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

Milwaukee isn't taking that trash deal from us for Giannis. That's not a good trade for them..great for us though but extremely unrealistic.

 

Sacramento continues to be the most inept franchise in all of sports? Cleveland should jump on this like ATL with the NO trade

 

The Kings don't seem to think Ellis is the big deal everyone else does. It will be interesting to see where he lands and how he plays next season somewhere else. I totally get the league wide interest though, he's on a cheap contract, less than Hayes. Picking him up at those numbers for a test drive isn't a bad idea at all. However if he was at the 20M Abeer seems to think he's worth, his interest level would definitely not be that high IMO.

 

HIs advanced metrics were really good last year





He's young, fights on defense, and can shoot - I don't think the league interest is surprising at all. For the Kings who the f*** knows. With the Kings, it's the Kings being the Kings. They got schroeder and then Brick on top of lavine, derozan, sabonis. A roster that doesn't make sense and buried they're young guys. Clearly they wanted to make a run for the play in and got these big personalities in there with a weak coach

 

His metrics aren't that good this year though, the eye test isn't that great either. He dies on every single screen he runs into. That's not encouraging as a perimeter lock down defender. It's also a bit interesting that Sacramento, prefers Dennis or Westbrook as a POA. They are both more physical than this kid in that role. Again at 2.4M I totally get the interest in giving him an audition for the rest of the season. I wouldn't give up anything more than Dalton for him and maybe a 2nd. FRP? Absolutely not, and I wouldn't be promising him anything more than the MLE, if we traded for him. Honestly I haven't seen anything from Keon this season, that suggests that he should play over Smart. I'm more in line with Vogel on this advanced stats stuff, that stuff has some merit to it, but you shouldn't make roster decisions based off of them.

 

It's really not interesting they are playing hedgehog and brick and it has nothing to do with quality of play - they paid these guys FA dollars the last 2 years. Not only are they getting paid more, but they are also vets with big egos. It's the Kings - they are a dumb organization.

He's a good complement to Smart not a replacement. Smart also is old and injury prone you need to keep his minutes down to get the most out of him.

This is pretty straightforward stuff here

 

Well..Sacramento isn't my squad, so I don't really care what they are up to. They signed those guys for a reason though, and maybe they weren't as convinced, about giving Ellis the type of contract that he was seeking? He is their player , so I'm pretty sure that his agent has already told them what they are seeking. That's probably why he's on the trading block.

Back to us, like I said, I'd take him, but from what I've seen of him this season, I wouldn't expect this huge impact. Next season though.. he could fit in nicely with some other defensive minded players. It just depends on his contract demands, because I still believe we need more size and athleticism on the wings or another big. Those two things remain a priority for me over POA.

Now on another note..Murray should be about to return from injury in New Orleans. He was a guy that you liked pre injury right? He might be up for grabs on the cheap at the deadline.

 

Yep I liked Murray when he was with SA and I thought him and AR could have made a nice pairing. He's accumlated a bunch of major injuries now (ACL and Achillies ouch) though and his defensive metrics nose-dived in ATL pre-Achilles. And he's got an ugly a** contract with 2 more years on it? I think. Not really interested

 

Charlotte at times looks to have the best starting lineup in the league. 4 big athletic dudes with good skillsets 1-4

 

Ouch for sure, I forgot that he already had an ACL, that's the terrible twosome. He might end up on a buyout this summer.

 

Did you watch the beginning of this season?
If we would have had a couple of two way wings instead of Vando, Gabe, Dalton, and Rui, we would be able to take down OKC. This team isn’t that far off. Even if we swapped Ayton with a better defender who could also finish lobs and added a good two way wing, we would be competing this season for a Chip.

 

I think my preferences if I had to state them, would be the following
1) Regarding Rui - I'm having a hard time with him. Defense definitely picked up and the lineups started making sense when he got injured. However, since he's come back and got his legs - his shooting/scoring off the bench is really good and he's defense has picked up as well. I think I'm back to where I started he's a playoff caliber rotation place at the right salary
2) Lebron - likely gone at the end of the year but he looks damn good this year and the stats are decieving as he was bad till he got into the shape. I'm very skeptical the Lakers are going to fill what is essentially an all star caliber talent next year with just salary cap space. So since Luka is in his prime, you have LEbron, and AR on this cheap a** contract - I'm willing to risk some future assets to get this team a shot. I think the title is way more wide open this year than people thought. Frankly, with some slight tweaks this is a far more talented team then say a team like the Pacers last year
3) I've said this before - this is a Ferrari which needs a few defensive minded athletes who are just competent offensive players to really tier up. Smart/Laravia is the right track they just need 2 more of those types to replace Gabe/Knecht/Vando (I have no confidence that Vando will get minutes in the playoffs still
4) Ayton/Hayes - it's a good enough platoon. Net neutral
5) AR - I think his defensive shortcoming are oversold but I take a lot of stock into who teams head hunt. Teams head hunt Luka and AR. Now this doesn't mean the defender is terrible - remember teams attack the other teams to stars for other reasons including tiring them out so they don't have the legs to drive the offense in the 4th.
5) So the gap, as I see it (I think in terms of defense for positions nowadays) remains guys who you can put on Mitchell and Murray. These guys are too quick for Smart and AR is too valuable on offense to be use. When the Lakers get blown out - typically it is some combination of a young athletic team who just wants it more and Lakers getting pasted by a 1v1 matchup (freakin Brooks, Mitchell, Castle, that odd looking C bag)*
6) The Ferrari looks unbeatable when the rolepalyer guy make their 3's but this is every team in the NBA :shrug:

So put it together, my preferences would be to get Wiggins and/or KCP (or dream both)
It's a very marginal move - I don't want to give up Rui, I'm willing to give a heavily protected first for either
Basically just take out the complete trash to get serviceable 20-30 mpg roleplayer that can defend and just like Smart every 2-3 games give you a 20+ppg game. teams won't leave this guys open to shoot.
I believe in the Pacer models of having mulitple pretty good but not great guys who put around your stars as long as those pretty good guys have high basketball IQ and have some offensive punch and you can't leave wide open

*Some of these bigger wing guys like Brooks going off won't happen in the playoffs IMO. I think the Lakers get past the Suns in the playoffs pretty easily because JJ will just put Lebron on Brooks and that gets ugly for Brooks quickly. Lebron too old for Murray and Mitchell

**I like Ellis as a prospect but he's a little too light in the a** for me. I worry about guys like Mitchell and Murray just too smalling him at times. Ideally you'd pair him with a younger Smart lol

 

i'd give up a little draft capital to make a move like this.

 

If we can flip our FRP for multiple ones, Ellis and Mathurin would be the ideal for me. We'd still have assets to move for another player.

 

Playoff basketball is fundamentally different. Offense-first teams like us tend to look better in reg season because the defensive effort in general is just not there. We had a couple of tight games against OKC late last season, then we almost got swept by Minnesota. It's just different basketball.

 

GG Jackson.. I like his potential here, If it cost having to take KCP, I'd roll with it.

 

OKC also ran us out of their building early in the season, in large part because the Luka and Austin high P&R heavy offense didn’t hold up well against OKC’s collection of perimeter defenders and their ability to play multiple different coverages at a high level. LeBron is the key to the OKC matchup - having two big wings that can handle their swarming but small defenders causes them problems.

 

Who knew Chris Finch calling OKC a bunch of posers who cheat and the refs let them get away with ended the OKC great team narrative lol

 

Re Kings: the point everyone is trying to make is you can't apply sound logic to the Kings to explain their decisions. They're a terribly run organization who make terrible decisions and have for a long time. Siding with them instead of league consensus probably isn't the best idea.

Same team who had two franchise point guards, traded both away and immediately reports came out they were looking for a franchise point guard. Same team who gave DS a lot of money and then immediately brought in Russ. Same team who has a lot of young talent and instead of developing them into their rotation or building them up to flip them, they're burying them to play vets with warts. When you're a bottom feeder you lose across the board when you go that route.

 

only new info on the Hunter side of it:
- Nets don't want to trade Sharpe.
- talks with Cavs stalled because we're not being offered draft compensation

There's a lot more info on the Ellis side of things

If Ellis only costs a swap, I'm definitely all the way in. If they want us to take back a salary, then it drops to a couple seconds (that we'd have to go find from team 3)


Regarding our interest in a big man