Official Trade Thread: Kind of a Drag...ic

[asudevil]

I really hope that after this offseason there will be a ton of crow eating. It kinda hurts saying this because that means the Lakers have to hit a home run after during the FA period. And i think that's where a lot of this garbage in the board is coming from. Because now, we have two options.

a.) hope the Lakers strike out and get nothing during the offseason. true fans cannot root for the Lakers. but this would PROVE that the Knight trade was terrible
b.) hope the Lakers insta-rebuild and become contenders. true fans canot root for the Lakers. this would negate trading their pick to Philly, and turns the Knight trade into Plumlee/Thomas/Ennis into Knight, which is defend-able.

either way its a lose lose, and nobody here wants a lose lose. We all wanted the Lakers to suck for at least two years, and now we have to turn into semi-Lakers fans in order to justify losing their pick. that hurts.

The Knight trade has essentially turned suns fans against eachother....those who want to root against the Lakers (which would prove the Knight trade sucked) and those who have to root for the Lakers (which would negate trading their pick).

and this post will most likely not be read. IBFTL

[NTB]

OMG it is just a f#£$ing pick. Don't overrate it.

[Mulhollanddrive]

If the last 30 years are a guide:

74% of NBA teams will not win a championship over the next 30 years.

Those 26% got lucky. Chicago Bulls don't win any of their 6 without 1 human being out of 6 billion going to pick 3 when Chicago has pick 3.

It probably means 99% of trades and comings and goings don't matter, you just need to strike the jackpot by landing a top 30 player of all-time.

The rest to me, is guys just doing their jobs the best they can (FO and players).

[batsmasher]

RealGM's worst trade deadline team with an outstanding 65% of the votes is...

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1374074#start_here

Hah. And if the Lakers land a semi-decent FA, draft a top 5 player and get Randle playing, suddenly they're not a bottom 5 team.

Then Dragic leaves, or gets maxed (pick your poison) and that 2021 unprotected pick turns into a top 5 pick (Bosh is off the books in 2019 so it'll have to be a quick reboot otherwise)

Then Brandon Knight re-signs for $15M/yr, the Suns lock up their backcourt for less than $30M/yr amid the cap rise, BK improves to be a borderline All-Star in the West.

All of the above isn't far-fetched if you look into a crystal ball. And if it happens, the Suns suddenly go from losing the deadline to winning it.

But for the time being we've 'lost' the deadline.

[collidingNeurons]

If the last 30 years are a guide:

74% of NBA teams will not win a championship over the next 30 years.

Those 26% got lucky. Chicago Bulls don't win any of their 6 without 1 human being out of 6 billion going to pick 3 when Chicago has pick 3.

It probably means 99% of trades and comings and goings don't matter, you just need to strike the jackpot by landing a top 30 player of all-time.

The rest to me, is guys just doing their jobs the best they can (FO and players).

The Suns weren't going to make the playoffs with the team they had, i didn't even honestly care if they did or not. I realize this was year two in a rebuilding process and i was content to be patient, overall i still am. The Suns still likely wont make the playoffs with this new version of the team, I am also ok with that. I am not particularly upset they traded Dragic or Thomas or even what they got for them, The Milwaukee trade is what got my ire up and it's not just for what we traded away or what we got, although that's a big part of it. My main complaint is this. Before the trade dead Line our guru GM took a bold step and admitted the construction fo the team was wrong, even specifically stated how it was constructed wrong and blamed himself for it. It gave hope that they would then address it. Then Dragic came out with his comments, if they are accurate or not, none of us know, we weren't in any of those meetings, he was obviously unhappy though, be it due to the fact he wanted to be the man, felt betrayed, felt they were asking him to play out of position and made promises as he stated or just felt they were ruining his earning power, all of those are possibilities and it could be a combination of more than one and again we will never know and it's all he said she said and speculations from all of our perspectives, regardless what you chose to believe. it's the front office's response to that that bothers me the most though.

They trade both Thomas and Dragic, so be it, they couldn't risk Dragic leaving and getting nothing, and Thomas may have been a cancer on the team, so fine I will live with that. But then to go all in on Brandon Knight, this in my opinion was as others have already said to remain in the picture,save face, look like they had a plan, sell tickets, etc. We don't know if he will be on the team next year or if he fits this team now, time will tell, but again what we gave for him was a extreme overpay in my opinion and we would have been better to just keep what we had and rolled the dice with them.. but that's just opinion and i could be proven wrong on that over time.. however that press conference is where my main gripe comes in, Instead of taking the high road and just stating something along the lines of "We disagree and deny making any promises we broke, and while we loved Dragic and the contributions he made to our team and we would have liked to bring him back as we have been saying publicly for two years, he decided he would rather pursue his career elsewhere and we decided in light of that we would respect that wish and make moves to further our ultimate goal" or sometime like that, if they had taken that path, i think it would have been viewed with respect and professionalism, instead they reacted liek a bunch of overly sensitive butt hurt high school kids trying to get in the last word, which to me makes them look unprofessional and petty and i can't believe players don't see it like that as well, they just saw the favorite sun and this management's darling for the last several years thrown under the bus after promoting him as the face of the franchise for the last 3-4 years.. that doesn't do anythig nbut harm and makes them look foolish and like maybe what Dragic was claiming had some credence, it was flat out embarrassing and pathetic in my opinion.


and none of this did anything to balance the roster or correct their self admitted mistake which was the origional stated goal, if anything we got smaller and now have less rebounding and interior defense

[3rdside]

If the last 30 years are a guide:

74% of NBA teams will not win a championship over the next 30 years.

Those 26% got lucky. Chicago Bulls don't win any of their 6 without 1 human being out of 6 billion going to pick 3 when Chicago has pick 3.

It probably means 99% of trades and comings and goings don't matter, you just need to strike the jackpot by landing a top 30 player of all-time.

The rest to me, is guys just doing their jobs the best they can (FO and players).

The Suns weren't going to make the playoffs with the team they had, i didn't even honestly care if they did or not. I realize this was year two in a rebuilding process and i was content to be patient, overall i still am. The Suns still likely wont make the playoffs with this new version of the team, I am also ok with that. I am not particularly upset they traded Dragic or Thomas or even what they got for them, The Milwaukee trade is what got my ire up and it's not just for what we traded away or what we got, although that's a big part of it. My main complaint is this. Before the trade dead Line our guru GM took a bold step and admitted the construction fo the team was wrong, even specifically stated how it was constructed wrong and blamed himself for it. It gave hope that they would then address it. Then Dragic came out with his comments, if they are accurate or not, none of us know, we weren't in any of those meetings, he was obviously unhappy though, be it due to the fact he wanted to be the man, felt betrayed, felt they were asking him to play out of position and made promises as he stated or just felt they were ruining his earning power, all of those are possibilities and it could be a combination of more than one and again we will never know and it's all he said she said and speculations from all of our perspectives, regardless what you chose to believe. it's the front office's response to that that bothers me the most though.

They trade both Thomas and Dragic, so be it, they couldn't risk Dragic leaving and getting nothing, and Thomas may have been a cancer on the team, so fine I will live with that. But then to go all in on Brandon Knight, this in my opinion was as others have already said to remain in the picture,save face, look like they had a plan, sell tickets, etc. We don't know if he will be on the team next year or if he fits this team now, time will tell, but again what we gave for him was a extreme overpay in my opinion and we would have been better to just keep what we had and rolled the dice with them.. but that's just opinion and i could be proven wrong on that over time.. however that press conference is where my main gripe comes in, Instead of taking the high road and just stating something along the lines of "We disagree and deny making any promises we broke, and while we loved Dragic and the contributions he made to our team and we would have liked to bring him back as we have been saying publicly for two years, he decided he would rather pursue his career elsewhere and we decided in light of that we would respect that wish and make moves to further our ultimate goal" or sometime like that, if they had taken that path, i think it would have been viewed with respect and professionalism, instead they reacted liek a bunch of overly sensitive butt hurt high school kids trying to get in the last word, which to me makes them look unprofessional and petty and i can't believe players don't see it like that as well, they just saw the favorite sun and this management's darling for the last several years thrown under the bus after promoting him as the face of the franchise for the last 3-4 years.. that doesn't do anythig nbut harm and makes them look foolish and like maybe what Dragic was claiming had some credence, it was flat out embarrassing and pathetic in my opinion.


and none of this did anything to balance the roster or correct their self admitted mistake which was the origional stated goal, if anything we got smaller and now have less rebounding and interior defense

Careful, you'll be accused of not being a Suns fan if you carry on like that

[Tahleron]

If Knight gets a contract this summer, the Suns are committing to the most expensive backcourt in the West - a backcourt not comprised of an all-star. A backcourt comprised of two tweener point guards that the history of the league tells us would be a questionable fit. Yikes. At best, it's gambling on youth and potential and hoping it works out. At worst, it's being downright arrogant and reckless and could set the franchise back for years.

The blame for what happened to Dragic can go a number of different directions. Some will say Dragic went off his rocker. Some will say it's alarming the front office handled it the way the did, both letting it get to the stage it did and the press conference afterwards. Giving up that Lakers pick for Knight legitimately makes me question if the franchise knows what it's doing or is taking orders from Sarver to put bandaids on bullet wounds and sell as many tickets in the short term and disregard the future.

It's a shame that a poster like Frank gets his fandom questioned and labeled as "negative" when simply questioning the direction of a franchise when the questions are absolutely warranted right now.

I agree with this post, and Frank has been here for a long time and longer than most and his comments are dead on in a lot of cases, and fans have ever right to criticize the direction of the team ,we are the ones they are selling their product to, if we dont like it we should speak up.

Here's my biggest problem with the Milwaukee trade, I'm not sold on Knight first of all, it's pretty telling both fan bases of the teams he has played for were happy when he left. Secondly, they gave the 18th pick in last draft , a serviceable back up center, and the prized LA pick and what happens if the Suns decide that Knight isn't a fit or worth the money some team offers him, they traded all that for nothing.. and before you tell me how much cap space they will have, when was the last time Phoenix signed a premier free agent and after the fiasco of that press conference i think the chances went down a bit more.

The Suns are no where near contending and getting Knight didn't change that , I can't see them beating out The Thunder for the playoffs and even if they did I see it even more unlikely they would give the warriors much of a challenge, so in my opinion they would have been far better rolling the dice with Ennis, the pick and trading plumlee seperately

I think we have discussed this previously. You cannot build a championship team with just picks. You have to consider FA and you need at least one star player if not more. Dragic screwed the Phoenix FO and we were forced to give up Ennis/LAL pick and maintain our rebuilding schedule.

There was no room for Ennis and that pick could be garbage when Kobe retires next season and they have cap space. Add Randle/2016 pick (which could be #1), player from free agency (or two) and the Lakers are competing for the playoffs. That is why that pick could end up around the 10 spot and there is too much uncertainty.

Every team operates in free agency, especially for role players etc, but the core best players can go several ways.

The Spurs are all draft/draft day trades.
The Warriors, 4 of their starting 5 were drafted by them, and they traded for #5.
OKC if they didn't unload Harden would be a draft team dynasty.
Cleveland drafted everyone except Lebron's buddies on their team bar Love, who they traded 2 #1 picks for
Chicago drafted everyone except Gasol who they pay $7m

You can certainly build a championship team through the draft, what you can't do is build a never ending cycle of nba finals like the lakers without going big in trades and free agency to recycle your team, but at the same time, no one can really compete with the lakers long term in terms of free agent power (most other teams need Dwyane Wades, Blake Griffins, James Hardens to even be in the conversation, not them).

[RunDogGun]

You have to love those examples.

Spurs won the lottery when there was a clear chose of the number one pick. Without Duncan, they are a finge playoff team with many of their players from late firsts to second rounders.

OKC isn't squat without lucking out and getting the best player in KD from that draft. If OKC drafted Oden, I doubt we would be talking much about them. Ibaka was our pick (damn stupid KT trade).

Cleveland won the lottery four frickin times!!!! One of those was the Clips pick, and they got two number four picks in that short time. Insane odds there.

Chicago was another lottery winner, and I doubt we would be saying much about them had they drafted Beasley instead of Rose.

Want to guess which team has NEVER won the lottery? Or has ever drafted number one? That's right, the beloved Suns.

So let's stop using teams that won the lottery when there was clear number one choices as examples of building through the draft. It's a crapshoot. You have to have great scouting, and either find a diamond in the rough, draft the right player for the right system, make smart trades, and grab the right FAs for your system. Still very hard to do, when teams change systems because of coaching changes, have different GMs, or have owners that either trust the wrong people in advising, or just plain meddle when they shouldn't.

[carey]

LAL fans so bitter

Pho while getting out of IT contract will now have to pay up to keep Knight, again they'll be nearly capped out and still as medicore as ever.....a win win I must say for me as Pho is one of the more hated fan base to me.

There's even more in their thread talking about us giving their pick to Philly

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1373599#start_here

That's completely wrong too. I mean, there's a chance we'll be mediocre, but we won't be capped out after signing Knight as that was the whole purpose of the trade. We acquired talent while giving ourselves cap room. If we move Tucker this Summer as well we will really be sitting pretty. Also, the reason he hates us is that we are one of the few fan bases that experience schadenfreude whenever the Lakers are terrible.

[carey]

If Knight gets a contract this summer, the Suns are committing to the most expensive backcourt in the West - a backcourt not comprised of an all-star. A backcourt comprised of two tweener point guards that the history of the league tells us would be a questionable fit. Yikes. At best, it's gambling on youth and potential and hoping it works out. At worst, it's being downright arrogant and reckless and could set the franchise back for years.

Damn this is scary when you think about it.

GS got really, really lucky with Curry's extension. He had a lot of trouble with those ankles so he signed a bit below market value at that deadline. Thompson is making $3M more than him a year and you know who the better player is... that pair makes $27M together next year. I imagine Knight signs for about $12 or $13M/yr next year so we'll be paying something similar and neither is an all-star. Kind of a bummer but better than paying $40M for the trio of Bled-Dragic-IT in my opinion.

[sunskerr]

Its funny reading how people are including Miles Plumlee in discussion as if its some sort of big loss for us. Little do they know he actually sucks.

[garrick]

If Knight gets a contract this summer, the Suns are committing to the most expensive backcourt in the West - a backcourt not comprised of an all-star. A backcourt comprised of two tweener point guards that the history of the league tells us would be a questionable fit. Yikes. At best, it's gambling on youth and potential and hoping it works out. At worst, it's being downright arrogant and reckless and could set the franchise back for years.

The blame for what happened to Dragic can go a number of different directions. Some will say Dragic went off his rocker. Some will say it's alarming the front office handled it the way the did, both letting it get to the stage it did and the press conference afterwards. Giving up that Lakers pick for Knight legitimately makes me question if the franchise knows what it's doing or is taking orders from Sarver to put bandaids on bullet wounds and sell as many tickets in the short term and disregard the future.

It's a shame that a poster like Frank gets his fandom questioned and labeled as "negative" when simply questioning the direction of a franchise when the questions are absolutely warranted right now.

I agree with this post, and Frank has been here for a long time and longer than most and his comments are dead on in a lot of cases, and fans have ever right to criticize the direction of the team ,we are the ones they are selling their product to, if we dont like it we should speak up.

Here's my biggest problem with the Milwaukee trade, I'm not sold on Knight first of all, it's pretty telling both fan bases of the teams he has played for were happy when he left. Secondly, they gave the 18th pick in last draft , a serviceable back up center, and the prized LA pick and what happens if the Suns decide that Knight isn't a fit or worth the money some team offers him, they traded all that for nothing.. and before you tell me how much cap space they will have, when was the last time Phoenix signed a premier free agent and after the fiasco of that press conference i think the chances went down a bit more.

The Suns are no where near contending and getting Knight didn't change that , I can't see them beating out The Thunder for the playoffs and even if they did I see it even more unlikely they would give the warriors much of a challenge, so in my opinion they would have been far better rolling the dice with Ennis, the pick and trading plumlee seperately

Frank has been a critic even when we had prime Nash, the dude has always been grumpy.

[LApwnd]

LAL fans so bitter

Pho while getting out of IT contract will now have to pay up to keep Knight, again they'll be nearly capped out and still as medicore as ever.....a win win I must say for me as Pho is one of the more hated fan base to me.

There's even more in their thread talking about us giving their pick to Philly

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1373599#start_here

haha bitter coming from the guy who wanted us to remove our protection and Randle for Dragic , its the truth, between bled/knight ext. you'll be between 25-30mill between two undersized combo guard, add in the rest of the your guaranteed contracts and you're looking in the 50mill range before your picks. 7-12mill isn't enough to sign a game changer, thus medicore but to be fair to you, the west medicore is better the east bottom 4 that's in the playoff.

[saintEscaton]

Dragic forced the FO to make that Ennis/LAL pick trade because the Bucks wanted Ennis and we wanted Knight. Philly was sending MCW to the Bucks which allowed the Bucks to want to move Knight. Remember that we offered Dragic for Knight straight up at the beginning of the season and they shot down our offer.

Not that you can take any of this stuff as fact, but it's something to ponder.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/GeryWoelfel/status/568546010651234304[/tweet]

Lol half a season of Dragic> MCW who is one of the moist ineffecient players in the entire league. But that wasin part to him having the green light to command Philly's tank.There's some hope for him yet with his idol , Kidd taking him under his tutelage

[Qwigglez]

haha bitter coming from the guy who wanted us to remove our protection and Randle for Dragic , its the truth, between bled/knight ext. you'll be between 25-30mill between two undersized combo guard, add in the rest of the your guaranteed contracts and you're looking in the 50mill range before your picks. 7-12mill isn't enough to sign a game changer, thus medicore but to be fair to you, the west medicore is better the east bottom 4 that's in the playoff.

They both can't be undersized if they are both playing together. Clearly one is playing PG and being 6'2/6'3 isn't undersized for a PG. If you are talking about 50mil range of salary for the summer, I'm pretty sure that's after we would sign/extend Knight right? I'm sure the Suns gameplan is to go after a top tier free agent before giving Knight his money as he's a restricted free agent, that way they can maximize their salary issues.

[LApwnd]

haha bitter coming from the guy who wanted us to remove our protection and Randle for Dragic , its the truth, between bled/knight ext. you'll be between 25-30mill between two undersized combo guard, add in the rest of the your guaranteed contracts and you're looking in the 50mill range before your picks. 7-12mill isn't enough to sign a game changer, thus medicore but to be fair to you, the west medicore is better the east bottom 4 that's in the playoff.

They both can't be undersized if they are both playing together. Clearly one is playing PG and being 6'2/6'3 isn't undersized for a PG. If you are talking about 50mil range of salary for the summer, I'm pretty sure that's after we would sign/extend Knight right? I'm sure the Suns gameplan is to go after a top tier free agent before giving Knight his money as he's a restricted free agent, that way they can maximize their salary issues.

yes and a fair point I guess it'll work out then if that were the case since I don't see anybody offering Knight a big contract from the start of FA till all the other FA Pg's are signed.

[Revived]

If Knight gets a contract this summer, the Suns are committing to the most expensive backcourt in the West - a backcourt not comprised of an all-star. A backcourt comprised of two tweener point guards that the history of the league tells us would be a questionable fit. Yikes. At best, it's gambling on youth and potential and hoping it works out. At worst, it's being downright arrogant and reckless and could set the franchise back for years.

Damn this is scary when you think about it.

GS got really, really lucky with Curry's extension. He had a lot of trouble with those ankles so he signed a bit below market value at that deadline. Thompson is making $3M more than him a year and you know who the better player is... that pair makes $27M together next year. I imagine Knight signs for about $12 or $13M/yr next year so we'll be paying something similar and neither is an all-star. Kind of a bummer but better than paying $40M for the trio of Bled-Dragic-IT in my opinion.

Yea but even if you forget GSW, I don't think we even have a top 4 backcourt in the West.

GSW, POR, LAC, OKC and actually even Houston all have better backcourts imo. (Of course for OKC and Houston, it's basically one man backcourts but still). You can maybe even make the case that Memphis has a stronger backcourt.

Right now, we're probably in the same tier as New Orleans and Dallas in terms of backcourt imo.

[Qwigglez]

haha bitter coming from the guy who wanted us to remove our protection and Randle for Dragic , its the truth, between bled/knight ext. you'll be between 25-30mill between two undersized combo guard, add in the rest of the your guaranteed contracts and you're looking in the 50mill range before your picks. 7-12mill isn't enough to sign a game changer, thus medicore but to be fair to you, the west medicore is better the east bottom 4 that's in the playoff.

They both can't be undersized if they are both playing together. Clearly one is playing PG and being 6'2/6'3 isn't undersized for a PG. If you are talking about 50mil range of salary for the summer, I'm pretty sure that's after we would sign/extend Knight right? I'm sure the Suns gameplan is to go after a top tier free agent before giving Knight his money as he's a restricted free agent, that way they can maximize their salary issues.

yes and a fair point I guess it'll work out then if that were the case since I don't see anybody offering Knight a big contract from the start of FA till all the other FA Pg's are signed.

That's what I think the Suns front office game plan is. However, any team could screw that up by offering Knight a contract early in free agency forcing the Suns to match. Who knows what will happen.

[TeamTragic]

RealGM's worst trade deadline team with an outstanding 65% of the votes is...

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1374074#start_here

Hah. And if the Lakers land a semi-decent FA, draft a top 5 player and get Randle playing, suddenly they're not a bottom 5 team.

Then Dragic leaves, or gets maxed (pick your poison) and that 2021 unprotected pick turns into a top 5 pick (Bosh is off the books in 2019 so it'll have to be a quick reboot otherwise)

Then Brandon Knight re-signs for $15M/yr, the Suns lock up their backcourt for less than $30M/yr amid the cap rise, BK improves to be a borderline All-Star in the West.

All of the above isn't far-fetched if you look into a crystal ball. And if it happens, the Suns suddenly go from losing the deadline to winning it.

But for the time being we've 'lost' the deadline.

[saintEscaton]

LAL fans so bitter

Pho while getting out of IT contract will now have to pay up to keep Knight, again they'll be nearly capped out and still as medicore as ever.....a win win I must say for me as Pho is one of the more hated fan base to me.

There's even more in their thread talking about us giving their pick to Philly

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1373599#start_here

haha bitter coming from the guy who wanted us to remove our protection and Randle for Dragic , its the truth, between bled/knight ext. you'll be between 25-30mill between two undersized combo guard, add in the rest of the your guaranteed contracts and you're looking in the 50mill range before your picks. 7-12mill isn't enough to sign a game changer, thus medicore but to be fair to you, the west medicore is better the east bottom 4 that's in the playoff.

Well good luck with your current tank to win the 2016 KD sweepstakes strategy. I'm sure it will all work out cauz you know brand name recognition. Marquee FAs wouldnt care about landing in destinations with competitive rosters if they get the keys to Lalaland