Don't give any second thoughts about Wes and Nic. It would only hurt our chemistry for a short bit but for lebron, it would be all with it. But yes it would be last. And I wouldn't trade those two for probably anyone else in the league.
If Lebron leaves Miami, aside from maybe Cleveland, I bet Houston is the most likely to land him. They could potentially clear the cap space to sign him (Asik and Lin), TX has no state income tax, they already have some solid talent (Lebron, Harden, Howard, Parsons, and Beverley - that's a WC champ right there, besides the fact that there is ONLY one ball), etc.
Although the chance are slim to none I would like to hope that Olshey could at least get a meeting to give it a shot. Its one of those you never know unless you try and you never know what can happen.
All these guys opting out, and teams needing to dump players to make a play for them, gives me hope Olshey is going to pick up some discarded talent this summer, like a vulture waiting at a rural highway crossroads where someone has swiped all the stop signs.
As stated above, he's done it before. If he is really interested in going to a team that can provide him with a long title run, Houston, LAC and Portland would seem to be the best scenarios for him.
If we could somehow appeal to his leadership and mentor side to bring up another group of younger guys that is almost there ... It makes a ton of sense on paper but the real world rarely matches up with the paper side.
He is also a ducks fan as well as big fan of the city of Portland... to bad none of this matters because there is no chance in hell he goes from extremely sunny all year long to Portland fickle weather. Stop getting my hopes up with posts like these!
That's was my point, though as RR points out, LBJ can only receive the 5-year max from Miami. I'll give Olshey credit if he can score another meeting, but LBJ actually coming to Portland has a snowball's chance in hell of happening.
I think all the talk about being able to trade Lin and Asik w/o taking on any salary is total BS on Houston's part. Not only are their final years extremely overpaid, both players' stock took a hit with their mediocre performance in the playoffs.
In regards to signing him, if we started him out at 20 per year, we could theoretically dump Wesley and our bench minus Robinson and Barton to teams with cap space, sign him, then have t fill in with minimum salary guys. Last season, GS was able to dump roughly 20 million in salary to Utah by offering up a 2014 first and a 2017 first, as well as 2 2nds. We'd be able to offer up CJ, Leonard, Crabbe in replacement for those, but can also offer a future pick as enticement. Anyways, not going to happen, but it'd be possible to clear the space, IMO, if we needed to.
Houston could offer him 4 years and 86 million without needing to do a sign and trade with Miami if they can find takers for Lin and Asik.
LeBron just goes to teams with stars to win tittles. He has never won anything with a team starting from the ground up. As soon as that team shows they can't get over the hump he jumps ship. Now there's a team player for you.
