Official Trade Thread -- Part XXXIII

[Kanyewest]

Just think of where we were on July 1, 2016.

We had the exact same starting five then as we have now + Oubre -- but we also had max cap room and our 2017 pick. The moonshot plan was to upgrade the starting five; the backup plan was to field a professional bench (combo guard who can score/distribute, backup PF/C who can defend mobile 4/5s, specialists).

If EG had just had an average offseason -- not inspired, but not horrendous -- we'd have likely made it to the EC Finals (granted, we might've been a higher seed and faced the Cavs earlier in the bracket. But still).

Instead, EG managed to to bungle that cap room so *thoroughly* that he had to light that innocent 2017 pick on fire just 8 months later. And, here we are, July 7, 2017, with the same starting five + Oubre, only with no max cap room, no pick, a negative asset in Mahinmi, and an *extremely* iffy bench. We still need a combo guard who can score and distribute, and we (likely) still need a big who can defend mobile 4s and 5s.

Man, it takes a special kind of skill to turn a promising situation into a sad one so quickly.

I would say off the top of my head, the Wizards offseason was fairly average but that's only because the average was pretty horrific.

Teams that had probably just as bad of a free agency period

Chicago- Dwayne Wade/Rondo signings
Indiana- Al Jefferson didn't work out for them, neither did the George HIll for Jeff Teague trade, they also managed to sign Kevin Seraphin. May have lead to Paul George demanding a trade.
Detroit- wasted money on Boban and Jon Leur.
Phoenix- Big contracts to Dudley and Barbosa who they waived this offseason
OKC- Lost Durant
Atlanta- Lost Horford, signed Dwight Howard, sign Bazemore extension (although they did draft Prince)
Orlando- signed Biyombo, traded for Ibaka which lead to nothing
Charlotte- Batum extension, Sessions wasn't great for them either. I believe they gave one of the Plumlee brothers a bad deal.
OKC- Lost Kevin Durant
Memphis- Signed Chandler Parsons
Trail Blazers- gave massive contracts to Allan Crabbe, Evan Turner, and Meyers Leonard.
Lakers- See Mozgov and Luol Deng

I would give teams like the 76ers, Nets, Kings, New Orleans and LA Clippers incomplete.

Golden State, Boston, Utah, San Antonio had really good offseasons

Teams like the Bucks and Mavs had good offseasons relative to the Wizards.

[NatP4]

I want Jerian Grant, go get Jerian Grant Ernie. Jerian Grant is goood. If only we would've targeted him instead of Tim Frazier. Ugh. Maybe Chicago wants to move him for cheap because of the pg logjam they have.

[mhd]

Toronto had to throw in a future 1st and a high 2nd to get rid of Caroll. At a minimum, we'd need to trade 2 future firsts to dump Mahinmi. Thanks Ernie!

[queridiculo]

Toronto had to throw in a future 1st and a high 2nd to get rid of Caroll. At a minimum, we'd need to trade 2 future firsts to dump Mahinmi. Thanks Ernie!

There's a lot of bad deals out there now, seems like Mahinmi's is one bad deal in a sea of plenty, and after this year there's only two more years left on the deal.

You obviously don't want to spend $16 million a year on a backup, but $16 million seems to be the going rate for a starter with a pulse and there's a good chance Gortat will be gone before Ian.

Silver linings, that's all this franchise leaves us with.

[BigA]

The thing that keeps Ernie in business is that you can always point to GMs who've been bigger screw-ups, made worse deals, etc. Understanding Ernie's mistakes often involves considering opportunity costs that only become clear sometime later. His moves often have a reasonable rationale at the time. Plus he's following "The Plan."

[payitforward]

He is 28 not too at on and he's on a reasonable 2 year deal.

My bad, you are right. Don't want him anyway. Not if it costs us another R1 pick.

But youre not paying a first jsut for him, you are getting him and moving the mahinmi deal which is twice his and a year longer, so over all that's saving like 32 million, all while not really loosing a whole lot player wise.

I understand your point. But, a team cannot go year after year w/o adding young talent on the rookie salary scale. If you do that, you are sunk. You are never able to put together the talent you need to compete for a title.

Are there exceptions? Of course -- if you happen to have one of the best players in the history of the game, or 3 superstar FAs get together & say "lets all go to X together & win a couple of titles" & one of them says "I'll take a little discount to make it possible," etc.

But otherwise, it's really pretty much impossible. Given a salary cap, you have to have players who produce above their pay grade. That takes more than just drafting well, of course, but you do have to keep your picks & use them well.

We are already seeing the bad results of having no one from 4 of the last 7 drafts. & only 2 proven outstanding players from the other 3 of those drafts.

I keep fronting the example of GS & the way they continuously refresh their roster. Plus, it goes w/o saying, once you see some success from that you also get another kind of high-value player production: guys like Pachulia & West want to come play for you. So you are getting the most productive guys from the other end of player careers as well, i.e. from the back end.

GS isn't the only example of a franchise operating in this optimal way: San Antonio does as well. Utah has gotten better as well based on this way of working.

I could go on. There's a lot to learn from the way Danny Ainge moved on from his title based on a veteran trio. He saw how short-lived that was, & he responded by learning a different way of building a team.

Sorry to write at such length in response to a single trade idea, but this franchise is really driving me crazy right now. More ineptitude & blown opportunities than anything I've seen in many decades of watching all kinds of professional sports.

[payitforward]

The thing that keeps Ernie in business is that you can always point to GMs who've been bigger screw-ups, made worse deals, etc. Understanding Ernie's mistakes often involves considering opportunity costs that only become clear sometime later.

In an era of a salary cap, the lottery, etc. you really only have to look at one data set to get at least a summary sense of where a guy fits in the scale of GM ability: the team's record year by year over his tenure.

Not just the overall multi-year record, but the shape of improvement over time as well as the durability of that improvement & its upper limits. In Ernie's case, the message in that data is perfectly clear: this guy is a lousy GM.

[gambitx777]

My bad, you are right. Don't want him anyway. Not if it costs us another R1 pick.

But youre not paying a first jsut for him, you are getting him and moving the mahinmi deal which is twice his and a year longer, so over all that's saving like 32 million, all while not really loosing a whole lot player wise.

I understand your point. But, a team cannot go year after year w/o adding young talent on the rookie salary scale. If you do that, you are sunk. You are never able to put together the talent you need to compete for a title.

Are there exceptions? Of course -- if you happen to have one of the best players in the history of the game, or 3 superstar FAs get together & say "lets all go to X together & win a couple of titles" & one of them says "I'll take a little discount to make it possible," etc.

But otherwise, it's really pretty much impossible. Given a salary cap, you have to have players who produce above their pay grade. That takes more than just drafting well, of course, but you do have to keep your picks & use them well.

We are already seeing the bad results of having no one from 4 of the last 7 drafts. & only 2 proven outstanding players from the other 3 of those drafts.

I keep fronting the example of GS & the way they continuously refresh their roster. Plus, it goes w/o saying, once you see some success from that you also get another kind of high-value player production: guys like Pachulia & West want to come play for you. So you are getting the most productive guys from the other end of player careers as well, i.e. from the back end.

GS isn't the only example of a franchise operating in this optimal way: San Antonio does as well. Utah has gotten better as well based on this way of working.

I could go on. There's a lot to learn from the way Danny Ainge moved on from his title based on a veteran trio. He saw how short-lived that was, & he responded by learning a different way of building a team.

Sorry to write at such length in response to a single trade idea, but this franchise is really driving me crazy right now. More ineptitude & blown opportunities than anything I've seen in many decades of watching all kinds of professional sports.

Naw man I understand, and that why most of the time when I propose a trade deal it involves the following years first and not the current years first. I get that we need a first round pick I do, But I also see that at this point you have two options, you roll with Walls window and go all in and try to win now, (im not talking about all the stupid **** EG did to do this, AKA nicholson and mahinmi, but its a general statement.) Or you cash in on the stars you have and sell them high now and go into rebuild mode right now. Its hard to do both ways, and all im saying now is if you wanted to go the GS route we needed to stick to that say 3 years ago, not now, now you have to make a choice and either break it down and start over, or make the most of it now.

[Jimmy Recard]

Aron Baynes - a better, younger, more athletic, tougher, less injury prone, center than Mahinmi just signed with the C's for a quarter of the price we're paying Mahinmi this year, and on a one year deal!

**** me words can't describe how much I detest Ernie

[NatP4]

Aron Baynes - a better, younger, more athletic, tougher, less injury prone, center than Mahinmi just signed with the C's for a quarter of the price we're paying Mahinmi this year, and on a one year deal!

**** me words can't describe how much I detest Ernie

You can't be serious...

[Jimmy Recard]

Aron Baynes - a better, younger, more athletic, tougher, less injury prone, center than Mahinmi just signed with the C's for a quarter of the price we're paying Mahinmi this year, and on a one year deal!

**** me words can't describe how much I detest Ernie

You can't be serious...

About Baynes being a better basketball player than Mahinmi right now? Dead serious

[deneem4]

What's our current roster as of today with salary stats??

[gambitx777]

Aron Baynes - a better, younger, more athletic, tougher, less injury prone, center than Mahinmi just signed with the C's for a quarter of the price we're paying Mahinmi this year, and on a one year deal!

**** me words can't describe how much I detest Ernie

You do realise that ian was born in november of 1986 and aaron was born in december of 86 and Ian has always had much better stats than bynes and yes ian is a bit more injury prone and yes the contract is better but ian is in no way not a better player.

[payitforward]

What's our current roster as of today with salary stats??

Just over $122.2m for 12 guys: Wall, Beal, Porter, Oubre, Gortat, Mahinmi, Morris, Smith, Meeks, Frazier, Satoransky, & McCullough. I think we can assume that Ernie will pick up Sheldon Mac's option, which adds another $1.3m. If he also picks up Ochefu's option that again adds $1.3m.

That would leave us at $124.8m for 14 guys. We also have Michael Young signed as a 2-way player. Depending on how many days he spends w/ us vs. G League (max is 45 days), he costs us between $75K - $250K. I assume the "days with us" pay is part of our salary picture.

We have roster room for 1 more player, & we can sign 1 more 2-way player as well. I'm pretty sure we'll do both those things.

I also think it's pretty likely that we will trade either Gortat or Mahinmi: maybe this Summer or else at the deadline in order to get under the luxury tax. Look for yet another R1 pick to be sacrificed in that deal.

[long suffrin' boulez fan]

This is in the too little to matter department, but I'd rather see us keep Keene, Robinson and Cunningham over (alternate universe 1st round pick) McCullough

[BearlyBallin]

What's our current roster as of today with salary stats??

Just over $122.2m for 12 guys: Wall, Beal, Porter, Oubre, Gortat, Mahinmi, Morris, Smith, Meeks, Frazier, Satoransky, & McCullough. I think we can assume that Ernie will pick up Sheldon Mac's option, which adds another $1.3m. If he also picks up Ochefu's option that again adds $1.3m.

That would leave us at $124.8m for 14 guys. We also have Michael Young signed as a 2-way player. Depending on how many days he spends w/ us vs. G League (max is 45 days), he costs us between $75K - $250K. I assume the "days with us" pay is part of our salary picture.

We have roster room for 1 more player, & we can sign 1 more 2-way player as well. I'm pretty sure we'll do both those things.

I also think it's pretty likely that we will trade either Gortat or Mahinmi: maybe this Summer or else at the deadline in order to get under the luxury tax. Look for yet another R1 pick to be sacrificed in that deal.

How much did Michael Scott cost ? 1.7 mil ?

[queridiculo]

$1.7 sounds about right.

[gambitx777]

This is in the too little to matter department, but I'd rather see us keep Keene, Robinson and Cunningham over (alternate universe 1st round pick) McCullough

Chris did not play badly. ! Not at all. Give him a chance he's athletic and active and plays solid D .

I think.we.couls trade gortat at even or positive value. Mahinmi... I think trying to pull a s$t for Len makes sense he's probably only gonna get 8-10 mill a year so it helps us out and they get a pick and a play able center. I honestly would love a Zeller gortat swap with the hornets.

[payitforward]

What's our current roster as of today with salary stats??

Just over $122.2m for 12 guys: Wall, Beal, Porter, Oubre, Gortat, Mahinmi, Morris, Smith, Meeks, Frazier, Satoransky, & McCullough. I think we can assume that Ernie will pick up Sheldon Mac's option, which adds another $1.3m. If he also picks up Ochefu's option that again adds $1.3m.

That would leave us at $124.8m for 14 guys. We also have Michael Young signed as a 2-way player. Depending on how many days he spends w/ us vs. G League (max is 45 days), he costs us between $75K - $250K. I assume the "days with us" pay is part of our salary picture.

We have roster room for 1 more player, & we can sign 1 more 2-way player as well. I'm pretty sure we'll do both those things.

I also think it's pretty likely that we will trade either Gortat or Mahinmi: maybe this Summer or else at the deadline in order to get under the luxury tax. Look for yet another R1 pick to be sacrificed in that deal.

How much did Michael Scott cost ? 1.7 mil ?

Crap... I forgot about (the forgettable) Michael Scott. I think he's had 5 years experience, no? Drafted in R2 in 2012. If that's right, he earns $2.05m.

That means, if we pick Sheldon Mac's option & Ochefu's option, our roster would now be complete at $127m for 15 guys. Plus Michael Young's 2-way deal. Plus, I assume, 1 more 2-way deal. So, maybe one of Mac/Ochefu will go. I'd certainly rather keep Robinson.

[payitforward]

Chris did not play badly. ! Not at all.

Oh yes he did. In fact he played terribly.

In 30 minutes, he went 4-12. He got a total of 5 rebounds. He blocked 0 shots. He turned the ball over 5 times & got 1 steal.

Just for comparison, in 18 minutes Devin Robinson got 6 rebounds. He blocked 3 shots. He turned it over 2 times & also got 2 steals.

Give him a chance he's athletic and active and plays solid D ....

Sure, give him a chance. But, don't say he played ok when he didn't.