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.