Question: if Dame does get traded, do we go back to saying Drexler is the greatest Blazer? (After all, he's still ahead of Dame on Win Scores, and he will have been a Blazer longer.)
This just ain't going to happen. Philly would rather hold on to Simmons than not get a superstar in return. Philly wants to win in the East and they've got to go through Brooklyn - there's no way you do that with Embiid as your only star. (Remember: Simmons has been an All-Star at least twice, while CJ hasn't, and is a good deal older.)
Step 1: CJ/Simmons Trade Step 2: Nurk+Pick/Charlotte #11/Wood+Augustin Trade Step 3: DJJ/Thad Young Trade Step 3: Re-sign * Norm - 4/$90M * Zach - 2/Minimum (~$4M) * Kanter - 2/$10M Step 4: Sign * Cousins - 1/Minimum * Ennis III - 3/$10M (part of Tax MLE) * Alec Burks (or Garrett Temple) - 3/$10M (remaining part of Tax MLE) Roster: PG: Dame, Augustin, Simons SG: Norm, Burks, Elleby SF: Simmons, Ennis, Little PF: RoCo, Young, Zach C: Wood, Kanter, Cousins Pick up a couple of UDFA for 2-way contracts or purchased 2nd Rounders. (McKinley Wright [PG], Charles Bassey [C], EJ Onu [PF], Quentin Grimes [SG])
This is how it's done. Trade for loads of high draft picks and pay to bring in the best talent evaluators and GM. If you make thw mistake of trading Dame.
Why would you even click on this thread? Are you the kind of person who subscribes to /r/MakeMeSuffer on Reddit?
I hate all of those moves (sorry). Setting my personal thoughts aside: do "really stellar defensive teams" win anything in the NBA these days?
There is the fact that the Suns had the third best defensive rating in the league this season and it was basically a tie for second with the Clippers. So I do think having a dominant defense with a good offense can still win chips.
The top 12 teams in Drtg all went to the playoffs. The finals features 2 teams in the top 10. Those teams were 9th and 10th, but that is very deceiving, as both were closer to 6th than to 11th. There was one team who was 29th in Drtg, and they very much underperformed in the playoffs, leading to rifts within the team and organization, including firing their coach. So, yeah, defense is still pretty damn important.
This is my new plan if Dame really requests a trade and remember when he's asked about it he's just going to go back to saying that he's only talking to the team about stuff like that. If it's true it's a sad day and I put it on Olshey (wasn't supposed to rhyme). That being said the job is now to secure the one generational talent that's actually on the board and more talent with him. Simmons, Shake (others might want Thybulle which is fine) this draft's 28th pick and a future first. That can only be the first step though. Again only if this is true and Dame is demanding out and who wouldn't want out of this shit show right now, we have to keep going and build a team around Simmons that fits him and his timeline... I would even think about getting players younger and end up with Simmons as the elder statesman. CJ will have to go and the Knicks make the most sense but I would do it for picks, all picks. I think CJ would yield the 19th, 21st and 31st. Then Nurk should be placed somewhere else because him and Simmons together is a non starter. Charlotte could actually renounce their capholds on Zeller and Biz and just send back picks. I think we could get the 11th pick in this draft for Nurk and a future first. RoCo should yield a prospect and a pick from a contender. So after all of that we would end up with Ant, Shake, Simmons, Nas, DJJ (he would opt in) and CJE on the roster who with Simmons trade kicker would take up about 55M of the cap. We would have picks 11, 21, 28 and 31 and whatever pick we got for RoCo. I would draft Kai Jones to start at C with 11 and with the rest of the picks we'd just get the best shooter/athletes we could while filling positions. All of the picks and the prospect we got for RoCo would probably be about 22M hat would put us at 76M. That would give us enough cap space to sign John Collins to a max deal. We could sign Nerlens Noel with a good chunk of the MLE. The fact is our roster would look something like: Ant, Shake, Simmons, Collins, Kai Jones, DJJ, Noel, CJE, the prospect and pick from RoCo and picks 21, 28 and 31 and two two-way players. That team would make the playoffs next season without a doubt and be scary to play but more scary they'd just get better and better.
We'd need to draft a leader, cuz I don't see one in the guys we would be retaining. And i would worry about having Simmons on a team without a strong leader.
Well, that's a lot of picks so we could probably find a pretty high character guy that's been team captain a bunch of times but if we did those moves, we would be so young that Chauncey, one of the better leaders I've seen in basketball, would be teaching these young men how to lead.
Well, if Dame leaves, we have no choice but to blow it all up. Fire Olshey, make Jody sell the team, start fresh.
Just going to bump this one instead of creating a new one. What are people thinking? This is assuming that Dame asks out. Here would be my rebuild: And then I would take one of those picks and package it with this Re-sign Grant for the $130 over 5 years. Scoot/Dinwiddie Sharpe/Harris/Rupert OG/Thybulle/Murray Grant/Thad/Clowney/Walker Claxton/Eubanks/Watford We would still need a power forward of the future. OG is only 25 so he still fits the timeline. Players I would be looking to move or cut: Grant Dinwiddie Harris Thad Keon Johnson Knox
