Ford and Stein are moving Nikola Milutinov into the first round. Who gave him his promise? I'd guess it's either Boston or San Antonio.
Not necessarily. This is the Lakers after all. They want to rebuild quickly. They could agree to something like randle future firsts and another contract for lma. If it allows them to keep some cap space to try and sign someone like rondo. Rondo, nick young, Kobe, Aldridge, okafor has big names on paper. But is a trainwreck stylistically. Just the type of thing the Lakers would do to try to win now
The NBA wants stars to stay in place. They don't want super teams. They want all their teams to make money. Adam Silver is different from Stern in a LOT of ways. If they take away the advantage of a sign-and-trade, that means a player HAS to stay with his current team if he wants the bigger contract.
We can sign LA as if we're keeping him and he gets a better contract than anywhere else. Then later we can trade him. THAT'S a sign-and-trade that benefits him. But of course, there's no guarantee he could get that we wouldn't renege. And I don't know how long you have to wait before you can trade him.
But not with a FA. LMA will have to WANT to go to LA. He can't even talk to them about direction/team make up/etc until July. That is a big risk to anticipate being able to accomplish that without LMA having visited all his options.
It would have been a publicity nightmare, and they would have sucked last year. BUT, Wiggins+Dame+Lotto Pick sounds a lot better right now.
And the reason why I was pushing for it back then was because of this very reason. Aldridge could walk for nothing. And I imagine Cleveland would rather have Aldridge right now lol
I suppose in hindsight yes. Still, I can't blame them for taking the chance. Just like I can't blame them for the Afflalo trade even though it didn't work out. When you have a window of opportunity you need to take it. It's a shame things never panned out but that's neither here nor there.
Given that Flip is a well-known hater of analytics, this should make Timberwolves fans who want Towns very nervous...