Season Speculation, Trade Ideas & Discussion 2: End This Knightmare!

[AtheJ415]

Evan Turner broke his hand would you guys be willing to do this...
Suns get-
Meyers Leonard
Festus Ezeli
Blazers 1st (top 10 protection)

Blazers get-
Tyson Chandler
PJ Tucker

Blazers need defense and veteran leadership. They give up their 1st, but they still have Cleveland's 1st. Leonard is just straight terrible, but his contract isn't as bad as others (Miles Plumlee). I'd do this because of the pick, but also because we'd be forced to start Len the remainder of the season and I really want to see what he can do as a starter.
This trade would likely be a domino effect and would mean the front office is ready for a rebuild. Thoughts?

Or in a different direction (just for fun!)...
Suns get-
Allen Crabbe
Cavs pick

Blazers get-
PJ Tucker
Serge Ibaka

Magic get-
Brandon Knight
Blazers pick

Maybe to the 1st one. Probably would end up saying yes. Hell no to the 2nd one. Crabbe is insanely overpaid and the Cavs pick is of little value.

[bwgood77]

Evan Turner broke his hand would you guys be willing to do this...
Suns get-
Meyers Leonard
Festus Ezeli
Blazers 1st (top 10 protection)

Blazers get-
Tyson Chandler
PJ Tucker

Blazers need defense and veteran leadership. They give up their 1st, but they still have Cleveland's 1st. Leonard is just straight terrible, but his contract isn't as bad as others (Miles Plumlee). I'd do this because of the pick, but also because we'd be forced to start Len the remainder of the season and I really want to see what he can do as a starter.
This trade would likely be a domino effect and would mean the front office is ready for a rebuild. Thoughts?

Or in a different direction (just for fun!)...
Suns get-
Allen Crabbe
Cavs pick

Blazers get-
PJ Tucker
Serge Ibaka

Magic get-
Brandon Knight
Blazers pick

I'd just give them PJ for the Cavs pick and whatever salary we need to take back...the problem is how soon it expires. Try and get their pick lotto protected (or of course better if you can).

[AtheJ415]

Jabari has significantly more value than Bledsoe. I'd love to get him in PHX though.

Could not disagree more.

And you're allowed to.


But Parker is significantly younger, putting up borderline star numbers already and could only get better sooner. So there are people out there, many people too, who can feel justified in feeling that Parker is worth more than Bledsoe.

Point me to these borderline all-star numbers. Because that is a flat out lie beyond raw stats, which are still much worse than Bledsoe's. I agree he is much younger and thus may have more value than Bledsoe, but it isn't significant and would be the opposite for teams wanting to win now. Bledsoe is also a far better player today.

If 20 (on 16 shots a game) and 6 makes you an all-star with horrid advanced numbers (0 obpm, -1.2 dpm, both of which are especially bad considering the lack of depth on his team and that he gets to play a lot with Greak Freak, and an Ortg-Drtg differential is 0) and at best average shooting, then holy hell. Rudy Gay is now a career all-star.

I get that he's good for his age, and I know he has improved offensively (3 point shooting up, assist % up, etc.), but he's still a poor defender and isn't efficient enough to even up the game of his team offensively. He may get there one day, but I wouldn't say he's a guaranteed star at all. In fact, I wouldn't trade Warren for him (numbers wouldn't bare that out anymore given Warren's recent stretch, but he has at least shown a willingness to defend and has been a more efficient offensive player for his career). And with Jabari the defensive potential has not shown AT ALL. It may be nonexistant.

Bledsoe's O-Drtg is +1, which is much better considering he plays for a much worse team. WS/48 is also much higher for Bledsoe, which is especially telling because he plays on a team with drastically fewer wins to share, thus you would expect comparatively even players on teams that are losing to have much lower WS numbers than players on losing teams. His OBPM is 4 times higher than Jabari's (that is a MAMMOTH gap), and his DPM is also noticeably better (although also not good given how our starters defend).

[Zelaznyrules]

I'd give serious thought to trying this wacky approach. Call up Ainge and tell him that we'd like a little payback for the Thomas deal. And we desperately need the best chance possible to grab the first pick this season. Offer him Knight and Tucker for Amir, Smart and their 1st round pick or Knight for Amir and the right to swap picks with him after the lottery drawing (which means with Brooklyn). Tell him that our needs are such that if he can't work his end of it, we'll be offering Bledsoe and Tucker to Brooklyn instead. One way or the other, we want that top spot!

[lilfishi22]

I want to avoid a Portland type situation where they spent $18.5m to resign Crabbe, close to $24m to resign CJ and to a lesser extent, they signed Turner for $16m. The Blazers are sitting at 9th in the West right now, with the 3rd highest payroll and will have the top 2 highest payroll well into 2020. They have one of the biggest payrolls and will be capped out for the next 3 seasons yet they don't look particularly dangerous even with internal growth. They've done well to resign the guys they've developed but their talent are fairly pedestrian outside of CJ and Lilliard and even those two arguably aren't a good pairing long term. This is a team that could be treadmilling for years even with arguably better talent than we do.

Is Len a guy I want for $13-18m? Is TJ a guy I want for $15-20m? Do I want Tucker for $8-12m a year? We have money to spend but we can very quickly fall into the trap that many young teams fall into by resigning their own marginal talent, especially if they don't have a solid foundation of players to resign. I've said it before but I'm not convinced we have the foundations of a future contender. We just need to be real careful with the kind of contracts we hand out even if there's money to be spent.

Portland was forced to match, but their problem is that they are way over the cap anyway, so letting guys go doesn't help them...retaining them at least gives them players they can use or potentially trade. They have a multi-billionaire owner who doesn't care about the cap so now they just have more assets under control to play with, since you can retain your own players...he doesn't care about any tax either.

We need to keep the guys who we drafted. TJ won't get that much. Len will probably get somewhere in that range. I mean you can't let TJ go...even with this mysterious injury and playing like crap for a while after being our best player prior to that injury, he still measures out better than Booker overall in advanced stats....

http://bkref.com/tiny/D66am

Had he not had that mysterious injury he might still be our best player right now.

Paul Allen makes Sarver look legitmately poor but the point isn't whether the owner can afford a $140m payroll or whether they can sustain $50m in luxury tax over multiple years. My point is that there are restrictions to salary caps which means, even with all the exceptions and loopholes, teams are still limited on how much they can pay players and the ability to sign players once you're over a certain limit. So my post isn't so much about payroll sustainability or affordability (although affordability is more of an issue for Sarver v Allen); it's more about whether what we have is a group you want to invest long term in. As with most investments, you want a return on that investment and on the topic of basketball, ROI would be measured in wins, excitement, playoff success and ultimately a championship. Paul Allen's investment in his current group of players is considerable (as mentioned $140m a season over multiple seasons) but right now, I don't see much potential in an ROI other than perhaps regular season sucess and maybe a playoff appearance or two. The problem with that also is the fact that they have hit the upper limits on what they can do with that roster because they won't be a player in free agency and they could only get better internally or through trades. All I'm saying is that, we don't NEED to keep the guys we draft, especially if they aren't part of a foundation of a future contender. It makes no sense to pay role players 8 figures a year if they aren't going to be a big contributor of this future contender.

If we were in the Blazers shoes at the end of last season, it makes sense to keep Len and TJ under almost all circumstances since we aren't likely to find a replacement player at the veteran min nor through a trade without giving up some other valuable piece. But when we're the 2nd worst team in the league, I just want to be very careful in considering the steps we take moving forward. I haven't looked at our cap situation in detail moving forward but I'm all about getting better and if signing TJ and Len or any other young player coming up for an extension means we're potentially closing the door on an avenue to get better (free agency) then we should really look into whether they absolutely need to be resigned. We need every door open to us if we want to build a future contender, not lock ourselves into what we have at this point in time.

[lilfishi22]

I want to avoid a Portland type situation where they spent $18.5m to resign Crabbe, close to $24m to resign CJ and to a lesser extent, they signed Turner for $16m. The Blazers are sitting at 9th in the West right now, with the 3rd highest payroll and will have the top 2 highest payroll well into 2020. They have one of the biggest payrolls and will be capped out for the next 3 seasons yet they don't look particularly dangerous even with internal growth. They've done well to resign the guys they've developed but their talent are fairly pedestrian outside of CJ and Lilliard and even those two arguably aren't a good pairing long term. This is a team that could be treadmilling for years even with arguably better talent than we do.

Is Len a guy I want for $13-18m? Is TJ a guy I want for $15-20m? Do I want Tucker for $8-12m a year? We have money to spend but we can very quickly fall into the trap that many young teams fall into by resigning their own marginal talent, especially if they don't have a solid foundation of players to resign. I've said it before but I'm not convinced we have the foundations of a future contender. We just need to be real careful with the kind of contracts we hand out even if there's money to be spent.

Portland was forced to match, but their problem is that they are way over the cap anyway, so letting guys go doesn't help them...retaining them at least gives them players they can use or potentially trade. They have a multi-billionaire owner who doesn't care about the cap so now they just have more assets under control to play with, since you can retain your own players...he doesn't care about any tax either.

We need to keep the guys who we drafted. TJ won't get that much. Len will probably get somewhere in that range. I mean you can't let TJ go...even with this mysterious injury and playing like crap for a while after being our best player prior to that injury, he still measures out better than Booker overall in advanced stats....

http://bkref.com/tiny/D66am

Had he not had that mysterious injury he might still be our best player right now.

I don't get why anyone really thinks we need to let go of Len. We have the cap space to sign him, and he isn't untradeable at all. He's at worst a rotation big who will be signed into an ever increasing cap. And despite all of that he still has his upside.

He may never develop into the Marc Gasol-type offensive player we hoped, but we don't really need him to be. Our scoring is going to come from Booker and Warren in the future, with many of our other perimeter guys helping out.

We don't need to let him go or trade him but we do need to figure out whether he's someone you want to pay $12-18m a year for the next 5 seasons. I like Len and I'm probably in the small camp of fans who thinks he's worth more than $12m a year despite 7pts, 6rbs. I just don't want us to be so liberal with our cap space just because we have cap space. Many young teams do this and resign their own talent without really thinking about what they really contribute to their team and whether that chunk of cap space could go to someone else who could contribute more.

[bwgood77]

Portland was forced to match, but their problem is that they are way over the cap anyway, so letting guys go doesn't help them...retaining them at least gives them players they can use or potentially trade. They have a multi-billionaire owner who doesn't care about the cap so now they just have more assets under control to play with, since you can retain your own players...he doesn't care about any tax either.

We need to keep the guys who we drafted. TJ won't get that much. Len will probably get somewhere in that range. I mean you can't let TJ go...even with this mysterious injury and playing like crap for a while after being our best player prior to that injury, he still measures out better than Booker overall in advanced stats....

http://bkref.com/tiny/D66am

Had he not had that mysterious injury he might still be our best player right now.

I don't get why anyone really thinks we need to let go of Len. We have the cap space to sign him, and he isn't untradeable at all. He's at worst a rotation big who will be signed into an ever increasing cap. And despite all of that he still has his upside.

He may never develop into the Marc Gasol-type offensive player we hoped, but we don't really need him to be. Our scoring is going to come from Booker and Warren in the future, with many of our other perimeter guys helping out.

We don't need to let him go or trade him but we do need to figure out whether he's someone you want to pay $12-18m a year for the next 5 seasons. I like Len and I'm probably in the small camp of fans who thinks he's worth more than $12m a year despite 7pts, 6rbs. I just don't want us to be so liberal with our cap space just because we have cap space. Many young teams do this and resign their own talent without really thinking about what they really contribute to their team and whether that chunk of cap space could go to someone else who could contribute more.

You just can't have confidence you can find free agents who are better with so many teams after them.

[Mulhollanddrive]

Len's Block + Defensive Rebounding Rate for Centers < 26 is only bettered by Davis, Embiid, Drummond, Gobert.

He's next ahead of Towns.

[MrMiyagi]

Len's Block + Defensive Rebounding Rate for Centers < 26 is only bettered by Davis, Embiid, Drummond, Gobert.

He's next ahead of Towns.

And he has the highest foul rate in the entire NBA - not really but he's 7th per 36 minutes among players with 600 or more minutes (2nd among players with 900+ minutes, only behind Marquese Chriss) logged.