To Trade or Not to Trade

[Biff Cooper]

I've been getting a little uneasy feeling reading some of shrink (and others') trade proposals lately. Assuming we have a season of course.

The argument for making trades. We have a back-log of players at certain positions on the court. It is going to be impossible for us to maximize the potential of all of these guys simultaneously. There will certainly be players that have their value diminished because they can't make it on the court enough. It also might stunt the growth of out entire team to not have some additional veteran presences on the court. Therefore, it makes sense to trade some "potential" for some "sure things".

The argument for not making trades. We have a large stockpile of talent and potential on our roster. Most of these guys have never played under a competent NBA coach. Why not give them a chance to compete for playing time, play, develop, and see firsthand what we've got. Maybe we can develop one or two superstars out of the group along with one or two other allstars and the occassional solid player. This team really needs to find stars, so even if we are throwing away value now, it is worth it to not give up on the potential of a huge "lottery" win later.

I'm a little torn, but I tend to fall in the Not to Trade camp for this year at least. Opinions?

[Narf]

JMO. We should trade for a star or very good, young starters if the price is right. We should not trade youth and potential for "veteran presence". That's far less important than youth and talent and Adelman is all the veteran presence we need.

[Foye]

It's pretty simple, IMO. Use our trade assets to upgrade in talent/quality. If we can't do that at a reasonable price then we don't need to make many (if any) trades.

[Dewey]

A legit starting SG is the only trade I would pursue at this point. We cant start unloading players who have the potential to have productive long-term careers - just for the sake of adding veteran players (for example). I'd rather have the player retention and stability vs. hoping some vet will bring magic. the hard part is you don't want to get caught with letting players walk a couple years up the road for nothing because they didnt pan out. Fortunately, we now have a coach who'll have the ability to make some credible evaluations on players who can play ... I would expect Adelman to make some significant moves once he gets a chance to work with these guys.

[The J Rocka]

I'm thinking WJ is going to hold it down at SG. I'd like to add Raja Bell as a backup but hope Webster can stay healthy for the majority of the season. Malcolm Lee should be very good as well.

My concern is getting a starting center. Should we overpay to get DeAndre Jordan? Roll with Darko for one more year to give him a shot under Adelman?

[Foye]

DeAndre Jordan is overrated, IMO. He's a great prospect but he'll get paid big although his on-court value isn't all that good right now.

He'll get in the 8-10 mil. range but he's worth 4 or 5 mil.

[Esohny]

The team needs a real center even more than an upgrade at SG. They shouldn't trade high potential just for a "vet presence," but I think it limits most prospects' development when the team is in disarray.

I want them to fill the holes using some of their redundant parts.

[wolves_fan_82au]

no need to make a big trade this season with the lockout
next season though i wouldnt mind fixing up the sf's and getting a decent sg

[cpfsf]

Hard to say since this covers blockbuster trades in general, but I'll take a stab at it. There's really not as much of an incentive to tank (aka rebuilding) as much as prior years because Minnesota lacks a 2012 pick. I would prefer to add some established talent, but I wouldn't force anything. My hope is that Minnesota could add a new starting center (e.g. Bogut or Gortat). If they succeed, than ideally find a new home for Pekovic because we would have no need to pay Pekovic that much to rack up DNPs.

[shrink]

JMO. We should trade for a star or very good, young starters if the price is right. We should not trade youth and potential for "veteran presence". That's far less important than youth and talent and Adelman is all the veteran presence we need.

Hard to say since this covers blockbuster trades in general, but I'll take a stab at it. There's really not as much of an incentive to tank (aka rebuilding) as much as prior years because Minnesota lacks a 2012 pick. I would prefer to add some established talent, but I wouldn't force anything. My hope is that Minnesota could add a new starting center (e.g. Bogut or Gortat). If they succeed, than ideally find a new home for Pekovic because we would have no need to pay Pekovic that much to rack up DNPs.

I think Biff laid out the dilemma pretty well, and I'm somewhere in Narf and cpfsf's area on whether I'd want to make a trade. But let me add two complicating issues:

1. Do we have enough talent on the team? If we say no, we need to keep going to the well of young players, and hoping they develop and raise their value. Without our pick this year, the draft well is dry for 2012, but we have many high-potential young players that we wouldn't want to trade.

2. This leads directly to the "if the price is right" argument. Right now, we carry lots of undeveloped, high-potential players (Beasley, Randolph, Rubio, Wes Johnson), however, for most of them (Beasley, Randolph, Rubio, Wes Johnson), we'll only get 50-cents on the dollar in trade value. Kevin Love and Derrick Williams would be full value players, but they are also our biggest fan draws.

3. Attendance. It doesn't make sense to waste our potential on a non-star, but that star better be someone that the fans want to see - especially if the trade included Love or Williams. Stars are also going to have salaries of $10 mil or more, and that matters in 2012, when we need to find the money for new deals for Love, Beasley and/or Randolph.

In my mind, our best approach is to set up trades of a non-upside player if we need additional cap space to try hard to get one of the decent centers in free agency (Nene, M. Gasol, Chandler, Jordan, Dalembert - maybe Oden if the price is right), and then see where we are after that. Free agent signings don't require MIN to give up talent, just that Glen Taylor is willing to spend money. If we strike out there, we can make offers for the more cost-effective centers on cheap teams (Gortat or Bogut). Centers are expensive, so we only go after a star SG if one falls into our lap for a very good price. I agree that Adelman will provide lots of "veteran presence."

[Biff Cooper]

I've seen some people try to do this in the past, but I've been trying to come up with some sort of a quantitative rating of the potential of the players on our current roster so that we could compare the value to someone we'd be trying to acquire via trade to see if it's worth the loss in potential. Has anyone tried to do this lately and be willing to throw it out there as a starting point? Maybe if I get a little more free time this weekend I'll throw something out there for discussion.

I have no problem trading guys that have little to no star potential if we are getting something valuable in return, however, it gets a little trickier when we are trading our guys that do have some potential to develop into stars.

[the_bruce]

I could get on board with a simple trade for Okafor or B. Wallace.

[[RCG]]

I could get on board with a simple trade for Okafor or B. Wallace.

Ew. No Ben Wallace please.

[Biff Cooper]

I've seen some people try to do this in the past, but I've been trying to come up with some sort of a quantitative rating of the potential of the players on our current roster so that we could compare the value to someone we'd be trying to acquire via trade to see if it's worth the loss in potential. Has anyone tried to do this lately and be willing to throw it out there as a starting point? Maybe if I get a little more free time this weekend I'll throw something out there for discussion.

I have no problem trading guys that have little to no star potential if we are getting something valuable in return, however, it gets a little trickier when we are trading our guys that do have some potential to develop into stars.

Here is my first stab at it:
Base Ratings
A. 25 pts - NBA Superstar
B. 18 pts - NBA Perenial All-Star
C. 13 pts - NBA occasional all-star / good starter
D. 9 pts - NBA solid starter who generally holds their own against opponent at position
E. 4 pts - NBA mediocre starter / quality role player
F. 0 pts - NBA roster filler / injury replacement / blow out minute eater
G. -5 pts - NBA negative value on the court / typically someone who has potential, so earns unwarranted playing time hurting team

Additionally, add age factor of (28-age)x1.02/100+1 to give extra credit for years of career remaining
Additionally, add a contract factor giving extra credit for a good contract or years remaining on rookie deal - the formula I used was a little tricky and needs a little work, but I limited it to a 15% positive or negative value.

Player / % chance probability for remainder of career in the following categories:
Love 14%A, 29%B, 46%C, 8%D, 3%E x1.05 age x 1.06 salary = 17.3
Williams 10%A, 22%B, 32%C, 22%D, 9%E, 1%F, 4%G x1.08 age x1.15 salary = 15.9
Rubio 10%A, 22%B, 30%C, 18%D, 9%E, 1%F, 10%G x 1.07 age x 1.15 salary = 14.6
Beasley 8%A, 15%B, 33%C, 23%D, 17%E, 0%F, 4%G x 1.06 age x 1.06 salary = 13.0
Johnson 5%A, 16%B, 24%C, 20%D, 23%E, 4%F, 8%G x 1.04 age x 1.12 salary = 11.2
Randolph 3%A, 10%B, 24%C, 26%D, 28%E, 5%F, 4%G x 1.06 age x 1.06 salary = 10.1
Milicic 0%A, 2%B, 14%C, 39%D, 26%E, 1%F, 18%G x 1.02 age x 1.15 salary = 6.8
Pekovic 1%A, 5%B, 12%C, 18%D, 39%E, 14%F, 11%G x 1.03 age x 1.12 salary = 6.2
Ridnour 0%A, 0%B, 2%C, 30%D, 60%E, 5%F, 3%G x .98 age x 1.15 salary = 5.9
Webster 0%A, 1%B, 6%C, 29%D, 53%E, 4%F, 7%G x 1.03 age x 1.0 salary = 5.5
Toliver 0%A, 0%B, 1%C, 4%D, 86%E, 8%F, 1%G x 1.02 age x 1.15 salary = 4.6
Miller 0%A, 0%B, 0%C, 10%D, 75%E, 15%F, 0%G x 0.93 age x 0.86 salary = 3.1
Ellington 0%A, 0%B, 1%C, 5%D, 28%E, 45%F, 21%G x 1.04 age x 1.09 salary = 0.7
Hayward 0%A, 0%B, 0%C, 5%D, 24%E, 44%F, 27%G x 1.03 age x 1.12 salary = 0.1

Compare this to someone like Iguodala:
0%A, 8%B, 60%C, 32%D, 0%E, 0%F, 0%G x 1.01 age x 0.93 salary = 11.4

Example calc – Iggy (0x25 + .08x18 + .60x13 + .32x9) x 1.01 x .93 = 11.4

This formula (with my quick category input) would say Iggy is worth slightly more than Wes.

Input welcome - I know it needs some work as I only spent two hours on this task. I want something where I can compare potential of our guys to value of potential traded players, and I like several parts of what I've done, so this seems like a fairly solid start.

[the_bruce]

This is interesting but would be helpful to see other non-wolves player rankings.

Or more to the point. Using the formula what players fall into Superstar, perenial- all Star, etc rankings