Trade Deadline: February 6, 2025

How many lawn care stories can you possibly have?

 

He might be my least favorite player ever

 

Spurs got Duncan in a year Robinson, Elliot and others were hurt. They weren't tanking at all like you've suggested the Blazers should do.

Look, I'd love to get another top5 pick.

But it's just shocking we don't see any teams since basically Hakeem/Sampson drafted 40 years ago that did this. Conversely we see dozens of teams that won a title with a star drafted after pick #10

Just makes me wonder if a team has to gut so much talent to get a top5 pick - it's nearly impossible to build a contending roster around that top5 pick.

 

They didn't get multiple top5 picks in the same losing stretch as Phat is saying we should do. They were a decade or two apart.

 

Nobody is talking about getting "a" top 5 pick. We already have Scoot. Obviously I'm not suggesting that we'd be building a roster around this upcoming pick.

I'm simply suggesting picking as high as possible so we have the best shot at picking the guy we like best.

And I'm sorry. The Spurs absolutely tanked for Duncan. I remember it very well. And they've tanked to get Wemby and will almost certainly win a title with him.

Cleveland absolutely lost a ton of games for LeBron. And they lost a ton of games to get Kyrie.

The Raptors won 35 or fewer games 4 out of 5 seasons starting 2008.
33
40
22
23
34

This is where they picked up much of the talent that was used to trade for Marc Gasol and Kawhi, and won them a championship.

I don't know where this idea comes from that we'd have to keep everyone we draft to make the tank count toward the success that follows. You have to have talent to trade for talent. The most likely way to acquire the best talent is higher in the draft. It really is that simple.

Other non-destination teams had similar stretches of losing seasons to build up their talent level to a point that they could maneuver for a championship caliber roster. Or they got there by being lucky enough to draft an MVP caliber talent later in the draft.

 

Spurs didn't need to tank for multiple years because they "lucked out" and got a hall of famer the first year. To go with the Hall of Famer they already had.

Most non-destination teams who trade a guy like Dame have sustained stretches of losing and mediocrity. It's not easy to come back from.

You're not going to find a rich history of non-destination teams that have successfully built a championship team after losing a guy like Dame. Because that just doesn't happen. Non-destination teams don't win enough championships to have any kind of reliable sample size.

You need to have one of the most talented teams to win a championship. It's hard to get that much talent to a non-destination city. Unless you draft them...

 

What? C'mon now!
Everyone is talking about getting another top 3 pick.
Most are talking about building around Cooper Flagg and or Ace Baily.
YOU have been the one talking about it over and over and over again.

 

By the way. I finally read the thread title. Guess the trade deadline came and went.
How did that go for all of you?

85 pages long and God knows how many hundreds of other pages on multiple threads full of statements exclaiming "We Need To Trade Ant, Grant, and Ayton.

Guess we gonna hold till the summer when they have better value right?

 

I have actually said next to nothing about either Flagg or Ace. The individual player doesn't matter to me. I care about the asset. If Flagg or Ace or anybody else are the best on the board for when we're picking I'm good with whoever it is. I just knew that we weren't going to get many more chances to draft this high (and this is widely considered an incredibly loaded draft), so it has been frustrating that we haven't moved on from some of the vets with an eye on the draft.

 

We've seen a lot of non destination teams win titles. Toronto, Milwaukee, Denver, Detroit. Meanwhile Knicks didn't do shit in the playoffs for over 20 years.

If primarily building talent through the top of the draft was the best route to a title we'd have seen more examples. Now I do think it can be a big part of adding talent. But it's not the primary solution historically as many here seem to claim.

 

Now he is contradicting himself LOL. Stopped have any discussions with him because it's the same all story with him over and over and now he is saying no one is "talking" about a top 5 pick when ALL discussions in the past was us tanking to get a top 3 in the draft vs picking outside the top 3 and we must try to get top 3 to get a MVP caliber player and yada yada...

 

I guess they felt repeating themselves 1057567 times about needing to trade Ant/Grant/Ayton would magically make us trade them. It's the same bunch of men now too lol....

 

That's 4 titles in 20 years. And 3 of those teams lucked into a hall of famer late in the draft. The other lucked into an all star late in the draft. Those 4 players might be the best late draft finds in the last 30 years.

So in 30 years with 30 teams picking over 2 rounds (is that 1800 picks?) those 4 draft picks (Ben Wallace, Siakam, Giannis, and Jokic) are what helped those small market teams win.

Lets just eliminate the top of the draft and say 1000 picks. We have a 0.4% chance of landing one of those guys in the first round every year. But we have multiple chances! So let's say we have 0.8% chance of landing one in the first or second round. Or a 4% chance of landing a player like that in the next 5 years.

And these are very generous estimates.

 

Nah bro. I ain't gonna go there with you but i absolutely know for a fact i could dig up plenty of comments that would say otherwise.

 

Sorry, but you're wrong on this one.

 

Yeah this is a pretty blatant turnaround. Not saying at all i disagree with the idea that the team should have made a case for getting rid of the vets and tanking this year.

 

Please. It's all you have talked about for 6 months bro.

 

Nope. You're thinking of someone else. I've hardly said anything about either player. I have no particular affinity for either one.

Again, if they are the best on the board when we're picking I'd be stoked to get them. But I'd be stoked about any of the top 5.

 

What are you talking about? Dozens of teams winning titles with stars drafted after pick 10. Most of those players you listed were not the best player on their team and would not have won anything without the star who was drafted in the top 10.

The point isn’t how you acquire a top 10 pick. It’s that you NEED top 10 picks to win rings and the blazers options to acquire top 10 picks are limited.

Only a tiny number of teams won titles in the last 30 years without a superstar drafted in the top 10.