Wingy wrote:dice wrote:my plan was/is to trade lavine for as many young assets/picks you can find rather than overpaying him soon
Sounds like you're hoping for the very unlikely outcome of one, or more of those picks becoming as good as Zach Lavine, and Nik Vucevic. Having them turn out better than those guys becomes even more unlikely. Plus they need to stay healthy (hello, Derrick Rose...Grant Hill...Penny Hardaway, etc.).
Then the next idea for this plan becomes flipping these young asset/picks for a superstar, right? Also extremely unlikely because we are not LA, Miami, or even Brooklyn. The superstars dictate where they go. Why are they choosing a much worse version of this team, and franchise?dice wrote:make quality moves. that's always the plan. trade bad value for good value. if you can't find good value, sign players to short-term "prove it" deals. rinse and repeat until you strike gold, or if you get to the point where the raptors were for several years pre-kawhi, being a fringe contender ain't a bad place to be
Quality moves and all the stuff you said in the first part there. Why can't that be done from the position we're in now? We have a FO with an eye for NBA talent. Continuing to tinker from where we are right now can land us in that Raptors-zone where you're looking for one lucky move, or pick to get you over the hump. Red L pointed out the Jazz as a great example of slowly building up over time from a similar position as us.
AK appears to have just made the kind of move that hits on both things you're suggesting. Throwing out what has been garbage to us for an upside player in TBJ. Of course there's no guarantees on TBJ, but that's the exact sort of "gold" opportunity we're hoping to strike. While also grabbing Theis who isn't shiny whatsoever, but just plays winning ball. We had no depth, now suddenly we have minutes battles throughout. I'm sure AK will continue to improve the roster up, and down so we get better and better. No more try hard plucky Arcidiaconos. No more Felicios.
Then look at the current elite teams:
- Lakers - Father Time is going to beat even Lebron, and AD is injury-prone.
- Nets - Durant/Kyrie are injury-prone, plus it's a pretty volatile mix that's also aging into their 30s
- Bucks - for all Giannis is, does he have the look of a guy who's going to dominate scoring late in the playoffs? He can get better, so maybe.
- Sixers - probably the toughest team for us, but can Embiid keep staying healthy w/deep post season runs, and w/o an elite offensive perimeter player to go w/him?
These teams are much better than us right now mind you, but they are heavily flawed. This is not the GSW/Cavs era we saw a few years ago. Keep getting better until you're that true pretender right behind those teams (AK's working on it), then you're hoping to get lucky. It's just a different attempt at being lucky than hoping for a drafted superstar, or a string of consecutive all star players drafted (e.g. - Warriors).
There is probably 1 prospect coming up that is in the can’t miss (LeBron, Durant,) category. That guy is Emoni Bates and he will probably be in the 2023 draft. If there is a guarantee that the Bulls can draft him then I would be willing to trade an established star like LaVine for him. Unfortunately there is no possible way to guarantee being able to draft him.