Multiple time all star, multiple time all NBA, solid numbers and production relative to cost. Your point is flawed in that a bad fit and a bad player are not the same thing. We know Miami has inquired about Randle multiple times including this year. I would be shocked if LAL was not as well. Just because fans on a fan board dislike a player doesn’t mean he is worthless. Also remember that people like Dane Moore are working on bad assumptions and intel. To assume we will only trade Randle for expirings is very short sighted. We don’t even know if NAW is in the long term plans, after all Shannon is his natural replacement. We don’t know that Naz opts out. If he is happy here as people think, maybe we ask him not to with the promise of making it up to him in his next deal. He sacrifices 8-10 in the short term for 8-10 more total over his next deal. Maybe we give him a 2 year 40 deal with a player option in year 2 to kick the pay raise can down the line. My point is Naz can both have his money and help the team.

Ball is a huge risk, and at best little if any reward. I don’t understand your devotion to the idea of acquiring another one dimensional PG when we have seen them fail here again and again. If they cannot floor space and consistently score then they are no better than Bev, Dlo, Rubio, all of whom were not long term fits because they couldn’t contribute next to Ant. Hell, we are only talking about replacing Mike because of his offensive drop off. The delta between Lonzo’s defense and Mike’s is not enough to give up Randle’s trade chip. It is the only true asset we have to get better and position ourselves for the future.

[wolves_89]

My guess is that Connelly was somewhat caught off guard by the severity of the 2nd apron rules. Based on how he was building the team I believed that they were planning to play out Gobert's contract and pay any necessary taxes to keep the core together. When the 2nd apron came into being, I think the plan changed and the team felt pressure to move off of KAT's money even though it hurt the competitiveness in both the short and long term. It's frustrating that it took nearly 20 years to build a good team and as soon we do a CBA rules change hurts us more than any other team.

We are nowhere close to where we were the past 20 years, this is honestly one of my biggest frusrations with the doom-and-gloom movement.

Not sure what you're referring to. I said it took us 20 years to build a good team, not that we are currently close to the teams of those 20 years.

[winforlose]

My guess is that Connelly was somewhat caught off guard by the severity of the 2nd apron rules. Based on how he was building the team I believed that they were planning to play out Gobert's contract and pay any necessary taxes to keep the core together. When the 2nd apron came into being, I think the plan changed and the team felt pressure to move off of KAT's money even though it hurt the competitiveness in both the short and long term. It's frustrating that it took nearly 20 years to build a good team and as soon we do a CBA rules change hurts us more than any other team.

We are nowhere close to where we were the past 20 years, this is honestly one of my biggest frusrations with the doom-and-gloom movement.

Not sure what you're referring to. I said it took us 20 years to build a good team, not that we are currently close to the teams of those 20 years.

Not sure what you mean, but I am gonna respond to what I think you mean. Please correct me if I a wrong. 21 years ago we had a historic season leading to a loss in the WCF against the Lakers. The following year things began to collapse and we fell well short of expectations. The aftermath of that 04/05 season would begin a process that would lead to a playoff drought not broken until 17/18 with Butler. Your point seems to be that we appear to be mirroring that trajectory. I would respond by saying we have much more talent now then we did then. All of our core players (I am not counting Rudy as a core player on the Ant timeline,) are younger than 27 except DDV who is 27. 27 is the year an NBA player is often considered to enter their prime. Ant, Jaden, Naz, maybe NAW, Dilly, maybe Shannon, are all pre prime and likely to improve. The Wolves also have Ant who unlike KG is already at that insanely high level before his prime. We need to make good decisions this year and the next few years. That doesn’t mean that we are for sure going to be a contender when we should be, but we are much better off than we were in 04/05 and much better positioned moving forward.

[wolves_89]

We are nowhere close to where we were the past 20 years, this is honestly one of my biggest frusrations with the doom-and-gloom movement.

Not sure what you're referring to. I said it took us 20 years to build a good team, not that we are currently close to the teams of those 20 years.

Not sure what you mean, but I am gonna respond to what I think you mean. Please correct me if I a wrong. 21 years ago we had a historic season leading to a loss in the WCF against the Lakers. The following year things began to collapse and we fell well short of expectations. The aftermath of that 04/05 season would begin a process that would lead to a playoff drought not broken until 17/18 with Butler. Your point seems to be that we appear to be mirroring that trajectory. I would respond by saying we have much more talent now then we did then. All of our core players (I am not counting Rudy as a core player on the Ant timeline,) are younger than 27 except DDV who is 27. 27 is the year an NBA player is often considered to enter their prime. Ant, Jaden, Naz, maybe NAW, Dilly, maybe Shannon, are all pre prime and likely to improve. The Wolves also have Ant who unlike KG is already at that insanely high level before his prime. We need to make good decisions this year and the next few years. That doesn’t mean that we are for sure going to be a contender when we should be, but we are much better off than we were in 04/05 and much better positioned moving forward.

I had no intention of linking the current situation to that of 20 years ago. My whole and only point was that we were bad for the better part of 20 years and almost as soon as we get into a good situation a new set of CBA rules had a negative impact on the roster.

[winforlose]

Not sure what you're referring to. I said it took us 20 years to build a good team, not that we are currently close to the teams of those 20 years.

Not sure what you mean, but I am gonna respond to what I think you mean. Please correct me if I a wrong. 21 years ago we had a historic season leading to a loss in the WCF against the Lakers. The following year things began to collapse and we fell well short of expectations. The aftermath of that 04/05 season would begin a process that would lead to a playoff drought not broken until 17/18 with Butler. Your point seems to be that we appear to be mirroring that trajectory. I would respond by saying we have much more talent now then we did then. All of our core players (I am not counting Rudy as a core player on the Ant timeline,) are younger than 27 except DDV who is 27. 27 is the year an NBA player is often considered to enter their prime. Ant, Jaden, Naz, maybe NAW, Dilly, maybe Shannon, are all pre prime and likely to improve. The Wolves also have Ant who unlike KG is already at that insanely high level before his prime. We need to make good decisions this year and the next few years. That doesn’t mean that we are for sure going to be a contender when we should be, but we are much better off than we were in 04/05 and much better positioned moving forward.

I had no intention of linking the current situation to that of 20 years ago. My whole and only point was that we were bad for the better part of 20 years and almost as soon as we get into a good situation a new set of CBA rules had a negative impact on the roster.

I think the CBA is unfortunate for us in the short term. But in the long term will help us. GSW bought dominance with spending that only a large market could afford. Other teams who traditionally are top of the league use similar models. We were forced to go big financially to compete, and as we have seen we are not big enough to sustain it. That said, we have a lot of talent and with a couple of good moves hopefully we can tie things together such that we can compete without breaking the bank. A big part of that will be internal improvements as guys reach their prime, plus external improvements with trades like Randle for value players back. The next 2 years are critical in the shaping the 3-5 years after that.

[Klomp]

My point is that you don’t trade Randle for anything less than an upgrade over Mike. If Ball gave me those same numbers I would not be pleased. Randle is not a toss in, he has real value, Ball is a waste of that value.

All I've heard all season long on this forum is that Randle is a horrible chucker, horrible defender, horrible teammate, horrible contract. How do you expect to get an incredible return for someone who is so poorly thought of?

Multiple time all star, multiple time all NBA, solid numbers and production relative to cost. Your point is flawed in that a bad fit and a bad player are not the same thing. We know Miami has inquired about Randle multiple times including this year. I would be shocked if LAL was not as well. Just because fans on a fan board dislike a player doesn’t mean he is worthless. Also remember that people like Dane Moore are working on bad assumptions and intel. To assume we will only trade Randle for expirings is very short sighted. We don’t even know if NAW is in the long term plans, after all Shannon is his natural replacement. We don’t know that Naz opts out. If he is happy here as people think, maybe we ask him not to with the promise of making it up to him in his next deal. He sacrifices 8-10 in the short term for 8-10 more total over his next deal. Maybe we give him a 2 year 40 deal with a player option in year 2 to kick the pay raise can down the line. My point is Naz can both have his money and help the team.

Ball is a huge risk, and at best little if any reward. I don’t understand your devotion to the idea of acquiring another one dimensional PG when we have seen them fail here again and again. If they cannot floor space and consistently score then they are no better than Bev, Dlo, Rubio, all of whom were not long term fits because they couldn’t contribute next to Ant. Hell, we are only talking about replacing Mike because of his offensive drop off. The delta between Lonzo’s defense and Mike’s is not enough to give up Randle’s trade chip. It is the only true asset we have to get better and position ourselves for the future.

I agree with the overall point of this post. It is why I have always said I ideally want something more than Ball in any trade of that sort of build. However, I would also say part of the assessment around Ball is what you think about his health. If you think he is what he is, obviously it creates very little incentive to make the deal. However, I think what we see now is closer to the overall floor of what he can and would contribute. Sure it is an injury risk, but any player you trade for has some sort of risk...otherwise the other team probably wouldn't be trading for them. I do think he still has starter-level upside in him, whether he actually starts or comes off the bench. Unlike Randle, I think he is an excellent fit with each one of the backcourt members he could share the floor with.

When it comes to Randle, I think there is a discrepancy between how you are describing him here and how he is generally thought of within the fan base. The narrative isn't that he's a poor fit. The narrative is that he sucks. That's the narrative I'm pushing back against. Because if he sucks, then we shouldn't expect some great player on a great contract in return.

It's about prioritizing what is important. If just clearing the runway for Naz is most important, than I wouldn't expect much more than productive expirings. If it is about trying to match whatever asset value you think was assigned in the Towns trade, I wouldn't get your hopes up for a trade. If it's somewhere in the middle, you might be happy with what happens at the deadline and you might not.

[Klomp]

Not sure what you're referring to. I said it took us 20 years to build a good team, not that we are currently close to the teams of those 20 years.

Not sure what you mean, but I am gonna respond to what I think you mean. Please correct me if I a wrong. 21 years ago we had a historic season leading to a loss in the WCF against the Lakers. The following year things began to collapse and we fell well short of expectations. The aftermath of that 04/05 season would begin a process that would lead to a playoff drought not broken until 17/18 with Butler. Your point seems to be that we appear to be mirroring that trajectory. I would respond by saying we have much more talent now then we did then. All of our core players (I am not counting Rudy as a core player on the Ant timeline,) are younger than 27 except DDV who is 27. 27 is the year an NBA player is often considered to enter their prime. Ant, Jaden, Naz, maybe NAW, Dilly, maybe Shannon, are all pre prime and likely to improve. The Wolves also have Ant who unlike KG is already at that insanely high level before his prime. We need to make good decisions this year and the next few years. That doesn’t mean that we are for sure going to be a contender when we should be, but we are much better off than we were in 04/05 and much better positioned moving forward.

I had no intention of linking the current situation to that of 20 years ago. My whole and only point was that we were bad for the better part of 20 years and almost as soon as we get into a good situation a new set of CBA rules had a negative impact on the roster.

I may have projecting the feelings of other posters and individuals onto you, so apologies for that.

I regularly read about how there are no positive signs from this team. And then to read basically that a team that took 20 years to build has been destroyed since the October trade, I guess I just assumed there was a belief that we are back to where we've been for the past two decades.

[cmoss84]

Chi OUT: Ball, Vucevic
Chi IN: Randle, Vincent, Wood, '25 SRP (Utah)

LAL OUT: Vincent, Knecht, Wood, Hayes
LAL IN: Vucevic, '25 FRP (Det)
Hachimura and Reddish traded next.

MN OUT: Randle, '25 SRP (Utah), '25 FRP (Det)
MN IN: Ball, Knecht, Hayes
Yes, I know losing picks hurts. But I'm willing to sweeten the pot in order to make a run this year and beyond. And to give Ball and Hayes auditions. NAW traded next.

PG: Mike/Ball (20 each), RD (8)
SG: Ant (30), NAW (18 minutes until DD returns, then traded), TSJ
SF: Jaden (20), Knecht (20), NAZ (8), Minott
PF: NAZ (25), Jaden (15), FA PF and/or NAW trade (8), Miller
C: Rudy (30), Hayes (15), NAZ and/or NAW trade (3), Garza

[winforlose]

Chi OUT: Ball, Vucevic
Chi IN: Randle, Vincent, Wood, '25 SRP (Utah)

LAL OUT: Vincent, Knecht, Wood, Hayes
LAL IN: Vucevic, '25 FRP (Det)
Hachimura and Reddish traded next.

MN OUT: Randle, '25 SRP (Utah), '25 FRP (Det)
MN IN: Ball, Knecht, Hayes
Yes, I know losing picks hurts. But I'm willing to sweeten the pot in order to make a run this year and beyond. And to give Ball and Hayes auditions. NAW traded next.

PG: Mike/Ball (20 each), RD (8)
SG: Ant (30), NAW (18 minutes until DD returns, then traded), TSJ
SF: Jaden (20), Knecht (20), NAZ (8), Minott
PF: NAZ (25), Jaden (15), FA PF and/or NAW trade (8), Miller
C: Rudy (30), Hayes (15), NAZ and/or NAW trade (3), Garza

I have disagreed with many of your suggestions, but this is the first one where I look at it and say there is 0% chance we would even entertain it. Kneckt is not that good, Hayes is not the good, and Ball despite some people loving him is a current Mike downgrade. To give a high second, mid first, and Randle for that package makes the KAT trade look like a GOAT by comparison. Sorry but hate is not enough close to a strong enough word for it.

[cmoss84]

I simply do not understand why anyone would disagree with ANY of my suggestions!

[Black star]

Hey Wolves board. I'm a huge Ant fan so I'm very interested in seeing how the team plays out in the long term.

My question is given the current construction of the team, who do you all see as Ant's running mate in the event that Randle is traded for spare parts? Is there another guy with allstar level upside on the team? I see Naz and Rob as the best candidates to make that leap.

My fear from the outside looking in at a Randle trade for role players to balance the roster is that the team loses an all NBA caliber guy to pair with Ant without a clear way to replace him. Is Ant with Naz, Divencenzo, and Dillingham enough offensive firepower to compete with top Western contenders over the next 4 years?

[younggunsmn]

My point is that you don’t trade Randle for anything less than an upgrade over Mike. If Ball gave me those same numbers I would not be pleased. Randle is not a toss in, he has real value, Ball is a waste of that value.

All I've heard all season long on this forum is that Randle is a horrible chucker, horrible defender, horrible teammate, horrible contract. How do you expect to get an incredible return for someone who is so poorly thought of?

He is a very mediocre player with huge flaws in his game and given his salary and big money player option for next year, we are highly unlikely to get anything decent for him.
An expiring contract would be a bit of a coup.

There's an outside chance that Miami gets so desperate to get rid of the Jimmy Butler circus they would consider adding Julius Randle a net positive.
But my gut tells me they'd much prefer Bruce Brown + other expirings from Toronto.
But how many 1st round picks would it take to get them to take on Bradley Beal's contract?
4? 5?

If he gets traded I have a feeling the board is going to be very disappointed in the return.
If we had a decent backup 4 or 5, moving him for NOTHING and putting Naz Reid in the starting lineup would improve the team.
Sadly we don't.

It's more of a reflection on our extremely mediocre guard play than Julius Randle's ability that we are asking him to handle the ball and initiate offense so much this year.

[winforlose]

Hey Wolves board. I'm a huge Ant fan so I'm very interested in seeing how the team plays out in the long term.

My question is given the current construction of the team, who do you all see as Ant's running mate in the event that Randle is traded for spare parts? Is there another guy with allstar level upside on the team? I see Naz and Rob as the best candidates to make that leap.

My fear from the outside looking in at a Randle trade for role players to balance the roster is that the team loses an all NBA caliber guy to pair with Ant without a clear way to replace him. Is Ant with Naz, Divencenzo, and Dillingham enough offensive firepower to compete with top Western contenders over the next 4 years?

Jaden is on the ascent and his scoring relative to shot attempts is something to pay attention to. As you mentioned Naz is on the ascent. Expect Rudy to be traded next year and don’t be surprised if the Wolves make enough cap space in 26/27 to sign a free agent of value. DDV was back to his NYK form before the injury. I think we probably trade NAW, but if not, he is still going to be a very valuable bench player. To answer your question about fire power, we are winning games without DDV right now, and that should tell you something.

[shrink]

I simply do not understand why anyone would disagree with ANY of my suggestions!

I disagree

[shrink]

Hey Wolves board. I'm a huge Ant fan so I'm very interested in seeing how the team plays out in the long term.

My question is given the current construction of the team, who do you all see as Ant's running mate in the event that Randle is traded for spare parts? Is there another guy with allstar level upside on the team? I see Naz and Rob as the best candidates to make that leap.

My fear from the outside looking in at a Randle trade for role players to balance the roster is that the team loses an all NBA caliber guy to pair with Ant without a clear way to replace him. Is Ant with Naz, Divencenzo, and Dillingham enough offensive firepower to compete with top Western contenders over the next 4 years?

I personally think that the Wolves fortunes rise with Ant, particularly whether he can combine his other skills with playmaking. If Ant can playmake, all his teammates are instantly better, plus you add in their own internal improvement. Jaden, DDV, Dillingham, and a good player in a Randle trade may never be stars, but they can be good, affordable starters. There is a belief that teams need multiple superstars to compete at the highest levels, but I think DEN just won a ring with one super-duper star, and a bunch of very good teammates. The problem for DEN is they paid them max deals, and painted themselves into the corner. MIN is escaping that path by trading KAT’s supermax.