Two things... 1) You are getting a little closer to reality. I still think any trade that involves us getting rid of both Leonard and Turner would take a miracle though. I also think that Cleveland would only do this if we took a bad contract from them too like Tristan Thompson or JR Smith. 2) This trade may make us better for a season but we get older, still not championship level, and ruined our future by trading away assets. Those are the type of trades that could potentially kill a franchise in a small market.
I mean, the fact that CLE saves $25M is a small miracle. Hills contract cancels out Turners. Plumlees is worse than Leonard's. Hopefully the development of Hutchison, Collins, and Nurkic would keep us solid for the future.
If we are giving up two 1st round picks we better be getting someone that would put us into contention. This trade has Nets/Celtics written all over it in two years when Love and Hill are no longer on the team and we are wondering why we traded our picks away for results that still weren't worth it. I'd rather just let Turner and Leonard expire and keep the picks.
For the record, all season long up until the trade deadline I was suggesting taking on Miles Plumlee's contract using the TPE and Minnesota's 1st round pick they have. Before Butler got hurt the pick was in the mid-20's but ended up being 19th. Damn, I wish we had that right now. I wonder if they'd still do that? I also wonder how high up the draft board we could get combining 19 and 24 if that happened. Probably not high enough for Mikal Bridges but 24 and our 2019 1st for #10 to Philly (we could trade those two since we'd still have 19) would probably be close to getting it done. Then take Bridges at 10 and Hutchinson at 19 (wouldn't have to worry as much about him still on the board at 19 compared to 24). It doesn't really help our cap situation though but it does give us some major potential on the wings.
The 2019 draft is weak as hell. We're not missing out a pick that's between 20-30 in that draft. That's like giving up a 2nd round pick in my opinion. The trade has Nets/Celtics written all over it? That's why we'd protect our 2021 pick. The plan in 2021 would be for Love to be a super-6th man (Hed regress a bit but would still be a very solid player with Collins having developed into a very good starter. We'd still be a playoff team, unless, for whatever reason, Collins didn't develop AND Love regressed a ton, but in that case we'd keep our pick since it'd be protected. I think Love, Hill, the right coaching change, and internal development could put us into contention.
Why would Atlanta trade a 1st to shed salary though? They wouldn't do that... 24 and our 2019 1st would have no chance at moving up that high. 2019 is a weak draft, and it took 15 and 20 to move up to 10 last year, and that was an extremely deep draft. So 24th and a 20th or lower pick in a weak 2019 draft isn't going to get us up to 10 in a top heavy 2018 draft. Byw, even without 19 we could trade 24 and a 2019 pick for 10 because we'd still have a pick this year (10) thus we could trade our pick from next year.
Another idea: POR Gets: Tobias Harris, #12 (from LAC) & Joakim Noah, #9 (From NYK) LAC Gets: C.J. McCollum, Al-Farouq Aminu (TPE), 2019 POR 1st, Two Future 2nds (From POR), Future 2nds (From NYK) NYK Gets: Maurice Harkless, Meyers Leonard (From POR), Sam Dekker (TPE), Jawun Evans, #13 (From LAC) NYK sheds Noah's contract while adding young talent at the price of only moving down 4 spots andna couple 2nds LAC adds someone under contract for the next 3 years and a star who could blossom as the #1 option on a team. Trades the 12th and 13th picks but gets back 2nds and a future 1st in a year where they dont have their pick. They also replace Harris with Aminu, who fits in their $7.3M trade exception from Chris Paul. Portland would have the 9th, 12th, and 24th picks, and sheds $16M in salary. Portland would then have their 3 picks as well as a 2021 1st to try to move up if they wanted. Option 1: Trade 12, 24, & 2021 1st to SAC for 7 (If Michael Porter Jr. falls). Draft Michael Porter Jr. 7th Draft Mikal Bridges 9th. Option 2: Trade 9, 12 to ORL for 5 Draft Jackson, Porter, Doncic, Bagley, or Ayton (whichever remains). Draft Hutchison at 24. Options 3: Trade 9, 12, 24 to Atlanta for 4. Draft Jackson, Porter, Doncic, or Bagley. Sign Will Barton (Full MLE) or trade for Courtney Lee (TPE).
Another thing we could try: LAC Gets: C.J. McCollum, 2019 1st (if LAC demands it), Emmanuel Mudiay NYK Gets: Tobias Harris, Maurice Harkless, POR Gets: Joakim Noah, 9th Pick, 38th Pick (From NYK), Danillo Gallinari, 12th Pick, 13th Pick, (From LAC) The Clippers save $12M over the next 3 years by swapping out Harris for McCollum while also shedding Gallinari's contract. Could be a major step to future space for Kawhi, Paul George, and/or LeBron, while adding the best talent in the deal. The Knicks shed Joakim Noah's and Courtney Lee's contracts turning them into serviceable young talent in Harris and Harkless while giving up the 9th pick. For us, we would have the 9th, 12th, 13th, 24th, and 38th picks. That's a ton of draft capital. We double down on bad contracts but with Noah, Lee, Gallinari, Leonard, and Turner all expiring in 2020, with some great young talent on rookie contracts, we could make some serious moves then to try and contend in 2021 and beyond. Dame would be 30-31 then, but hopefully he'd still be in his prime and our young talent would be all-star level. With the 9th, 12th, 13th, 24th, and 38th picks, what could we do? Here's what I would try: Trade up for Michael Porter Jr. and add a SG 9, 12, 2019 or 2021 1st, Aminu, Leonard to ATL for Bazemore, 4th Pick. 9, 12, 2019 or 2021 1st, Aminu, Leonard to ORL for Fournier, 5th Pick. 9, 12, 38 to CHI for Valentine (Vonleh TPE), 6th Pick Fournier could possibly opt out in 2020, but Bazemore would be a FA then, and Valentine would be as well, thus those two would be better options in our plan for 2020 (see below) Trade 13 to 10 for Bridges, take on Bayless salary to clear cap space for PHI, (PHI dumps Bayless and moves down 3 spots) Draft Chandler Hutchison 24th Lillard / Baldwin / Bayless Fournier? / Turner / Hutchison Bridges / Porter Jr. / Layman Collins / Gallinari / Swanigan Nurkic / Davis / Papagiannis ? - Could be Bazemore or Valentine Porter would come off the bench as a 6th man scorer until he was ready to be in the starting lineup. He could develop as a PF is he adds a little strength. Would be a serious matchup problem there if he develops well. Going into free agency in 2020, I could see us trading Nurkic for cap space and picks (or trading Nurkic and picks for a star, but lets assume we trade Nurkic for cap space). We'd have $60M or so in cap space to add to the following starting lineup: Lillard / Hutchison / Bridges / Porter Jr. / Collins Or we could easily keep Nurkic and still have cap space for a max player. A Porter Jr. & Collins frontcourt would be built for the modern NBA. That'd be lethal. Hutchison is the least likely to develop so we could be looking to add a SG to bring Hutchison off the bench. Guys we could pursue: Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard, Khris Middleton, Kevin Love, Draymond Green. Or we could fill out the bench with good pieces on one-year deals and try again in 2021.
I know this has been brought up a thousand times but imma do it again. Neil should try and get a meeting with Paul George this summer and convince him to work out a sign and trade with OKC. He doesn’t want to leave OKC and his buddy Russ completely high and dry so this way OKC at least gets back a couple decent players and he’s now a 3 hr flight from LA while playing in a player first organization and a chance to make a run at the Larry O’Brien trophy should things fall our way. Sounds ridiculous but it’s the type of creative thinking I’ve been waiting to see from Neil and at the very least it’s a worth a call to his agent.
I like your posts BonesJones (no joke), but Neil isn't trading CJ. He's said as much over and over and over. MAYBE he'd trade him for LeBron but that's about it. 27 teams wish they had our backcourt, remember? (I assume the two that aren't interested are GS and Houston)
Yeah it’s a waste of energy talking about it. I think trades in general are a waste of energy this offseason, unless we’re talking about the TPE. The valuable pieces we have are guys we either can’t afford to lose or guys that Olshey wouldn’t ever trade.
It’s not a crazy idea. I mean it’s no crazier than the Lebron one. Everyone assumes he’s gonna be in LA but the lakers aren’t close to contending. We could offer OKC a package including a pick and Harkless.
Exactly. Also- I love CJ, he's awesome, but we wouldn't get a franchise-changing player for him. If you want that, you have to give up Lillard and that will never never never happen.
In this extremely unlikely fantasy scenario? Because if you’re going to lose George, you may as well pick up someone you like (evidently OKC likes Moe) instead of losing him for nothing. They’d also get our pick, giving them something they don’t have this year.
Guys c'mon, I am going to have to copy this post and paste it every time someone posts a sign-and-trade. Sign-and-trades are not allowed if the team is over the tax apron at the conclusion of the trade. If they aren't over the tax apron then they are hard capped at the apron. So even if the Blazers managed to pull it off they'd be totally screwed. Here's why (going to use rounded numbers to make it easier to understand): Expected luxury tax line: $121 million Expected tax apron line: $125 million Current Blazers Guaranteed Salary for 2018-19 (8 players): $110 million Blazers Salary until they cut Baldwin, PapaG, and Layman: $115 million Blazers Salary until they renounce free agents Nurk, Davis, PC, and Napier: $144 million What these numbers mean is that the Blazers would not be able to do a sign-and-trade easily even if they weren't worried about being hard capped. A hard cap at $125 million means that the Blazers couldn't go over that number for ANY reason for the whole league year, so in this case through June 30th 2019. So right away in order to even do the sign-and-trade we'd have to renounce Davis, PC, and Napier to get under the tax line. They'd be gone, with almost no possibility to be kept. Nurkic would probably have to go too which I will explain why in a minute. Okay so in this scenario I am going to show the most favorable trade possible for the Blazers, without factoring in what the Thunder would want, which in my opinion would be: Paul George $30 million max for Turner, Leonard, Swanigan, #24, and a 2020 1st round pick which is almost exactly the same as George's contract. So after this trade we'd be at $113.5 million in contracts with 8 players under contract (Dame, CJ, George, Collins, Aminu, Harkless, Baldwin, and PapaG). I'd assume we cut Layman on June 30th before this trade could've happened. We'd still have the rights to Nurk with a cap hold of $8.8 million. Keep in mind we'd be hard capped at this point at $125 million. That means we'd have $11.5 million to sign 5 players (we'd have to reach the minimum) including Nurk. Now there is a little tiny bit of wiggle room by cutting any of the three non-guaranteed contracts of Baldwin or PapaG but the difference between them and a minimum contract somewhere else isn't big enough to really matter in this too much. Since we need 5 players we'd have to factor in 4 minimum contracts when re-signing Nurk (approximately $600,00 each). This means the absolute max we could offer Nurk at this point is about $9 million per year. If he signed any offer sheet with another team for more than that amount we would lose the right to match and he'd be theirs. So lets say that happened and Nurk was gone too. We'd have PapaG as our only big man with basically only the MLE and undrafted free agents to fill out the roster. I guess we could still technically use the TPE's but we'd still only be able to accept $9 million back and still have to round out the roster with four minimum free agent rookies. We could offer Davis the MLE at $8 million. Once again this scenario would only work if the Thunder accepted Turner and Leonard back which they wouldn't but I'll still play along and we'd have this roster: Dame/Baldwin/Undrafted Rookie CJ/ Undrafted Rookie George/Harkless Collins/Aminu/Undrafted Rookie Davis/PapaG/Undrafted Rookie The only trades we could make are ones that brought back both less money than we sent out and left room to sign more rookie free agents if we sent out more than we brought back. This would be the absolute best case scenario if every single thing broke perfectly in the Blazers favor. Unfortunately the OKC owner is cheap and won't want to stay in the luxury tax if it isn't for Paul George so he'd be gone. Now to the only way to get Paul George, and no it has nothing to do with Olshey's creativity level. Dame and CJ would have to convince him to opt in to his contract a la Chris Paul last year forcing his way to Houston after James Harden convinced him to go there. The decision date for the opt in is before free agency starts so Olshey wouldn't even be allowed to talk to him. Basically George would have to feel so strongly about playing for the Blazers that he'd be willing to accept $10 million less for one season to come here and have to play next year without a long term contract. Even if we got this far, we'd still have to give OKC enough to not want him to just leave. They would never get anything close to fair value in this situation because George holds all the leverage. I would imagine if we got this far something like Harkless, Aminu, Swanigan, #24, and a 2020 1st would probably get it done. In this dream scenario we'd have the best of both worlds. No hard cap so we could go all-in and still use the TPE's, tax-MLE, re-sign any of our own free agents for whatever we wanted, AND we'd have the bird rights to George so we could offer him a max contract next summer too. The only downside to this if it happened is that George could just leave for nothing after next year and there would be nothing we could do to stop it. This trade would have to be done by June 29th as that is when George has until to opt in for next year. Here is a projected roster in that scenario: Dame/Napier/Baldwin CJ/Ellington (tax-MLE)/PC George/Turner/Layman Collins/Faried (TPE if done before June 30th, just the first backup PF I could come up with) Nurk/Davis/Leonard/PapaG I really cringe every time someone mentions sign-and-trade this summer. I hope this helps.
