This looks like a 25 win team to me. That said I think they're going to play hard, be plenty athletic and be sort of exciting in "upside" sense, but there's a dearth of shooting, and our defense is going to be awful (mostly because they are young and inexperienced and building a team defense takes familiarity gained only by playing together for awhile).
This is a win/win in my opinion. If they match, they most likely had to dump a bunch of talent to stay under the luxury tax threshold. If they don't match, we essentially take their one asset that they got out of the Reggie Jackson trade, so that's one more trade that they completely whiffed on.
You misunderstand, 25 sort of feels like the high side if everything breaks just right. 35 wins is wildly high and would be startling to say the least, but if a team this young and awful on paper somehow managed to win that many then it means somebody stepped up considerably and maybe we actually do have a team to be excited about at that point? Honestly though I think a top 7 pick is super realistic and that's plenty high enough to find a good player (depending on the draft and the quality of your talent evaluators of course . . . and Neil seems like a good one).
I don't blame you. My fear is that OKC won't match on Kanter, and that he plays just well enough to keep us from a good pick. Then we are left with a lousy pick, not that much cap space, and no clear path forward.
So it's a bad thing if one of our players play well? Ok dude. The draft is a crapshoot. Unless were getting Ben Simmons there are no guarantees and I sure as he'll ain't prioritizing draft slot over the development of what we already got.
We will have some solid cap space next summer. The cap is going to jump $20-30 mil. The problem is that everyone else will have cap space as well.
I'm intrigued by Olshey's interest in picking up Vonleh type 2nd year talent more than next season's draft. Makes sense to let another team use up a roster spot on a rookie than having a draft pick at the end of the bench unless there's a starter somewhere in the top 10 for a competitive team. Shorten the development time on most young players.
Q. IF the Thunder match and they are over the luxury tax threshold, when is the amount of luxury tax figured? I am not sure of the time line of when they would need to dump players to get under the luxury tax threshold. Since Kanter is a RFA, the Thunder can re-sign him without dumping players now. I do not believe the tax is figured at the start of the season, it probably is figured near the end of the season. If that is the case, I do not believe the Thunder need to dump players until the trade deadline. A lot can happen between now and then. Or am I missing something?
Kanter (in this theory) Leonard Vonleh Aminu Mccollum Lillard I count 6 lottery picks. And if you want to argue that none of them are stars outside of dame, then you're just helping my argument out.
You are correct @oldfisherman they don't have to do it until right before the end of the season. However, teams are spending up all their cap space (I think we, PHI and DEN are the only teams with more then 6 MIL available right now) quickly and OKC doesn't want contracts back in a trade. They want to dump 3 players to a team with cap space plus give them a 2nd rounder just for taking on those guys. So if they wait to the deadline then they might not be able to do it how they want.
