2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

has anyone's? feel like at this point teams should be wary of taking adebayo, tbh.

 

Wiggins numbers from a team perspective were really good the year before and the year after their championship run (he played well I thought against the Lakers when the Lakers beat them). Outside of that he's been bad.

I was really into getting Wiggins prior to Smart/Ayton and now I'm not so sure. Rui frankly is a pretty equivalent player (intensity waxes and wanes, physically imposing yet you don't notice enough of physicallity in game, can light it up for a few games) who is younger and less injury prone. big difference probably is he will get lost more as an off-ball defender, messes up his defensive assignments, vs Wiggins.

I'd only pull the trigger if it's a pure trash for trash move and Rui isn't trash IMO.

 

I’m not trying to trade with Miami. Bump that.

no players over there. I don’t want Wiggins. He’s close to just retiring from the NBA.

how about we start training camp and see how this team looks.

 

You don’t trade Rui Hachimura for Andrew Wiggins. You don’t mess with our team culture. Rui Hachiumura has fit really well here.

he’s been great on offense and good on defense. A 2 way player. If you compare his stats you’d be so surprised how he compares to Ron Artest. Same size and everything.

 

You can’t mess with team chemistry.

 

Wiggins will play another 5 years easy. His athleticism is off the charts and the guy just coasts because he can naturally move better than 90% of NBA players. He’ll have a Vince Carter like end to his career where he’ll be ok for a good 6-7 years longer than you expect.

But I don’t think he’s better than Rui. He may be better defensively but Rui is the better shooter, post defender and scorer.

Unless we could get it done with Kleber, Gabe and Dalton - no thanks.

 

Without LeBron Rui is about 18-19 points a game on this team. You can’t just give that up.

 

Luka 29 points Reaves 22 points Rui 19/20 points. Ayton 18 points a game.

that’s a lot of scoring. And we are going to need to be able to replace that when Lebron retires.

 

hmmm...i don't see him like carter. doesn't have anything approaching the grace, which is shorthand for a lot of strength in terms of balance. jordan, ant, kobe (to some extent) all had that kind of easy athleticism. i view wiggins's as more like lebron's. and lebron is still an athlete, but if his game was predicated on it, he'd have either retired or become a backup big years ago. wiggins isn't as big as lebron and has nothing like the ball skills/hoop iq, so i don't know if his shelf life will be as you're predicting.

i'm open to being wrong on that, though. also, carter played his last several years on low-dollar deals. he signed his last big deal at age 30, when he was still a much better player than wiggins is now. he declined fairly precipitously in the following years and was on bae/sub-mle type deals after that (he was tpmle when he was a key bench player for the post title mavs, a middling team).

this is a long way to say that sure, when wiggins takes the tpmle two years from now, sign me up. trading useful things for him at 30 per...pass.

 

I've always been an NBA guy so I don't watch a lot of college ball ever. But I remember watching VC in college. he came in with an absolute ton of hype going to NC when NC was the place to go s/p Jordan and then somehow he didn't take off pardon the pun right away. Sort of forgot about him and then watched NC with him and Jameson his final year. God damn did that dude's athleticism just pop - I was like what was I watching. Had no idea about the rest of his basketball ability but I've seen all the great dunkers and never seen anything like a young VC.

Still crazy that Jameson was picked ahead of him and that his career frankly was a bit disappointing. With that jumper and athleticism, kind of crazy that he may not be considered a top 5 shooting guard of all time.



Still brings a chill down the spine seeing what he was able to do. Back on topic: Wiggins is nowhere near as athletic as VC and I don't see the Lebron athleticism comparison to be honest. Frankly seems a slight lol - what makes Lebron different is the size he's a true forward more along the line of a Dr. J then a SG like jordan, ant, kobe. The freight train with agility was something that was obvious from the beginning with him. With Wiggins this issue for me is his athleticism just doesn't seem to translate that well on the court. Reminds me more of other UNC products like Barnes, Bagley and Marvin Williams who all tested well athletically but doesn't translate in game all that well. The speed of the game seems to neutralize these dudes ability to fully harness what they got.

 

Idk...I'd be open to Rui,Kleber, Knecht and a protected FRP for Wiggins and Ware. Wiggins, Smart and Vando, gives us 3 high level wing defenders, and Ware is the young, athletic, lob threat shot blocker, that would fit Luka to a T. A fair exchange IMO.

 

what i meant is that lebron's not graceful. his athleticism is insane, but it's more like a football player. there was never a ton of fluidity to his movement, even at apex. wiggins is like that, but like 40lbs lighter and a couple inches shorter. great straight line speed, good quick burst/explosion, great leaping, but less body control/grace. you mentioned dr. j in addition to reiterating mj, ant, vc. i'd add young tmac, too. the way those guys moved was different than wiggins and even lebron.

but i mostly agree with what you're saying. i just think it's hard to articulate the difference. my main point was that i don't think of vc when i see wiggins. harrison barnes is definitely a better comparison for me as well.

 

Except they won't trade Ware...

I didn't mean that he had Vince Carter's style of athleticism, but more so that I can see him having a similar end to his career as a 20min role player for another 5-6 years.

 

yeah I get what you're saying - frankly I think Lebron could have easily been the greatest non-QB football player of all time. I grew up in Ohio and watched Antonio Gates play ball in college (he was awesome and so fun to watch - just a very different kind of baller) and Lebron just blows him away in terms of speed, acceleration, agility, leaping and he's taller.

that being said there is no question that Lebron's athleticism even at this advanced age "pops" when watching him. Karl Malone with Dr. J hops when he was young was a fair comparison and it's interesting how it shows in game versus the more graceful types. The chase downs blocks of all things was something no one has done to the extreme level like James. A player who can wipe out fastbreaks the easiest possession in basketball in real time was a woah moment just like a VC dunk.

Wiggins even in college to me just never wowed me - I though Embiid "popped' more when he wasn't hurt. Admittedly in that finals against Boston there was a definite reason he got repped as GS second best player he was physically overpowering Tatum/Brown so it's not like he isn't special athletically but it just doesn't translate. Probably a combination of motor processing speed and agility just not being enough to activate the full arsenal? This kind of gets back to guys like Knecht as well - he's kind of dumb and doesn't set up his body well, particularly on defense to use his physical abilities to it's maximum.

 

yeah, that's possible, but i'll repeat that the last almost decade of vc's career, he was a tpmle guy. wiggins makes 30 per this year and next. be the team that signs wiggins at the tpmle, not the one that trades a bunch of stuff for him.

 

and if there are not, we have a ton of flexibility this summer, too. we're in a good spot overall.

 

I've been higher on Wiggins than most, but always to play WITH Rui and not in exchange for him. The appeal of Wiggins for me was having a trio of LeBron/Rui/Wiggins that could soak up all the minutes at the 3/4 and all bring different elements.

But now that I'm thinking of Luka as more of a 3/4 than a 2/3 (because defensive positioning is more important than offensive), I'm less interested in Wiggins. Wiggins guarded well at the POA in that 2022 Warriors run, but that was a while ago now. I'm looking more for a younger two-way guard type now. Abeer has mentioned Keon Ellis as that guy, he'd be awesome. I'd be dangling Knecht + the 2031 1st + more tbh for him. Devin Carter would be interesting as well, but not at the price of the first.