floppymoose wrote:I see very little chance of hitting 46 wins.
I've already described the alternate reality: GSW stinks short term, but has a shot at being a serious team again before the end of the decade.
Current team is a treadmill team that will be struggling to make the play-in and going nowhere.
What do you consider the chances of Jimmy and Steph playing a combined 130 games ? How about 120? 100? I would put the chances at a 30+ game injury at ~20%. Sure, they're older and more brittle but both Jimmy and Steph play a less physical style than they used to.
Let's pretend they both play 50 due to 20 games missed to injury and another 10 to load management. If they go 30/20 in those 50, they only need to go 16/16 in the remaining 32 games to get to 46. Considering how this team played after the Jimmy trade, 50 wins doesn't seem ridiculous if they both are able to play 50+.
Outside of the season he broke his arm, Steph hasn't played less than 50 games since his ankle issues. Jimmy has never played fewer than 50, including 55 last season, despite the age and suspensions.
If they do suffer injuries, the tank will be on in full force, considering how little we have behind Steph and Jimmy. If they're healthy, they'll be far from a treadmill and if they're hurt, or just one is out for the year, you'll get what you want.
And yes, you've said why you want to trade Curry but considering he's never given an indication at anything but the opposite, how would you do it? Would you have traded klay and dray after we failed to defend the title in '23, thus forcing Steph to ask out? Or in '19 after Steph broke his arm? Last summer?
I'm genuinely curious what the realistic scenario looks like where we move Steph after he spent his entire career talking about wanting to be a one team superstar. Even if I agreed with you that it would be the smart thing to do, I can't come up with a reasonable scenario where this could have happened. If I can convince him it's better to leave (to win or get paid or go "home" to cha) without alienating him, would he just allow me to shop him around like an old Corolla? If not, how good is the offer I'm getting? If I'm only getting some late first rounders, is that really what is going to shorten the tank?
I mean, Steph is so good he might be able to play the Seth Curry role on for next championship core. In order to do that, we have to be smart enough to draft Thompson at 11, and not Moses moody over trey murphy. It's the talent identification that's hard and I'm all for having multiple darts. Just not at this price for these darts.
I'm really genuinely curious as you're one of the few blow it up voters and so I thought I'd ask. Blow it up sounds impossible, even more so than trading for Giannis unless management really doesn't care about trading Steph against his will. How would it work otherwise?