I do agree with that. If you want a couple of veterans, you have Dwight and Melo as your deep bench, they will always be willing to sign for the minimum. Try to go young now and prepare for rebuild. If we build some team culture over the summer, the team should still be competitive, as long as Bron and AD are relatively healthy. And, for god's sake, get someone useful for Westbrook. Someone who actually fits.
The main thing for Rob is not to panic. As bad as this season was it will be easy to show vast improvement. He has to nail the coach, the more I read up on Sam Cassell the more I am convinced he is our guy. He has put in the time, a bit fiery, develops guards, is confident and good with player relationships. Wins and losses is going to come down to the health of Lebron and AD but there is plenty we can do to develop our young guys. Big assumption but I'm assuming Kendrick Nunn will start healthy. Then we have AR, who I have penciled in as a starter. He will come into camp stronger and a better three point shooter. He is a solid starter. So we have AD, Lebron, AR, Nunn and either Stan or Wenyen as starters before we do anything. That is a better unit than we had this year. Lebron can guard the weakest guy and look to pick off passes and rebound. McClung needs playing time to develop and the THT experiment is still underway. Wenyen and Stan have shown energy and good attitudes and deserve time to see how they develop. I'm also curious to see how Jay Huff comes along. A project but that is okay. Needs to bulk up, but a decent defender, can spread the floor. We don't resign the dinosaurs and keep Russ away or trade him if we don't have to take bad contracts and we will be in the playoff talk. Of course Rob will add players but at the very least we are much better and more fun to watch just with that. I didn't mention Monk only because I'm not sure how we keep him but if we do then we have a great six man that can light it up. AD and Lebron are healthy they should be able to lead this group to the playoffs. If they aren't healthy we have developed our young guys.
We might avoid having the oldest team, but we're going to go after names and most of them at our price range are going to be in their final 3-4 years of their careers. And the words "youth," "rebuild," "post-Bron" (or AD) are ones that will not interest Rob (self preservation mode) or Jeanie (investment dollars).
I'd rather help people appropriately dial in their expectations now so June and July aren't as painful and tear filled. I fully believe there is a path to building a championship team this summer. But that's a very narrow path where you cannot make one misstep and have to shimmy with your back against a cliff at 10,000 feet to not fall to your death. Whereas the path to failure is a wide open 10 lane highway during the zombie apocalypse and you're the only car on it. Given our track record, our cheapness, our inept front office, limited assets, aging/injured superstars, and Kurt f***ing Rambis... let's just say I'm not expecting a good summer. I'd love to be proven wrong and am actively cheering that they impress me at every turn.
yeah, we really boxed ourselves in. it will take some serious management to get out of it in a short period of time without also killing long-term flexibility. my concern is that rob tries to save his job by attaching the rest of our available picks unprotected to get something useful back for westbrook. just not worth it to the franchise, and this is where i wish someone with more acumen than jeanie and kurt were overseeing rob.
People here are still blaming Clark Kent, the only shining beacon of hope left in this franchise? SMH
I think those picks are long gone. I think we can get a better deal by attaching them with THT and Nunn in a separate deal (unless they're all in the same big package like that Indy 3 way I floated recently). But with Rob being put on notice he has no reason to protect picks that outlive him. This will realign Rob with Bron, because he's all about "f*** them picks." Jeanie won't mind either because she will be all in on us making the playoffs this next year. Being the only team in the league requiring government bail outs, I'm sure she really felt the weight of $0 coming in from playoff revenue this year. If it's a good deal, even if it's only in the short term, I'm ok with it because who knows when our next contention window will be. I am done with the process. We did that once. I got the t-shirt. I'm good. I don't think we're a big FA lure either, so if we can keep this window cracked a little longer, I'm in. Just look at the injuries to these playoff teams. We're one Curry injury away from anyone being able to come out of the West.
NO!! So says our resident Brick will be in uniform "expert" to start the season because he read it on line about the picks. I do hope he's right about the picks but he's full of Westbrick's brain escaping hot air with regard to him being in uniform to start the season. NO. WAY. IN. HELL. is that happening. FO doesn't want it and neither do LeBron and Klutch.
i guess i feel like we already took our shot, and we need to be prudent now. had we NOT done the russ deal, i might agree with you, but we so thoroughly emptied the chamber on it that i don't think we recover next year, maybe not even the following. why prematurely doom the latter half of the decade in the process? and i HATE rebuilding through the draft. my thought is to move westbrook for smaller contracts that will allow us some flexibility so that when the time comes and the next star wants out, we have picks and a couple players to offer. if we trade the rest of our picks for substars to win 50 games instead of 42 next year, we're back in the downward spiral.
I just feel like the circumstances lead to a perfect storm of forced action (Rob, Bron, Jeanie). That trigger is getting pulled even with an empty clip. I'm not sure that back half looks great with or without the picks as assets. Maybe if I heard some plan of accountability from Jeanie and Rambis or at least rumblings that she'll sell if she can't run this like a top notch organization. I think the price tag for the disgruntled star has gotten too rich for us to compete with, even if we keep the picks. Sure they give us a place to start, but it's usually 2-3 picks + swaps in the alternating years. Until the next CBA course corrects this, I'm not upset with sitting out that process.
yeah, probably. but there's a difference between ugly and putrid. i'm ok with it for an AD type acquisition. i think we need to clear a max spot and try to get someone to bite in FA in 2024 or 2025. then, if we've held our picks, we have a circumstance that could allow for another AD trade. this is why i don't mind taking back hayward/hield/conley, etc. in a russ trade (as long as i'm not sending out picks). we could be in position to lure some FAs that year (again, KAT/booker would be my targets).
On the topic of sacrificing our future draft picks, I’m curious what people think about this hypothetical. Now obviously this isn’t going to happen, but hypothetically if Lillard convinced Portland behind the scenes to trade him to his preferred destination, and they were willing to trade Dame for Russ, ‘27 and ‘29 unprotected firsts, and multiple second round picks, maybe even Reaves/SJ … would you do it? For the sake of the argument, let’s assume Dame’s slump this year was solely due to his injury (and being on a terrible team), and he’s now 100% healthy. I’d pull the trigger in a heartbeat. Sure we’re in the same position in terms of 3 max players and an otherwise barren roster with primarily only minimum contracts to fill out most of it. But unlike with Russ, I think Dame would be such a great fit that you could figure out the rest and be a legitimate championship contender for the rest of Lebron’s window. My point with this thought exercise being, I don’t agree that trading away the picks would inherently be a misguided move. It’s situational, depends on the return we’d be getting whether or not it’s worth risking the back half of the decade. Unprotected firsts for Dame? Hell yes. Unprotected first for John Wall? Hell no. Unprotected first for a solid return package for Russ? Maybe? For example I think the rumored Indiana/Charlotte packages (Brogdon/Hield or Rozier/Hayward) are good enough that sending one unprotected first would be worth the gamble. I wouldn’t see such a trade as a desperate self-preservation from Rob.
