Wessy fell off a cliff last year, man. Is Conley really going to be much better than the resurgent Deron was last year?
Conley is a really underrated PG. Wes was coming off an injury. That would be a pretty darn good team. Most likely better than ours
Meh, not buying it. When your best player is a guy in his 20th yr, not so sure. But let's see what happens
Since his "certainly not" was in response to your "most likely", I'd say it absolutely fits. Whiteside/Dirk/Wes/Conley is certainly not most likely better than Howard/Aminu/Harkless/CJ/Dame.
If the Blazers strike-out on landing a big time free agent, my guess is we'll see Olshey press the trade front and be a facilitator to pick up a player that a team is trying to dump to clear CAP space. Not a bad plan B.
If we could land Whiteside/Howard does it make any sense to trade for Kanter if the Thunder are clearing space to get Horford? Does that pair work?
I dont think so. Id rather resign meyers for spacing and probably salary reasons if we wanted a big that cant guard a 4.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-make-a-lot-of-sense-as-nba-free-agency-nears David Aldridge 10 Moves that Make Sense. #3 hits very close to home.
Although I would be happy if we got Whiteside or Howard as plan A, I can't say that it is that much better than a lot of other scenarios. I still get this nagging feeling that wiping out our cap space for a center is a bad idea. I realize they would both be upgrades, but I would prefer to have multiple centers on the team who bust their ass every night. We can use some size for sure, but 20-24 minutes a game is sufficient. Plumlee, Davis, and Leonard can fill in the other 24 minutes. Offense is not needed if we can get it from the 4 spot. And we might need the cap space to get that. Again.....getting Whiteside or Howard is not a bad thing, but a trade for a Milsap and a center like Mozgov might be just as good when you break down the minutes.
Regarding #10: We could also be in the hunt for trading for Tyson Chandler for merely cap space if we strike out in free agency. He is quite a bit older than Dwight though so we might pass.
My take from reading that is that if we get Whiteside, we better try to get Juwan Howard to come with him as a mentor, or somebody similar. I don't think Chris Kaman would be the right guy.
What jumped out to me was that all of the highlights for Whiteside included assists from Dragic. The Blazers should be selling him on the idea that we have two guards that will draw extra attention on the offense that can provide easy lobs.
Many of those aren't even that good of a lob. Sometimes Dragic would just throw it up in somewhat general vicinity and Whiteside would just go get it. Imagine the lanes to the bucket that would create for Dame and CJ if the defense had to respect that type of presence at the hoop?
