payitforward wrote:doclinkin wrote:...We traded away a late first round pick to provide leverage and flexibility for the Dinwiddie sign and trade....
I just noticed this, doc. Did I miss something? Or, what do you have in mind that I'm not getting...?
How did trading #22 for Holiday & #31 help in the acquisition of Dinwiddie?
I've laid this out before a few different places but maybe it got eaten by the site reset.
With the trade for Westbrook on the table we had exactly ONE guard on the roster that was signed: Bradley Beal. No back up to him, no veteran PG to play next to him. Yes we wanted Dinwiddie, but no guarantees, to get him we would need to do a sign and trade. Free agency was not yet open, so while we might have a few options to get him, none were at all a sure thing, and some were better than others. It was not a done deal even if both Spencer and the Wizards wanted each other. Brooklyn still had to be convinced. It could easily all have fallen apart.
In fact this trade has been cited as one of the most complicated trades in NBA history. Dinwiddie said he was stressed waiting for it to come to a resolution because at any point any one of the players could back out. Kuzma had said he was 100% sure he was going to be traded to Sactown for Buddy Hield.
That deal was all but inked before the Westbrook thing worked out... BUT.
Apparently LeBJ preferred Westbrook over Hield. At any rate, even if the Westbrook thing was possible, we had a 3-for-1 deal incoming, freighted with a lot of salary. Yes we would send out more than we were getting back, but were likely to still flirt with the luxury tax. Our roster was starting to fill up.
The Nets could not sign Dinwiddie because they are deep in lux tax. They wanted to send us DeAndre or another salary with him. No chance Tommy would want to do that, since that puts us in a similar boat. They also apparently wanted us to send a first round pick.
Now everybody in the league knows the Wizards are in a bind. We either make Beal happy and look like a contender, or he leaves, maybe for free. Mind you, this was before free agency, we had zero guards behind or next to Beal. No veteran PG, no back up 2G. KCP incoming IF we can swing the LA deal at the last minute. But no PG. If we sat down at the table saying: "we want Dinwiddie, he is our only plan" -- OR if we drafted a rookie PG and were hoping for them to carry the full weight of expectations, and Beal to be patient waiting on a guy to develop at the hardest position in the game -- then Brooklyn could lean on us harder. The longer those negotiations took, the fewer PGs would be on the market.
So Tommy looked through his rolodex of guards he likes, guards his analytics guys like, guys whose value may be suppressed right now, guys who have upside, guys who come cheap but have some experience in the league. Tommy liked Baby Holiday since his draft workouts. Indiana needed $ to sign their homegrown Jimmy Chitwood guy in TJ McConnell. Doubtless Shep phoned Beal and said "what do we think about trading for the little bro Holiday?". Beal, recalling his career .267 three-point percentage against Holiday said "Yeah, that's alright, I like that guy".
Then Tommy looked at a draft that was deep into the 2nd round and said: there will be a guy at the top of rd 2 that I like. Trading back doesn't hurt all that much. So he pulled the trigger. In the 2nd round you are not guaranteed a particular salary. There is flexibility in how it is structured. Trading to the top of round 2 gives Tommy wiggle room, or at least breathing space to get all other deals done and then say to the 2nd rounder's agent: "here is what we got left, how do we structure this so it works for everybody?"
Now. Recall this was LA's pick. Yes in theory it was ours, but it could have fallen apart. In theoretically trading back, we had to select a player at 22 that was agreeable both to LA and to Indiana. Indiana at 31 had to pick a guy that we both liked, in case the deal fell through.
Whatever the end result, Tommy didn't blink. We got Dinwiddie. Giving up only a TPE and 2nd round picks. And Hutchison.
The only 1st round pick we gave up was the one that we traded both for a veteran whose rep among players and analytics guys is better than his stats on paper --PLUS-- the first pick in the 2nd round in a deep year. LA and Indy were happy with Isaiah Jackson (if those parts of the deal did/did not work). The Wiz and Indy were happy with a project Big who could understudy for a couple years but had 1st round talent.
Washington did NOT have to take on additional salary from Brooklyn, and dodged the Lux tax. With the flexibility we even re-inked another +/- star from last year's free agency success in Raul Neto, as a 3rd string PG on an affordable deal.
In retrospect we could say HEY WE SHOULDA GOTTEN ALL THESE OTHER GUYS! But, we would have had to get Indiana and LA to agree. And at some point LA goes, "Hey LeBron, we are still the GM over here, you'll get Buddy Hield and be happy with it." Or the other players in the deal get fed up with the machinations, watching other teams add talent and make big deals (Chicago snatching Lonzo, etc). So Brooklyn panics and lines up another partner, and we are stuck with a disgruntled Westbrook and have to sign a billion players into the lux tax all on minimum deals. No chance we keep Beal on a team that is basically last year's team plus a mess of rookies and worse free agents.
Tommy had a ton of moving parts to make work. He got his guys, made a HOF player happy, made Beal happy, added youth and flexibility, didn't lose all that much. And he gambled on Aaron Holiday living up to his hunch, to Beal's approval, to his analytics guys analysis of his game effect.
In all, I'm pretty sure Tommy walks away from this deal with no qualms that he didn't also trade back for a half dozen rookies.