2024-25 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

lillard's probably done for good. if it is the achilles, he'll be 36 by the time he's ready to play again

bucks are toast and giannis probably ends up in houston this summer

 

^ or OKC

 

two centers and a POA defender is what we need ...

 

Reaves, Rui and Luka are all weaker defenders. I think most likely Rui needs to go out, even though he has been our best shooter this year.

Right now we don’t actually have an athletic SF. All 4 of Lebron, Rui, Vando and DFS are PFs at this time. Lebron is one of the best PFs in the league, so he starts. And you probably have Vando back him up in the regular season.

DFS will continue to back up the SF spot. But I think we need an athletic SF to start that can shoot and defend 1-3. That’s what we’re missing.

 

Luka is a better defender than he's getting credit for, just saying.

 

Honestly, I feel like we’ve needed the same things for several seasons. I expect us to be all in and very active in the offseason to address our need for a quality big man and wing defender

 

I’m not saying he is bad, I’m just saying he isn’t a premier defender. And you probably don’t want two many average defenders in your team if you’re trying to win it all. If we had good defenders at the 3, 4 and 5 - we can afford Luka and Reaves at the 1 and 2.

 

felt like dallas really took off with djj in this role. he can defend 1-3 and finish plays. hyper athletic. they picked him up off the scrap heap. who's the next one out there right now?

i've liked dsj for a career revival for two years now, but he's more of a 1-2 defender and still hasn't come around on the shot. but djj was a similarly bad shooter prior to dallas, too.

i think the hope was that fudge character we had last year in south bay might be that kind of player eventually.

one luxury you have with reaves/luka/lebron is you can afford to play these willowy 6'6" guys who don't have great ball skills but can defend the perimeter and finish plays.

 

Will be an interesting offseason to say the least. We're in a weird situation where we have to build around a Luka/LeBron pairing for next season but also think about what the team looks like around Luka beyond that. Austin is at the center of that conversation. If you have Luka and LeBron, I've come around to thinking that it might be a net benefit to turn Austin into a more defensive-minded, super high-level role player or two good role players. But LeBron is 40 and the second he's gone having Austin here with Luka long term makes more sense. It will be interesting to see how they navigate that.

Beyond that, it's clear we need a legit starting caliber center and then more athleticism among the back half of the rotation guys. The stuff we have to trade isn't super compelling. We have $11 million expirings for Kleber and Gabe. We have Vando also at $11 million but for three more years. That won't be easy to move, but considering this team committed to playing small with shooting at the 5 spot and Vando was still too bad offensively to make much of an impact in the playoffs...it may be time to pull the plug. We have Knecht, whose value I'm unsure of.

So I think we need:

• A starting caliber, rim-protecting center (and maybe a new backup, not sure Hayes is back after that vote of no confidence from JJ)
• An athletic two-way wing that can play 20ish minutes a night (I like Rui and DFS, but they're not 40+ minutes in a must win playoff game guys. We need to one more guy to complete a LeBron/DFS/Rui wing rotation)
• Athletic backcourt POA defender that can stay on the court offensively (maybe Goodwin can become this guy, I really appreciate what he gave us after showing up late in the year, but we need a better version of him essentially)

And that's assuming Austin isn't going out to get those guys. If Austin is in a trade to fill one or more of those spots, then you need someone that can handle the ball and score off the bench. Same issue we ran into when we traded DLo for DFS, before the Luka trade came out of nowhere.

 

we could go all in and try to get claxton from bkn with our two expirings and knecht (maybe a 1st, too, though).

we could go big salary with a vando/gabe/kleber for ayton trade, though i'm not in love with that one.

we could split the difference and give one of the expirings and some seconds for robert williams, then sign capela as the other center (which you'll need if you have williams).

last scenario preserves one of the expirings for an upgrade at wing/guard, possibly using knecht and/or the 1st to sweeten the pot. would have to see who's in the salary range there, but herb jones jumped to mind if NO blows it up.