Official Trade Thread -- Part XL

[NatP4]

It will always baffle me. Edwards was an inefficient chucker that played absolutely no defense in college. As it turns out, he’s the exact same player in the NBA. You would never know from all the tweets and highlights on sports center. It’s even more bizarre because in his freshman season, he played over 1000 minutes and took over 500 shots! Pretty substantial sample size. Nothing suggested he was worthy of the top pick in the draft.

It’s just something to be conscious of in evaluating this years draft because there are ALOT of these highly recruited athletes that have been poor college/g league players that will go in the top 10 because of run and jump ability and measurables.

When looking at most of the mock drafts out there, I see 3-4 players that will go on to be good NBA players from the top 10.

[Ruzious]

I can’t decide if it’s going to be Drummond or PJ Tucker for Troy Brown Jr.

I'm really not worried about them trading for Tucker. There really isn't much room for him in the rotation, and he's had an awful season so far.

Trading for Drummond wouldn't bother me all that much (if we didn't include Brown Jr.). I t's ultimately just expirings for expirings, except we offload Bryant's contract. I'm ambivalent on Bryant because I think we can obtain a center in the offseason just as effective as Bryant for the same money.

I think it would be a mistake to trade Bryant. (Unless it's a great offer.) We have a tendency to focus on what Thomas doesn't do well (defend, rebound) and forget what he does do well (spread the floor with his 3pt shooting, make short jumpers, run the floor, play extremely hard). Bryant played well in the bubble and even seemed to have improved somewhat as a rim protector.

Thomas played in all of 10 games this season. I'm convinced that we would be seeing a breakout season for the 23 year old if he hadn't gotten hurt.

Instead of trading Bryant, I would prefer to see the Zards add a good rebounding, defensive-oriented PF to play next to him.

I'm in general agreement there, but it's awfully hard to find great PF prospects nowadaze - which is one reason Mobley is such a great asset. I'm thinking (assuming we can't get Mobley)... trade down a little for Bassey, and re-sign Mo Wagner. That gives us the ability to trade Bryant to get another asset, so we can get Butler from Baylor and Hauser/Huff from UVA.

[nate33]

A Mobley/Bryant combo at PF/C would be pretty nice. Bring in Hachimura off then bench and it's a pretty solid 3-man rotation at the two positions (assuming Hachimura continues to improve). Over time, Mobley will fill out to be a full time center. Meanwhile, Bryant's ceiling is capped by his physical limitations, allowing Hachimura to ultimately surpass him as the better player. Two years down the road, I'd love to see a Hachimura/Mobley combo at PF/C with Bryant coming off the bench. That's a heck of a lot of defensive versatility.

[Ruzious]

It will always baffle me. Edwards was an inefficient chucker that played absolutely no defense in college. As it turns out, he’s the exact same player in the NBA. You would never know from all the tweets and highlights on sports center. It’s even more bizarre because in his freshman season, he played over 1000 minutes and took over 500 shots! Pretty substantial sample size. Nothing suggested he was worthy of the top pick in the draft.

It’s just something to be conscious of in evaluating this years draft because there are ALOT of these highly recruited athletes that have been poor college/g league players that will go in the top 10 because of run and jump ability and measurables.

When looking at most of the mock drafts out there, I see 3-4 players that will go on to be good NBA players from the top 10.

He's one of the top few physical freaks in the NBA - like Jaylen Brown but even more explosive. Looks like he's about 230 lbs of muscle. And he has the mindset of a scorer. As he gets smarter, he'll get a lot better. I watched the Pups last night. He did some things that amazed me and showed some smarts that I didn't expect.

[payitforward]

I half expect the Wizards to do something foolish.

Wizards in: Drummond
Cleveland in: Lopez, Bryant, Brown Jr., Smith, Jerome Robinson

That does have the right "feel" doesn't it?

But, 5 out & 1 back in would leave 4 roster spots to fill w/ insufficient room under the tax line to fill them.

[gambitx777]

I think the Cavs do that trade all day long. I've said before I think drummands rebounding solves a lot of this teams issues. Slight over pay imo with bryant and brown. But I think pair this with a trade of Bertans to a team for either cap relief and picks or younger smaller contracts and a little cap relief. Such as to boston, NYK, 76ers, the hawks, pels, gs, clips. Could fix that issue.

I half expect the Wizards to do something foolish.

Wizards in: Drummond
Cleveland in: Lopez, Bryant, Brown Jr., Smith, Jerome Robinson

I don't see it. The problem is that it's a salary-neutral trade but we'd have to go out and fill 3 or 4 roster spots, and that would get us into the luxury tax.

If Ted is willing to pay the tax, I'd do the same trade but keep Troy Brown Jr. I figure Cleveland would go for it because the bottom line is that they're buying out Drummond anyhow. With this trade, they save $3M in the trade before they start buying guys out. They could then see if they can give away Lopez to a team with a TPE and save even more money.

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[nate33]

I think the Cavs do that trade all day long. I've said before I think drummands rebounding solves a lot of this teams issues. Slight over pay imo with bryant and brown. But I think pair this with a trade of Bertans to a team for either cap relief and picks or younger smaller contracts and a little cap relief. Such as to boston, NYK, 76ers, the hawks, pels, gs, clips. Could fix that issue.

I think we need to be careful about understanding the consequences of trading Bertans. The dirty little secret about the team is that they don't shoot well at all from 3-point range (ranking 28th overall in 3P%) and their overall offense has been pretty bad after an okay start. Over the first 21 games, they had the 10th ranked offense, but over the last 20 games, they have the 26th ranked offense. Overall, they rank 23rd.

And that's with Bertans. Take Bertans and the spacing he provides out of the lineup and teams will pack the paint even more, making it very difficult for Beal and Westbrook to score.

I'm fine with trading Bertans under the premise that we should sacrifice current talent to build for the future. But trading him is going to make it harder to win games. It doesn't make sense to make to trade Bertans to make us worse, and then add Drummond to win now.

[gambitx777]

I agree with you but I think rebounding would really help the team with or without Bertans. Someone showing to be given the chance to fill that production weather it be matthews, rui , or deni. Also it depends on who you get for Bertans. I've mentioned nesmith from boston, he would be a decent chance to improve our 3pt shooting and who we bring in off the street. We could find some shooting there. I agree with you though it's a gamble but if we get some decent assets for Bertans I would be happy tolling those dice.

I think the Cavs do that trade all day long. I've said before I think drummands rebounding solves a lot of this teams issues. Slight over pay imo with bryant and brown. But I think pair this with a trade of Bertans to a team for either cap relief and picks or younger smaller contracts and a little cap relief. Such as to boston, NYK, 76ers, the hawks, pels, gs, clips. Could fix that issue.

I think we need to be careful about understanding the consequences of trading Bertans. The dirty little secret about the team is that they don't shoot well at all from 3-point range (ranking 28th overall in 3P%) and their overall offense has been pretty bad after an okay start. Over the first 21 games, they had the 10th ranked offense, but over the last 20 games, they have the 26th ranked offense. Overall, they rank 23rd.

And that's with Bertans. Take Bertans and the spacing he provides out of the lineup and teams will pack the paint even more, making it very difficult for Beal and Westbrook to score.

I'm fine with trading Bertans under the premise that we should sacrifice current talent to build for the future. But trading him is going to make it harder to win games. It doesn't make sense to make to trade Bertans to make us worse, and then add Drummond to win now.

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[wall_glizzy]

Andre Drummond is not a good basketball player! What's more, he's almost certain to make it to the buyout market, at which point we'll be about his 29th choice of team to sign with. Please, no more of this.

[payitforward]

Andre Drummond is not a good basketball player! What's more, he's almost certain to make it to the buyout market, at which point we'll be about his 29th choice of team to sign with. Please, no more of this.

Trading for Drummond would be completely pointless. Also, as far as I can tell, pretty much impossible.

[gambitx777]

I don't think it's pointless, he's a really good rebounder and is still mobile and big. Still have good offensive out put and would be good at cleaning up the teams bricks

Andre Drummond is not a good basketball player! What's more, he's almost certain to make it to the buyout market, at which point we'll be about his 29th choice of team to sign with. Please, no more of this.

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[gambitx777]

Definitely not impossible if you trade Bertans to one of a few teams that not need to do an even trade

Andre Drummond is not a good basketball player! What's more, he's almost certain to make it to the buyout market, at which point we'll be about his 29th choice of team to sign with. Please, no more of this.

Trading for Drummond would be completely pointless. Also, as far as I can tell, pretty much impossible.

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[Dark Faze]

I can't imagine Tommy not forcing some kind of answer for the defense by the deadline. This is unbearable.

[nate33]

I can't imagine Tommy not forcing some kind of answer for the defense by the deadline. This is unbearable.

Reminder that the team's DRtg over the past 20 games is 112.9, which ranks them the 17th best defense.

The defense has been respectable lately. It's the offense that is suffering.

[payitforward]

Definitely not impossible if you trade Bertans to one of a few teams that not need to do an even trade

Trading for Drummond would be completely pointless. Also, as far as I can tell, pretty much impossible.

Pointless because we could not keep him -- he'll get a reasonably big contract.

Impossible, because even if we traded Bertans & somehow only took Drummond back (good luck making that work in the trade machine!), we'd still be over the tax line by almost $10m.

[payitforward]

I can't imagine Tommy not forcing some kind of answer for the defense by the deadline. This is unbearable.

Reminder that the team's DRtg over the past 20 games is 112.9, which ranks them the 17th best defense.

The defense has been respectable lately. It's the offense that is suffering.

Fair enough, but tonight we scored 122 points at a .625 TS% Unfortunately, they were at .650 -- &, more importantly, as usual we allowed our opponent more chances to score than we had, which makes it hard to win.

They missed 42 FGAs, but we only got 31 defensive boards. We missed 43 FGAs, & they got 37 defensive boards.

That was the game. Period.

[nate33]

I can't imagine Tommy not forcing some kind of answer for the defense by the deadline. This is unbearable.

Reminder that the team's DRtg over the past 20 games is 112.9, which ranks them the 17th best defense.

The defense has been respectable lately. It's the offense that is suffering.

Fair enough, but tonight we scored 122 points at a .625 TS% Unfortunately, they were at .650 -- &, more importantly, as usual we allowed our opponent more chances to score than we had, which makes it hard to win.

They missed 42 FGAs, but we only got 31 defensive boards. We missed 43 FGAs, & they got 37 defensive boards.

That was the game. Period.

I'm not saying we don't need to get better. I'm just saying that the defense isn't "unbearable". The way the league is going, everyone has trouble stopping people. We've only been slightly worse than average at defense. (Note, that's if you only count the games after the Covid hiatus. We were horrific early in the season.)

Basically, I'm saying that there's no particular reason to focus on defense if we're looking for an improvement at the deadline. We need to focus on just about everything. Pretty much the only important thing that we do well is get to the free throw line.

[WallToWall]

Obviously, this team will not contend for anything but ping pong balls this year. So, the question I have is, when is it the best time to trade Beal, Bertans, and Westbrook, and any other player that is not a young pup? If the intent is to get draft picks in trade, is it better to wait till we have an idea of where other teams will be picking, before we make a trade - that means, trade at the end of the season? Or, should we sell while the selling is high for the valued player(s), before we know where other teams will be picking - that means trade by the trade deadline?
IMO, Beal's trade value will remain high now and through the end of the season. I think we trade him at the end of the season.
Bertans needs to redeem his value. So, we need him to play well now and through the season. At the end of the season, we can trade him. Westbrook is back to being a triple double stat. He should be traded by the trade deadline. All other assets can and should be traded before the trade deadline.
Bryant, Hach, Avidja, and yes, TBJ, will give us an above average set of players in 2 years. Mix in some good draft picks, and we may have something.

[gambitx777]

I figured out about 8 different ways to do this trade that gets us further under the tax it's doable and I also don't think he's gonna get much more than mid level money next year especially if he's happy here with beal. Also again I think he solves some issues for the team.

Definitely not impossible if you trade Bertans to one of a few teams that not need to do an even trade

Trading for Drummond would be completely pointless. Also, as far as I can tell, pretty much impossible.

Pointless because we could not keep him -- he'll get a reasonably big contract.

Impossible, because even if we traded Bertans & somehow only took Drummond back (good luck making that work in the trade machine!), we'd still be over the tax line by almost $10m.

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[nate33]

Obviously, this team will not contend for anything but ping pong balls this year. So, the question I have is, when is it the best time to trade Beal, Bertans, and Westbrook, and any other player that is not a young pup? If the intent is to get draft picks in trade, is it better to wait till we have an idea of where other teams will be picking, before we make a trade - that means, trade at the end of the season? Or, should we sell while the selling is high for the valued player(s), before we know where other teams will be picking - that means trade by the trade deadline?
IMO, Beal's trade value will remain high now and through the end of the season. I think we trade him at the end of the season.
Bertans needs to redeem his value. So, we need him to play well now and through the season. At the end of the season, we can trade him. Westbrook is back to being a triple double stat. He should be traded by the trade deadline. All other assets can and should be traded before the trade deadline.
Bryant, Hach, Avidja, and yes, TBJ, will give us an above average set of players in 2 years. Mix in some good draft picks, and we may have something.

I think Bertans' value is already restored. He started rough because of conditioning issues due to Covid and quarantines, but he has been his old self ever since coming back from Covid. No competent GM will assume he peaked last year and is now in decline. He should be shopped now, particularly if the intent is to trade Beal in the offseason.

The best time to trade Beal is the offseason. If we trade Beal, it must be for a top 4 pick, and we won't know until the lottery who has the picks.

I don't think there is a time to trade Westbrook. I don't see a scenario where we can unload him without giving up a pick.