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

Whatever money they are/were planning to use on Kennard should be funneled towards CJ McCollum

 

He is still a great player, he probably wouldn't be okay with being a 3rd string PG/bench scorer. In the unlikely event we trade Reaves, then it makes much more sense.

 

He’s getting older so that kind of role could prolong his career.I would approach it though because when Luka or Austin need some management he would get his starts

 

The coaching staff have done a great job of bringing new modern defensive principles into our way of play. But most of those revolve around switching, doubling, zones and help defense. Claxton excels in these.

The other side of the leaf is, Luka benefits from verticality at the rim and gets a lot of assists that way. Adding Claxton and Adou into the frame helps with this tremendously. I really like Claxton as the 5. It does mean that Wemby is going to crush us offensively. But to be honest, he spends half his time at the 3pt line anyway, he isn’t a modern day Shaq. As for his defense, it might just mean we have to find ways to force him into guarding on the perimeter as opposed to at the rim. And if he doesn’t, we have to be able to punish them with wide open shots from Luke, Rui, Reaves, Lebron, Thybulle, Smart and Luka with his step back 3’s.

If they’re interested, I’d go for the second rebounder and offer two firsts (second one heavily protected) if they take Vando and Ayton.

 

I actually thought this wasn’t much of a problem with how many FA’s we had. The team, to me - and from what I can tell via exit interviews, to them as well, was very much together and playing for one another. The culture was good this season minus Ayton’s weird mopping and the JJ/Vando flare ups.