Official Around the NBA October/November 2016

Weekly Cousins rumor:
Execs Believe DeMarcus Cousins Trade Talks Could Begin In December
NOV 14, 2016 7:31 PM


DeMarcus Cousins is averaging 26.6 points, 8.6 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game for the Sacramento Kings as they continue to struggle to field a competent team around him. Cousins will be a free agent in the 2018 offseason, which gives the Kings just three more windows to trade him otherwise risk having him leave without compensation.

“It is not going to happen unless the Kings cave a little,” said a Western Conference general manager. “No one is going to give up too much for someone who might ruin your team’s chemistry this year, then ruin it next year when he is playing for free-agent money. If they don’t see that, then I don’t think it changes and I don’t think he goes anywhere. I don’t know that is good for them or for him, either. But that’s the reality.”

Some executives expect the Kings to explore trade scenarios involving Cousins as early as December.

“I’d say they have three months, tops,” said the GM. “Probably more like a month, or month-and-a-half, because the closer they get to the (February trade) deadline, the less they’re going to get back. If you’re trying to trade him the week of the deadline, it’s going to be tougher.”

The Kings aren't ready to give up on the current season and will evaluate the team following their five straight home games.

“You have one owner in Sacramento who does not want to give him up,” an Eastern Conference GM said. “And you have 29 other owners who don’t want to overpay because they are scared the guy is going to be a headache and is going to hurt the organization.”


http://basketball.realgm.com/wireta...s-Cousins-Trade-Talks-Could-Begin-In-December

 

And what's our best offer? Including CJ is not a possibility in my mind.

 

Several players. Crabbe, Aminu, Leonard, Plumlee, Turner, Davis - all available. Please do not touch Harkless though.

It's better than nothing for Kings. CJ they would have to take immediately but that would be huge overpaying from us.

 

If we don't include CJ, the problem is that a lot of teams could/would offer a better package. And a package of Crabbe-Davis-Aminu and multiple draft picks wont't do it... I simply don't see a possibility. But I would really want a DMC to PDX trade to happen.

 

I would be very interested to hear what teams could, and would, offer packages that would exceed some combo of Aminu/Davis/Crabbe/Turner/Meyers/Vonleh/Plumlee/picks. I just don't see that many teams that make sense as a landing spot for DMC, and even fewer teams that could/would make a substantially better offer than we could make. There might be a couple (BOS, LAL), but I don't think there's a lot of competition in the bidding war for DMC.

 

Too bad Ezeli is injured as he has family in Sacramento. I love Plumlee and he has value around the league. As I bet the young Vonleh does as well.

But no we are not giving them CJ. Too risky.

 

Yeah, I would have dealt CJ for Boogie a year ago, but giving him up at this point only to lose Cousins in a year would be brutal. And he's a roll of the dice anyway. I have faith in Dame and Terry, but there's still a pretty big risk in trading for him.

 

So Dwight is ballin in ATL and they're playing really well. I feel like we missed out.

 

I was in favor of signing him. I was skeptical at first, but I was a little disappointed when we didn't even make a play.

 

I believe our play was Parsons first to help try and lure him here but he turned us down so we didn't bother

 

I think you've ignored how good Toronto is this season and to me the east is better....Bulls better, Hawks better, Detroit...even Philly is better...and I expect a lot of the youth movement in the eastern conference will show teams improving throughout the year as they develop talent

 

I don't.....I feel we don't have the alley oop passer to fit his game..he needs to play with an Andre Miller type pt guard

 

OK, I've given this some thought. The problem is that the Kings have no youth in addition to sucking - a bad combination. If I'm the Kings, I want young players signed to long, but cheap contracts, in addition to draft picks, of course. The blazers have all of their own 1st rounders and 1 extra.

So, If I was them, and I wasn't getting CJ, I'd want
Aminu - age 26, good player, can plug in as starter, amazing contract, locked in for 3 years
Harkless - age 23, very good player, can plug in as starter, good contract, locked in for 4 years!
Biebs - age 24, uniquely skilled, can plug in as starter, good contract, locked in for 4 years!
2 1st rounders + 1 2nd rounder

That's about $26 mil
DMC: $17 mil
+
Koufos (who coach is giving less PT to anyway): $8 mil
or
Gay: $13.3 mil.

Kings:
Biebs/WCS
Aminu/Skal
Harkless/Casspi
McLemore/Temple
Collison/Lawson

Interesting young team with good contracts and some potential for growth.

Blazers:
DMC/Plumlee
Davis/Vonleh
Crabbe/ET
CJ
Lillard/Shabazz

 

Technically by adding Layman to our depth chart it looks even better. But I would alter it just a little......

DMC /Davis
Plumblee/Vonleh
Crabbe/Layman
CJ/ET
Dame/Shabazz

 

If SAC does decide to blow it up and trade Cousins, they will also want to dump Gay. But perhaps they move him in a separate deal for additional draft picks.

You can't build a winning team aroud Gay, but if we add Cousins, I wouldn't mind Gay as a 4th scoring option. We'd go from two scorers to 4 in our starting lineup. Or, we could bring Gay off the becnh to aadd some scoring punch to our second unit.

BNM

 

Can Gay play the four? That's the biggest question. He reminds me a bit of a much more polished Harkless, which would lead me to believe that he couldn't play the four.

 

No, but Cousins can play either the 4 or the 5, depending on who we'd have left after the trade.

The proposed trade I was responding to included sending Harkless to SAC. So, we'd either need to replace him from within, or get another starting 3 in return. Which is why Gay would make sense. He isn't an all star, but he's way better than either Crabbe or Turner.

BNM

 

Dude I bet you a million dollars we reached out to him and found out pretty quickly he wasn't interested.

If weak ass Chandler Parsons is declining us think about the caliber of player Dwight will say to us

 

Ah completely forgot Raptors. I like them at all, my favourite team in the East.

 

I didn't actually see any proposals. Looking over the trade machine, they've got Gay making $13.3 million this year. Cousins making essentially $17 million, and I personally love Darren Collison, who is making $5.2 million.

So that's a grand total of $35.5 million. Only $30 million if you take out Collison.

If we waited until January, we could trade Crabbe (18.5) with Harkless (9) and Leonard (9.2) and pick for a total of $36.7 million.

Dame/Collison
CJ/Turner
Gay/Aminu
Plumlee/Vonleh
Cousins/Davis/Ezeli

That second unit has zero shooting, and I'm not sure if that's even enough to get it done.