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

more fake news being leaked by the rat Ainge

 

as he said in the clip, not all 1sts are created equal. 2 1sts that belong to okc next year and the C Bags the following year might as well be 2nds.

imo, lotto-protected 1sts that turn into seconds are basically 2nds in terms of value to the receiving team. to the sending team, it's an opportunity cost (what if sending that pick unprotected got you a star?).

 

its Ainge, this tool leaks all the time to get people to fomo after his players

 

getting morris and plumlee on vet mins was nice for phx.

 

It's a fair argument. I think Williams is their center of the future and they will lock him multiple years and pay him good.
Richards is an expiring next year where he's going to "get paid".
Bitadze got 3/25, Wagner 2/22 and Jalen Smith 3/27. I think Richards should be aiming for around that. Are the Hornets going to pay that? They have to choose one of them and Williams is clearly better. But he is indeed injured a lot so the Richard's insurance argument makes sense.

His last year is not fully guaranteed at 5mil and he expires when the cap space goes up, Williams new contract kicks in and the year before Miller gets maxed. They have also 30mil committed after that year to Grant Williams and Josh Green (+ LaMelo, Bridges and Miller bigger contracts).

I just think it makes a lot of sense for them to get something back from him at some point. But your argument makes sense that they can try to get more than a couple 2nd rounders and 2 vet min lifers

Great pick up by Detroit, they'll either get assets for him at some point or they get a solid backup center for years. Maybe they're open to trade Stewart now?

 

rui and reddish for stewart might give us another center and open up a little wiggle room under the second apron. it's not fantastic, but it could help shore up a weakness.

the issue is that stewart's deal runs one year longer than rui's. rui's the more valuable player overall, too, probably.

just still annoyed we can't get a legit big body in here.

 

Maybe we could use Detroit as a dumping ground to unload Rui/Gabe/Reddish/2025 2nd/ 2031 2nd for Stewart?

 

At that point I don't think we're making the team any better. We could really use another big, but when you look around the league its pretty common for that to be a weak point when you have an elite or All-Star caliber big like AD. Nuggets have DJ who's been washed for like 5 years at this point, they just play Gordon as the backup 5 when games actually matter. Sixers have been cycling through the centers we discard. Kings have Alex Len, that's okay I guess. Heat have this Kel'el Ware kid who has some talent but had motivation and effort issues in college. Pacers have Wiseman who could have been a nice reclamation project for us. Wolves are the outlier with Towns and Reid behind Gobert, and even Reid isn't really a rim protector.

All that to say, there's not much of a middle class for centers in the first place, and if you have a high-level big it might not make sense to deploy resources to get a second good one. I'd love to have Kessler, but not for the cost of two firsts when we don't want AD playing too many minutes at the 4 anyway. So this second big is probably maxing out at like 22ish minutes a night, less than that in the playoffs.

 

so are you saying you think hayes and/or wood is enough? i disagree. and i actually like hayes as a backup center--if your other center is a bruiser. we just don't have anyone to bang down low. that's why i mention stewart even though he's not tall. he's just big and strong.

i'd argue pretty much all playoff (not okc last year) teams have at least one legit big body, and many have at least two. AD sort of counts, but it's not his strong suit, and i'd rather spare him having to wrestle with the steven adamses of the world as often as possible. hayes and wood can't save him from that.

 

i think after the reed pickup, det only has two open roster spots (13 signed players) and a little over 5 million in space.

so most they could is 3 for 1, and gabe couldn't be 1 of them if rui's the other.

rui/reddish/lewis would clear 5 million for us, give us a 20mpg center, clear a contract they didn't want, and give them two players to take a look at in rui and lewis.

 

The Lakers front office apparently doesn't think backup center is as big of a priority as most media and fans seem to think. I think at one point it was a major priority for them, but things changed after getting input from Reddick. With that being said, getting Stewart would be more than just getting a backup center, it would be an opportunity to dump salaries and open up roster spots to potentially sign Trent and/or Dinwiddie.

 

Okay, good to know. Well, then I would remove the seconds then for sure.

 

I get the sense that over the past few years the FO HAS recognized that we have some glaring weaknesses at backup center that make us too reliant on AD… but then they simply haven’t been able to address it with the limited spending power available so they pretend that whatever we cobbled together will be sufficient

 

Perhaps, but if that were the case you would think they would of got somebody by now right? Sure Knecht was the best player available, but if we were really desperate for a big, Missi and Holmes were sitting right there.

 

@JSM saw your last YT bout Ingram, do we have necessary assets to get him? I know it said BI doesnt really fit but with his improved 3pt shot I think he can fit now, much more so than Derozan

 

Kind of seems like whatever way you want to look at it, the front office is not doing its job.

 

We have Woods,Hayes and Castle
Maybe JJ will make them more than rotation players.Fir example Hayes played average 20 minutes in Orleans and only 12 under Hamster

 

With Rob and Jeanie lurking here and after the way @KareemtheGreat33 blasted them all year over passing on BPA Walker last draft .... just no way they were passing on Knecht.