They won't trade both Black and 16 for Simons and Reath and Murray don't have enough value to make a team decide to give up a mid first round picks. Would be happy with #16, Anthony, and Harris
Orlando can send us Mo Wagner, Black and Cole Anthony in exchange for Ayton, Simons, Grant and our 2025 1st pick (top 3 protected)
But I prefer Deni as point-forward with DB Hooper as back-up point forward. Scoot as PG off the bench when penetration is needed
What about some sort of deal where Gianni's goes to PDX, Zion to the Bucks, Bucks get all their picks back? Maybe Ant, #10, and something else to the Pelicans. One problem is NOP only have the Bucks 2027 pick if it's top4, otherwise Atlanta gets it. But Bucks could get all the rest in above deal which is a huge pick haul, returning 5 years of their own picks. Sounds like NO wants to move on from the Zion experiment. He makes sense for Milwaukee as if he gets healthy that's a huge haul of assets and if not they have their picks back to rebuild. Would probably need something else to go to NO but seems like there could be a way to get a deal done here.
NOP get another unprotected picks from us to complete the Zion package. Could swap Ayton for CJ too. Giannis Clingan Camara Deni Grant Sharpe Scoot CJ That's a real contending lineup
Dude was like #3 in MVP and could legit lead a contender to a title next season. Sure I like the effectively 2-3 swaps we have with the Bucks but it's very possible if not likely they ultimately turn into a small amount of value.
Yeah the only issue with Giannis is his health. He has been pretty banged up lately as well. But if you put him on this team with Simons/Tou/Deni and either Clingan or Ayton, I think that’s a contender.
If Dame's injury is for more than 12 months, we can package Ayton, Simons and Grant for matching the salaries of Giannis and Dame and offering a huge salary cap relief with a bunch of their picks. I don't know how the would value having Dame off the cap or not but moneywise it would work.
Why? Dame demanded a trade. It's like feeling sorry for some guy that left his girlfriend now that she has a family. Dame on his supermax contract with poor defense was never going to lead a team to a title. Theres a reason Milwaukee has been much worse with Dame in and Jrue out while Jrue won a second title. Dame was way overrated.
Next season it makes more sense for Milwaukee to keep Dame and get draft picks or something. The team that trades for Giannis needs to contend next year and a team can't do that with Dames boat anchor contract. These guys should be on teams with different goals in 2026.
I will concede that Antony Black is decent. I would not hate him coming off our bench for defensive purposes. But damn, zero assists so far in 68 minutes in the playoffs and 1-10 from 3pt. Hard to get too excited about him. .
Only way I see Dame making sense here is if Giannis goes elsewhere in the trade and we get a massive influx of young talent/picks. In that case we're just going to eat Dame's contract for a couple years while we aren't yet trying to contend - but get those long term assets. I suppose it could be something to keep in mind for us to be a potential 3rd team in a Giannis deal. We also might make a ton of sense as a 3rd team in Giannis trade just because we have so many Bucks picks.
I think it depends what our other starters look like. I've been very impressed with Scoots defense. Camara and Deni are great defensively. Clingan is very good defensively too even if a more limited minute option. We might not have a role for another player that is primarily a defender. It might be more important for us to have a balanced starter or even an offensively minded starter. Now if Black is just one of the pieces in a Simons trade along with a pick or something else then I'm fine acquiring him. I just don't think I would target him as the primary pieces we get back with how our roster stands today.
My biggest knock on this organization was the usage of Scoot. The fact that we still don’t know how good he is and whether he’s a starting caliber PG is ridiculous. Simon’s should have been traded and Scoot should have started every game. me personally, I think he’s a starter and potential all star level player but also don’t know because he didn’t start enough games. Just dumb move by Blazers, worse thing that would have happened is we find out Scoot wasn’t as good as we hoped and we would have lost more games giving us more ping pong balls to win Flag sweepstakes or Dylan Harper or another great draft pick.
