Exclusive Around the NBA: Forgettable February edition

OKC is now a junior training ground for players & coaches. Draft them one and done, develop them for a few years, then they take off when possible.

 

Wow, thank you for that. Should sticky this somewhere...I don't know where.

So what I see is this is when the attendance drops massively because they're tanking and a Seattle businessman scoops the team back up and proposes a $1 Billion arena that is funded by tax money, is rejected, and then moves the team back to Seattle with all those draft picks?

 

I guess that's possible. I mean, how many times have the NFL Raiders moved in the last 50 years?

I forgot to add the links for those transactions I mentioned. If you want to track a particular trade or transaction, this is a great site:

http://www.prosportstransactions.com/basketball/Search/Search.php

and RealGM does a great job of tracking where future picks are headed:

https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/draft/future_drafts/detailed

 

Durant was sign and trade to Nets for D’Angelo Russel.

 

That was from GS, not OKC

 

wut? I was talking about what OKC got for Durant/Harden/Wstebrook/Ibaka. Thunder got nothing when Durant signed with GS

 

Ah right.

 

I got confused. I think Bogut might’ve been traded to OKC and released.

 

This really highlights the problem with blowing it up for draft picks. Most of the teams you can make deals with, when sending out star players with no trade clauses and/or strong agent influence, will be sending back fairly lousy picks. Other than the Washington and Houston picks, most of those 1st rounders are little better than 2nd rounders, and most of the 2nd rounders are little better than UFA's.

(Of course, the balance of power could change over the next 3-5 years and affect that greatly.)

Basically, OKC has created a massive upcoming logjam of fringe rotation talent and little in the way of starters.

 

Maybe? You simply never know with the draft. They might get a game changer.

 

Speaking of Bogut, he’s only 37. We should sign him to keep Ingles company.

 

Yeah, they could be looking to draft every overlooked player in hopes of a couple of them becoming the next Giannis. Throw all those picks at the wall and see what sticks...

There's a secondary problem there, though. Those diamonds in the rough usually need the right setting and circumstances to excel, and that's awfully tough to do when you're surrounding by five other rookies clamoring for attention.

 

I tend to agree

But a major part of OKC's strategy was to become a bad team and leverage that badness for high lottery picks. OKC was a 6th seed in 2019 (21st pick = Bazely + 2nd) and a 5th seed in 2020 (25th pick which became part of a bigger trade). Last year was the first draft when they had a high pick. They drafted Giddey at #6.

so almost all of OKC's payoff for dumping talent is ahead of them. They could have 3 first round picks in this year's draft and one could easily be top-4, with a mid and late first to supplement

the main tactic OKC hasn't used yet is consolidation. Say they have a 4th, a 18th, and a 30th pick this year. Can they consolidate into a top 2 pick? Will they roll the two lower picks into yet more future 1st's? Will they trade picks for talent?

 

I've been waiting to see them do that, but so far they seem to be most interested in acquiring more future assets. The one thing they've got in their favor is, having so many of the upcoming picks in their possession, teams might have to trade with them to get back in the draft. But, those aren't the teams with picks worth consolidating for, so that doesn't help. Plus, you know OKC will have to jettison a number of the selected players simply due to roster issues, so better to wait and cherry pick those than to go after their draft positions.

 

Damn that one two punch that the Sixers now have is going to really hard for anyone to beat considering the supporting cast they have around them.

 

Lakers lose again

 

Not surprising. Embiid finally gets the right complementary star player.

 

Yeah and people were shitting on Philly saying they overpaid for Harden. I think Philly has a real shot at contending now.