Bishop45 wrote:BenoUdrihFTL wrote:I'd consider something like CJ + Nurkic for Bam + DRob/Nunn (because I think Nurk has huge upside if he can stay healthy) but CJ for Butler makes no sense to me
Compression of morbidity; We're not going to win either way, the best way to remain a decent team that could attract stars, without bottoming out, is to grab another, young, elite wing
Doesn't have to be CJ, but he's what's available. If Jaylen Brown or some other wing of similar value were available, I'd go for them. This core is likely done, need to think ahead
I just don't think replacing Yimmy with CJ (or another player on CJ's level) would leave us with a decent team. We might not bottom out as in 20 win basement dwellers, but I definitely think we'd miss the playoffs and win somewhere around 35-40 games at most. Bucks series notwithstanding, Yimmy was massively impactful during the regular season, like top 10ish in the NBA impactful and the advanced metrics back that up:
- 4th in bball-index's LEBRON
- 6th in 538's boxscore RAPTOR
- 11th in 538's overall RAPTOR
- 12th in 538's WAR
Remove him from the roster and you're looking at a sub-30 win team and I don't think CJ and RoCo are enough to elevate that to even an 8th seed. We'd be in that no-man's land territory with CJ as your #1 on offense (yikes) and he's still owed $100 mil over the next 3 years. Perhaps I'm lower on him than most observers but I don't rate CJ as an elite wing, and he'll be 30yo next season so I don't really consider him to be young either. He's actually more on Yimmy's timeline than Bam's
Now if you could move Bam instead of Yimmy for CJ, and you get back Nurkic as well... now CJ is your 3rd guy on offense (if we actually utilize Nurkic optimally) and that gets much more interesting imo
I'd still to prefer a dice roll of DRob S&T + Dragic for Porzingis + Kleber or Powell (or even JRich if he somehow opts in) since we give up neither Yimmy or Bam, but that didn't seem like a very popular idea when I posted it here a week ago lol