Official Trade Thread - Part XXIV

[LyricalRico]

^ I'd make that trade, deneem. It's basically acquiring two young bigs in Asik+Horford for Nene+Porter+1st (which would be a late first since we'd be a darn good team after this). I'm actually wondering of the Wiz need to include more.

[payitforward]

But we'll be instant contenders with horford amd asik... Whatever moves we make need to put us into contender mode....

Unless your team is way overloaded w/ talent at a position (and that ain't us) there are no trades you can make that turn you from a 29 win team to a contender.

Do you imagine we'd be trading w/ idiots? -- you can't usually trade a busted axle and 2 used tires for a low mileage Mercedes Benz.

[rockymac52]

^ I'd make that trade, deneem. It's basically acquiring two young bigs in Asik+Horford for Nene+Porter+1st (which would be a late first since we'd be a darn good team after this). I'm actually wondering of the Wiz need to include more.

I'd be all for that trade as well, but I'm not sure it's realistic enough.

First of all, I don't see the Hawks moving on from Horford any time soon, no matter how this season goes. He's very good (not quite all-star caliber, but very close), in his prime (27 years old), and on a reasonable contract ($12 million per year for the next 3 seasons). However, if they do decide to move Horford, a package of Porter and our 1st round pick (let's say it becomes the 20th pick overall) is a solid haul.

As for the Rockets, I just don't see it happening. Yes, they need to move Asik soon because he can't play alongside Dwight, leaving him only 15 MPG or so at backup C, which is a waste of his talents. But I think they'd have better options if they chose to move Asik. While Nene seems like a very good complementary piece on that team, and a classic Morey guy IMO, his price tag is pretty large, and it officially ends the Rockets' pursuit of a 3rd star player. The Rockets would essentially be going all in with their current team as is. It's not the worst strategy, as they'd obviously be a very good team (they already are), perhaps even championship contenders, but I think they have other options available that could potentially make them even better. They might as well wait it out and see if they can land someone like Aldridge or Love as free agents or via trade. Add either of those players with Harden and Dwight and you have a perennial championship favorite (or as close as you can get). Harden, Dwight, and Nene on the other hand, is a very good team with the possibility of making a championship or two, but not nearly as dominant of a force as the other option.

The trade as a whole is pretty close to being fair for everyone involved, honestly. We'd probably need to include another decent asset in order to convince either the Rockets or Hawks to do it. The Hawks would also probably want to follow this up with a Millsap trade, or even possibly include him in this deal somehow.

[LyricalRico]

^ Oh yeah, totally agree. Not seeing either team going for it. Just saying I'd support it if it were to become real in some form.

Thinking about it deeper, if Houston was willing to give up Asik for another big on a longterm contract, and if Atlanta wanted to move Horford for an expiring and some good but not great young talent, why wouldn't they just cut Washington out and make it Asik+picks/assets for Horford?

[rockymac52]

^ Oh yeah, totally agree. Not seeing either team going for it. Just saying I'd support it if it were to become real in some form.

Thinking about it deeper, if Houston was willing to give up Asik for another big on a longterm contract, and if Atlanta wanted to move Horford for an expiring and some good but not great young talent, why wouldn't they just cut Washington out and make it Asik+picks/assets for Horford?

Because those picks would be very late, definitely in the 25-30 range.

Would you rather have Porter and a mid 1st round pick in 2014 (let's say 20) or Asik and a late 1st round pick in 2014 (let's say 26)? I think the answer is pretty clear.

EDIT: and also, then there wouldn't be an expiring contract in the deal, since Asik has 2 years left.

[rockymac52]

Just throwing this idea out there, not saying I'd necessarily do it or that it's even realistic...

Ariza and Porter for Deng, the rights to Mirotic, and the Bulls 2014 1st rounder.

As far as production this season, I think Ariza + Porter is probably pretty close to Deng, so I don't think it would hurt either our or the Bulls' playoff chances much at all.

After this season, Deng and Ariza both expire, leaving the trade at Porter for Mirotic and the Bulls 1st rounder. The Bulls 1st rounder isn't all that valuable, since it'll likely be in the 23-30 range, but it's not a complete throwaway either.

Personally I'm incredibly high on Mirotic from what I've read and seen, and he is expected to come over from Europe this summer, most likely for an MLE-sized contract. He's a legit stretch 4, and many experts seem to think he's the Euro who finally actually fits the Dirk comparison.

I guess this trade depends on how you perceive Porter and Mirotic's future value.

I initially thought about including the Bobcats' protected pick (most likely ends up being unprotected in the 2016 draft, when I expect the Bobcats to still be a bottom 10 team) instead of the Bulls 2014 1st, but I was afraid that was too much to ask of them. But without that pick included, it feels like the Bulls are getting too good of a deal. Thoughts?

[mhd]

What about this deal:

Wiz trade: Nene+Porter+Ves+Singleton for Zach Randolph+Gortat+Rights to LAL future 1st
Memphis trade: Randolph for Nene+Dragic
Suns trade: Dragic+Gortat+Future LAL 1st for Porter+Singleton+Ves

Wiz get much more consistent rebounding and interior scoring, while shaving a year off of Nene's deal. Gortat gives them a good big and makes a solid 3 big rotation when Emeka returns. That future LAL pick should be pretty good.

Memphis gets a much needed 3rd guard in Dragic who adds creativity. Nene can be limited in his PT, and he'll be fantastic next to Gasol.

Suns shave some longterm salary and get their SF of the future in Porter.

[jivelikenice]

No reason to trade Porter now. They need to trade Ariza as soon as Otto is healthy and ready to play 15-20 mpg. Even IF you decide on trade Porter eventually, now is not that time. There seems to be an pattern here of wanting to trade players at their lowest value. A lot ppl wanted to ship Wall out for 20 cents on the dollar during his slump last yr. never ends....

[hands11]

Horford doesn't have the upside or move the needle like Cousins, George, Aldridge, etc.

But he's better than both Cousins and George IMO and he's a better fit here than Aldridge would be. Aldridge needs the ball in his hands to do his thing on offense and would turn Wall into a shooter too often, and he's not as good a rebounder or defender as Horford.

Aldridge can be a total beast on offense and take over games and score in the clutch like a star player. But he's a weak defender and pretty mediocre rebounder for a 7 footer with his length and athleticism. Because of that, you have to make personnel decisions to compensate for his weaknesses, you just can't plug and play with him. And because of that, Portland has fielded a lot of losing teams despite the fact they've had an AS big.

Horford is the opposite. He's kind of like Nene/Porter/Beal in that he doesn't take anything off the table or require special lineups/personnel moves.

This is all academic anyway, we don't have an indication any of these players are available. BUT, if given the choice, there aren't a ton of bigs in the league I'd take over Horford. Excellent & complete player on a great contract.

We need some post toughness. Not huge needle movers but with Okafor out, Carmichael or Iverson would be really welcome right now and we could have had them for next to nothing.

[Ruzious]

With the house of cards roster we have, unless they can pull off an unlikely great trade, the best option is likely once again - playing for a draft pick - and either keep or increase next off-season's cap space. High draft pick and this time effective use of cap space.

[rockymac52]

Just had an interesting thought...

You know how when we talk about trading Ariza or Okafor some people try to draw up trades that get us 2014 1st round picks? The general consensus in most of those cases is that hardly any, if any, NBA teams would actually give up their 2014 1st round pick in exchange for either of those players. We assume that if any NBA team would be willing to give up their 2014 1st round pick, it would almost definitely be a championship contender picking in the 26-30 range, and thus, the pick isn't that valuable to us, so the trade no longer makes sense.

Now, this may very well be the case, and I personally think it is. While Ariza and Okafor (when healthy) are both quality players, I find it hard to believe either of them could fetch us a mid 1st round pick in 2014 (or any year, honestly - 2014's hype only furthers my point in this example). Maybe we could trade either of them to a championship contender, but again, that would only get us a pick in the 26-30 range, and that's not valuable enough to lose Ariza or Okafor for this season.

So if that assessment is correct, for the most part, then it appears that it's highly unlikely that the Wizards manage to acquire another team's 2014 1st round pick via trades this season.

Nothing I've said so far has really been groundbreaking, but here's where my interesting thought comes to play...

Right now the Wizards project to finish anywhere from 6th to 11th in the East, meaning their 1st round draft pick's range is something like 10-18. Let's split the difference and assume we finish around .500 and just barely miss the playoffs, giving us the 14th overall pick.

We already established that Ariza and/or Okafor are not good enough to land us an additional 2014 1st round pick, unless it's in the 26-30 range. The important thing to understand here is that if we traded Ariza and/or Okafor, we wouldn't be able to acquire the 14th overall pick (give or take).

Think about that for a second... In order to trade for the 14th pick, a team would need to give up a player (or package of players/assets) that is better than Ariza and/or Okafor. That's at the very minimum. More realistically, the team would have to give up a player that's notably better than Ariza and/or Okafor, but not necessarily a star caliber player - rather, just a "good" one.

We currently own our own 2014 1st round pick. We can keep it, see where it falls, and pick up a big man in the draft next year, even if he's just a role player. But IN THEORY, we should be able to trade our pick this season, and the player we get in return should be considerably better than Ariza and/or Okafor.

We all know that Ariza and Okafor have more value than the rest of the league seems to realize, and they're definitely pretty good for role players. Now imagine acquiring a player who was that next step above Ariza and/or Okafor, talent-wise (or value-wise, I suppose). All of a sudden we're talking about adding a really nice piece to our rotation.

Those of you who have fallen for the hype surrounding this draft might be reluctant to give away our draft pick, but I think we theoretically would get the most value by cashing it in for a current player. I'll have to do some more research to try and get a better estimation of what type of players we could get in return.

The big risk with us is our front court depth with Okafor out. If we then lost Ariza in this trade as well, we'd be running pretty thin. Of course we'd be getting a good player back in return, likely a big man, so that could completely offset this concern. But if Nene then gets hurt too, or Wall suffers another serious injury, and as we all know, this team could completely fall apart and be a sub-30 win team once again. If we traded the pick, then we fell apart this season, we'd be missing out on a huge opportunity to acquire a top end talent in the top 10 of the draft. That's the biggest downside as far as I'm concerned.

[rockymac52]

Following up on my last post, I'm going to try to project which big men might fit my description of being notably better than Ariza/Okafor, but not too much better.

I'm going to use WS/48 as my metric here, since it allows me to rank the overall performance and contribution of every single NBA player. Last season, Okafor's WS/48 ranked 173rd overall, and Ariza's ranked 177th overall. The fact that those two were so close to each other helps demonstrate how Okafor and Ariza are similarly talented overall.

It's hard to know how much of an increase in production to use, so let's just arbitrarily start by listing the first 10 big men that had a better WS/48 than Okariza (in order from worst WS/48 to better).

1. Greg Monroe
2. Reggie Evans
3. Nikola Vucevic
4. Ivan Johnson
5. Andrew Bogut
6. Kyle O'Quinn
7. Jonas Jerebko
8. Pau Gasol
9. Elton Brand
10. Udonis Haslem

Mixed bag so far, not sure what to make of it. I'm obviously oversimplifying this entire theoretical process here, but it's still interesting to observe. While some of those players are clearly better than Okariza, or have more future potential, there are others who don't even compare to Okariza, talent-wise.

How about the next 10 big men on the list?

1. Carlos Boozer
2. Omer Asik
3. Kris Humphries
4. John Henson
5. Taj Gibson
6. Mike Scott
7. Patrick Patterson
8. Zaza Pachulia
9. Nene
10. Derrick Favors

Again, still not perfect, but this appears to be more realistic. This is a nice collection of big men who are definitely good players, worthy of starting, but not quite all-star caliber. That's what I would consider the tier between Okariza and all-stars, so that's what we were going for.

Obviously there's a ton of factors that come into play here, as half these players listed might be unavailable because their team wants to keep them, for example. But certainly a few of them could be acquired if the price was right, and our valuation of Okariza in terms of 1st round picks indicates that the price to get these types of players should be a mid 1st round pick, which happens to be exactly what we have (except ours has an added potential of becoming a very good pick, IMO, if we struggle this year).

[LyricalRico]

^ Oh yeah, totally agree. Not seeing either team going for it. Just saying I'd support it if it were to become real in some form.

Thinking about it deeper, if Houston was willing to give up Asik for another big on a longterm contract, and if Atlanta wanted to move Horford for an expiring and some good but not great young talent, why wouldn't they just cut Washington out and make it Asik+picks/assets for Horford?

Because those picks would be very late, definitely in the 25-30 range.

Would you rather have Porter and a mid 1st round pick in 2014 (let's say 20) or Asik and a late 1st round pick in 2014 (let's say 26)? I think the answer is pretty clear.

EDIT: and also, then there wouldn't be an expiring contract in the deal, since Asik has 2 years left.

If I'm Atlanta and I'm trading a young big man like Horford, and my choices are essentially Porter+20 vs Asik+26? I'd go for the big man that has already proven he can average a double-double. And I can always negotiate for an extra pick or two to get more value. But a package build around Asik would be more attractive than one built around Porter IMO.

[rockymac52]

If I'm Atlanta and I'm trading a young big man, and my choices are essentially Porter+20 vs Asik+26? I'd go for the big man that has already proven he can average a double-double. I can always negotiate for an extra pick or two to get more value. But a package build around Asik would be more attractive than one built around Porter IMO.

I'm a pretty big Asik fan, but I still disagree with you. Even with our desperate need for big men, I'd prefer Porter. If you feel otherwise, then we could in theory just trade Porter to the Rockets right now for Asik, which I think they'd seriously consider.

[LyricalRico]

Just throwing this idea out there, not saying I'd necessarily do it or that it's even realistic...

Ariza and Porter for Deng, the rights to Mirotic, and the Bulls 2014 1st rounder.

<snip>

I guess this trade depends on how you perceive Porter and Mirotic's future value.

Yeah, I don't know much about Mirotic, so I'm not really feeling it. I'd actually be more interested in Taj Gibson, although I need to take a second look at his contract to make sure he's worth it.

[deneem4]

***fixed***

Well if we sayong **** drafting and want to be an instant contender

76ers
nene 2014 2nd and 2015 1st and 2nd
For
thad young, hawes,

76ers get a 3rd 1st rd pick in the best draft in a decade, another 1st rd and 2nd rd the following yr

Our roster becomes

Wall/maynor
Beal/webster/rice
Young/Porter/ariza/singleton
hawes/vesley/harrington/booker
Okafor/seraphin

Instantly extend spencer hawes

Thats a contender with ok depth, to get an even deeper team (risk cap space)

Ariza/booker/rice jr
For
Davis/affalo

Magic is aiming to clear cap this trade does that...it also gives them a promising player in rice jr ( who I would keep) and expirings in booker and ariza second rds jus bonus

Wall/maynor
Beal/affalo
Porter/webster/vesely
Young/davis/harrington
Okafor/hawes/seraphin

With this lineup we are instant contenders especially if porter can become a lockdown defender
The magic with a healthy davis was #6 in defense and #30 without,
Our bench would be one of the better ones in the league and affalo and webster on court together is 3pt hell


Im probably undervalued players but Holiday coming off an allstar yr got traded for a 1st rd and an injured rookie center. Hawes is expiring and thad been on the trading block....nene can play injured for the yr and 76ers get #1 for sure
Davis is on the block and affalo is holding up space, neither would net a 1st rd but 2, 2nd rounds and cap space and rice jr migh persuade

As a bonus depending how they team workout

Okafor/porter/2014 1st/2015 2nd
For
Cousins salmons

[TGW]

Well if we throwing porter out for the wolves...
Celtics
Jeff green and humpries
for
porter and nene...

76ers
nene nd porter, 2014 1st
For
thad young, turner, hawes,
76ers will end up with wiggins

we can resign hawes and turner
ariza and okafor can net us another 1st rd

LOL that's worst than a LyricalRico trade. Good job.

[fugop]

Ariza to Milwaukee

Udoh to Washington
Ridnour to Sacramento

Mbah a Moute to Washington.

We get a couple of defensive specialists who can play at the 4/5, with minimal long term commitment. Both guys are inferior to Ariza from a statistical perspective, but both are reputed to be good defenders, and either could play along Nene. I think Mbah a Moute would be more effective at the 4 than Ariza on the defensive end.

Milwaukee needs a Small Forward, and Sacramento needs a PG. Ariza would probably share time/take time from Butler, especially when Butler goes down with an injury. Ridnour would share time/take time from Vasquez and Isaiah Thomas.

Wall/Maynor
Beal/Webster
Webster/Porter
Mbah a Moute/Booker
Nene/Udoh

Non contributors:

Seraphin, Vesely, Singleton, Harrington, Temple

[deneem4]

Well if we throwing porter out for the wolves...
Celtics
Jeff green and humpries
for
porter and nene...

76ers
nene nd porter, 2014 1st
For
thad young, turner, hawes,
76ers will end up with wiggins

we can resign hawes and turner
ariza and okafor can net us another 1st rd

LOL that's worst than a LyricalRico trade. Good job.

I re-edited I think the new one is better, even though we wont see any draft picks no time soon

Wall/maynor
Beal/affalo
Porter/webster/vesely
Young/davis/harrington
Okafor/hawes/seraphin

We can take on a miami with this team

[Dat2U]

Ariza to Milwaukee

Udoh to Washington
Ridnour to Sacramento

Mbah a Moute to Washington.

We get a couple of defensive specialists who can play at the 4/5, with minimal long term commitment. Both guys are inferior to Ariza from a statistical perspective, but both are reputed to be good defenders, and either could play along Nene. I think Mbah a Moute would be more effective at the 4 than Ariza on the defensive end.

Milwaukee needs a Small Forward, and Sacramento needs a PG. Ariza would probably share time/take time from Butler, especially when Butler goes down with an injury. Ridnour would share time/take time from Vasquez and Isaiah Thomas.

Wall/Maynor
Beal/Webster
Webster/Porter
Mbah a Moute/Booker
Nene/Udoh

Non contributors:

Seraphin, Vesely, Singleton, Harrington, Temple

That's a good tank trade IMO. Udoh & Mbah A Moute aren't helping you win games. Good effort guys & solid defenders but both are complete self-checks offensively... and poor fits with Wall.