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

Ellis is huge risk.He has played 24 minutes in Cleveland first two playoff games.Do you really want to hitch your wagon to that.Meanwhile Rui is on the floor 40 minutes.Head scratcher to me to swap those two.

 

What are we paying Reaves here?

 

Yeah but that’s just your opinion not some whatever you want to call it “truth”. Especially with all the questions I put up about what happens IF on their other side of the ball skills in the bright lights of LA they're like "many" in our past bringing them in and it doesn't translate .... no guarantees on that at all and very expensive mistake, when if slotted correctly, AR isn't the problem and he solves so many other problems especially when Luka isn't on the floor for rotations and injury. Very little team offensive drop off with AR running it. And we have other less expensive ways to upgrade our overall defense as I outlined above, other than high dollar already 3(?) and D players. As Slick says there’s more than one way to do this.

 

I blame Abeer specifically, for all this Keon Ellis nonsense.

 

context

 

A while ago Abeer was on this, Keon Ellis is the next big thing PR campaign, "His advanced analytics, project him to, already be a better defender than Caruso, and will probably get close to 30M in Free agency.!"

Keon Ellis name has been mentioned hundreds of times around here, ever since that discussion. The professor is a big time influencer around these parts!

 

That's not a fair argument (Not surprised). But, obviously Rui has to play major minutes due to injuries to both Luka and Reaves.

During the regular season:

Rui averaged 28.3 minutes, and 14.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 0.7 steals, and 0.7 blocks, and 2.2 threes out of 4.9 attempts per 36 minutes.

Ellis (Cavs) averaged 24.8 minutes, and 11.9 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.3 assists, 2.1 steals, 1.1 blocks, and 2.5 threes out of 6.0 attempts per 36 minutes.

And, those are just the counting stats. This is not mentioning the advanced analytics, the obvious intangibles that Ellis provides, and the positional surplus that I have mentioned already.

 

Wait...are YOU abeer too?

 

Ellis is on a bad context. Harden and Don will always play close to 40. That leaves 1 perimeter slot for him, Schroder, Strus and Tyson. It's a deep team.

Rui is best suited to defend the same guys as Luka and Bron. They are better matchup with the less mobile forward. Ellis is best suited to defend guards. He'd be an instant upgrade on this team, I have no doubt

This situation in Cleveland might be good for us, we may get him on the cheap

 

We have a few large burly power-forward types already: Luka, Lebron, Laravia, Vanderbilt, and Thiero. What's the obsession with these type of players?

 

No

 

See! Here comes Abeer's chief 2nd!!

 

Back to the my original question. What are we paying Reaves in this scenario?

 

i'm still on the ellis bandwagon. don't care what happens in cleveland. hell, i hope he crashes and burns and is a cheap get in FA, because he's a player we could really use.

edit: and i don't think i ever said 30 million. i said i could see as high as 25 but expected closer to 20, but that was before doug christie decided to tank the kings season from game 1.

i stand by the caruso comparison, too. he's a different player; not as impactful as prime caruso, but also maybe not quite in his prime yet.

 

That's my man! Abeer..agree with him or not..my dude never, ever , ducks the smoke!

 

I'm assuming the max, but if he takes less, then that's good too.

 

What do folks here think of trading our pick away for future 2nds, in order to free up more cap room? Smart and Kennard's stellar play might cost us the pick. But that's okay.

 

I'm not feeling that scenario, we just added another guard, elevated him over Luke salary wise, and maxed out Austin? That's guard salary overload, when I really don't think perimeter defense is our main issue. Now we are going to pay Ellis and Kennard more than Lebron too?

 

i'm opposed. if we can't use it to get a win-now player in trade, we should utilize our new scouting director's skills and start building. 2nds can be bought and require stacking of at least 3 or 4 now to even get a 9th man type.

 

i think there are scenarios where you can get ellis for just over mle with lebron making 20. kennard would have to trust that we could make him whole the following year using bird rights.

the only reason our perimeter defense issues aren't highlighted right now is our opponent. basically 28 other teams have abused our inability to contain any dribble penetration from anyone all season long. houston may be the single team that can't exploit that.

reed sheppard couldn't even successfully create an advantage in iso against ayton. that's wild. any other playoff team will have been using a scoring guard to torture us a la jamal murray.