Fun question. The bolded teams below are my guesses. Two of the final six listed won't be in the lottery, of course. 1. Detroit (17-65 - 14.0% odds to win NBA draft lottery) 2. San Antonio (22-60 - 14.0%) 3. Houston (22-60 - 14.0%) 4. Charlotte (27-55 - 12.5%) 5. Portland (33-49 - 10.5%) 6. Orlando (34-48 - 9%) T7. Washington (35-47) T7. Indiana (35-47) 9. Utah (37-45 - 4.5%) 10. Dallas (38-44 - 3.0%) Minnesota Timberwolves New Orleans Pelicans Toronto Raptors Chicago Bulls Oklahoma City Thunder Miami Heat It's hard to guess without looking more deeply at contracts/salary cap situations than I have time/inclination to do at the moment, but it makes intuitive sense for all the borderline teams to be more willing to give up a high lottery pick for Dame. I don't see Dallas, at least, trading Wemby, though, and there might be other teams that feel the same way if the gap between him and the rest of the draft is as large as it seems to be.
So when you say top 4 I assume that means excluding the #1 pick but we could land Scoot? Minnesota would ....but we don't want their shit contracts in return. (at least I don't) Chicago....has nothing of value I want for Dame Toronto might Dallas would if they lost Kyrie but they no longer have any assets to trade OKC-doubtful Utah-probably Miami-possibly
I could see Orlando or Houston consider trading for Dame, they each have a lot of high lottery talent already on the roster and might have owners getting impatient with additional young draft picks.
That would be doing Damian a huge disservice (and yes I realize the team needs to do whats best for them and not necessarily him). But what would make Damian willing to go to Orlando or Houston if he doesn't want to stay in Portland around youth??
it seems people confuse being smart about not paying the repeater tax with penny pinching. As if people don't realize the massive penalties the team would pay if they had stayed above the repeated offended threshold. $0-5MM above tax line: $2.50 per dollar (up to $12.5MM). $5-10MM above tax line: $2.75 per dollar (up to $13.75MM). $10-15MM above tax line: $3.50 per dollar (up to $17.5MM). $15-20MM above tax line: $4.25 per dollar (up to $21.25MM). Considering how bad the team was, it's a no brainer as to why they'd want to stay out of it.
The Blazers are nowhere close to having to pay repeater tax. When would they possibly have to first pay, 2028? They could've kept and resigned Hart without having to worry about repeater tax. Instead they pocketed cash savings. They avoided adding other salary in trades for next season again for cash savings. They hired inexpensive inexperienced GM and President, they won't pay for a gleague team. So it's not only luxury tax. The Blazers priorite cash savings above building a competitive basketball franchise.
Landing the #1 pick would all but guarantee that we go young IMO. Build around Sharpe and Wemby. Easy decision. Neil made it impossible to build around Dame.
I always expected that the plan was to tank and go young around Dame back in 2016 but Dame had other ideas and got us into the playoffs. We weren't supposed to be a good team that first year after LMA left.
Eh.... I'm not so sure. Maybe the truly casual fans, but I think a lot of people understand that Dame is getting older and we are a very bad team. A lot more people are coming around to the idea of trading him than there were a couple years ago.
It feels to me that the casual fans I talk to are the one most comfortable trading Dame vs the die-hard NBA people who get how difficult it is to replace/fill the void of a top 75 all-time player.
We traded Drexler and were back in the WCF in just a few years. And that Drexler trade was fucking awful.
