closg00 wrote:Portis over KO alumni raise your hands. Kieff would be expiring and Portis would be in that slot just as we said, instead we will most-likely lose KO for nothing, that's my prediction.
Well, if that's where we're going forget about Bobby Portis, who after all hasn't been all that good (in fairness, I thought Portis was going to be terrific -- far better than he's turned out so far). Plus, we didn't think Portis would be there at #19 (our spot that year).
Oubre was very highly rated, but he was a one-&-done w/ only @700 minutes of college ball, so he was certainly a risk. I had no problem with Ernie taking that risk.
OTOH, given that I thought Portis would be gone, the guy I wanted (as did CCJ) was Kevon Looney, who's proved to be a better player than Portis so far.
Of course, better than Portis, better than Oubre, & in fact better than any other player taken that year w/ the exception of the #1 pick Karl Anthony Towns, is Larry Nance Jr. who went #27.
Lets see... supposed we'd traded our #19 for the #27 & #32 (somehow...) -- we'd have Larry Nance & Montrezl Harrell.
But wait, there's more! Nance was quite good even as a rookie, as was Harrell. So, we'd have had no reason to trade our 2016 lottery pick for Kieff. Plus, we'd still have had our 2016 R2 pick. We would have traded both those picks to move up 2 spots in the 2016 draft & take Damontis Sabonis.
Plus, we'd still have our R2 pick next year, which also went in the Oubre deal.
Lemme see... that's Nance, Sabonis & Harrell plus the upcoming R2 pick, right? Of course, with those guys on board, we wouldn't have had to panic in the Summer of 2016 & sign Nicholson (no need, we've got Nance), Smith (no need, we've got Harrell) & Mahinmi (no need, we've got Sabonis).
But wait, there's even more more: we no longer have to trade away our 2017 R1 pick to hide the idiotic error of signing Nicholson! Oh man... this is looking good!!
We've already got a lot of bigs, right? So lets use our #22 pick in 2017 to nab Josh Hart. No... wait a minute. He wasn't rated that high. So, in fact, lets trade our #22 plus our 2018 R2 pick to the Lakers for their #27 & #30 picks -- & take Kyle Kuzma & Josh Hart.
Ok, hmmm, what have we got so far? Oh yeah... Larry Nance, Montrezl Harrell, Damontis Sabonis, Kyle Kuzma & Josh Hart. Those 5 guys are making a combined $14.3m this year. No Jason Smith, no Ian Mahinmi, no Morris, no Oubre, no Meeks either lets assume). That's $36.7m gone.
So, we'd be paying $22.5m less salary this year. No tax problems. Tons of trade assets.
Gotta love that hindsight, huh? WOW!
Plus, I am sure I could re-do this so that we wind up with Jordan Bell too.