Trade Blazers trade Simons for Holiday

Dave is also an idiot, even if this isn't it.

 

Man, I read every post of this instead of looking up long term cap projections---that's later, I guess.

I don't have a cohesive thought partially because I'm not looking at Joe Cronin's or Rich Cho's whiteboard, but a synthesis of some of the facts out there make it both interesting to me and probably not horrible, especially if we're still just seeing the first salvos of what this is eventually going to land on. I'm not hating too hard yet.

1. Doing this (and publicizing it) pre-draft allows you to message and negotiate prior to the Jul 6 new league year timeline. Maybe some draft maneuvering happens, or Jrue or another player gets moved on, or exemptions are added, or...
2. If you're in it for the Ringzz Now culture, then you probably hate the thought that we may be keeping Jrue. But we just saw the two Finalists be young teams playing ridiculous defense. There's a blueprint there. We may be too late to copycat, but I'd rather take my chances with defensive-minded teams than trigger-happy sieves. And I liked having my team go to 20 straight years of playoffs, and a better-than-most chance of winning a home game I went to, than being 'Ship-or-bust and busting for multiple decades. YMMV
3. We are getting Jrue's 35/36/37 seasons (he just turned 35). If we keep him (and I agree that it's possible, maybe even helpful), it's because POR thinks more of his next 3 years than anyone else.
Though it's self-selecting (if they really suck, they aren't in the league anymore), here's the list of oldest players who played 40 games in the NBA this year...Lebron (40), CP3 (39), Horford (39), Conley (37), Batum (36), Steph (36), Durant (36), Deandre Jordan (36), Brook Lopez (36), Westbrook (36), Jimmy Butler (35), Derozan (35), Harden (35). Jrue's about to hit that point and is one season removed from an all-Defense championship season, so maybe it's fair to assume his ceiling is Butler and his floor is Batum over the next 3 years, with a 50% outcome of Horford or CP3? Not a guaranteed death knell of being washed by any means.
4. Just like the Bane return wasn't for 4 firsts, it was for 2-3 and ORL added 1-2 to have MEM take on KCP's 2/$40M going forward. I wonder if the calculus was that, in a vacuum, the cost to move Jrue was one of BOS's (late) firsts. For Ant as an underwater player on an expiring deal (and little chance of a long-term extension), it would take POR's (mid-round) first to move him. And in the negotiation it ended up being 2 2nds coming from us?
5. @HCP 's idea that, with a top 6 pretty well ID'd at this point, we can package a player with the pick and get a cleaner cap sheet (including not paying this year's 1st) has some merit. I don't know how much it's been discussed here, but 11 and a salary to BKN for either a couple of their late 1sts and/or moving 1st to CHI this year to get our future pick (and our ability to trade them) back would be interesting.

And the not-so-promising
1. I don't love the opportunity cost. One of the benefits of being below all the CBA lines are the ability to take on other peoples' problems for assets. Maybe Cronin's already in the "Eff Dem Pixx" mode, and just wants to (or is being directed to) win at the cost of building future assets. Or maybe he's already done his homework and seen it's not going to be easy to get the right player at the right cost for the right return, and this was the best of a weird league situation (where only 1 team has significant cap space). But I think there's space this summer to be had facilitating deals. Including Ayton for something big.
2. The 2nd-round picks are meh to me. If I was GM I'd be collecting them and using them to mine for diamonds, but I know that's not the standard GM fare so I don't mind it.
3. For all that Grant is talked about league-wide (and on this thread) as a boat anchor contract, it's less than Jrue's over the next 3 years for a player who's 4 years younger and still serviceable.
4. Brad Stevens just may be better at this particular game than Joe Cronin. No shame in that.