Right. So you're not doing anything to change my mind about free agency being a reliable avenue to add talent...
Reliable? Like tanking? Right back at you on changing my mind that Portland has none chance in Free Agency. Their potential window there is the offseason prior to the 2026-7 season and today I'm not sure who they might even want to target. If as they draw closer they've a target or two they want, it's those player's agents who'd they'd be talking to prior who they'd need to sway not you. STOMP
The vast majority of the best players are lotto picks. If we're making the playoffs our ability to add talent is significantly reduced. We've added far more talented players via the lotto than any other way. This isn't even close. Absolutely, 100%. For Portland tanking is a far more effective way to add talent than free agency. I can't believe anybody as logical as you usually are is even suggesting otherwise. I feel like I must be misunderstanding you.
First, thank you for the compliment but it doesn't seem you've thought this through. Plenty of lotto picks turn out to be busts, so when you degrade any avenue other then tanking as unreliable what you're advocating for is hardly a sure thing either. What is more of a sure thing is the players who've already established themselves in the league. The question for a franchise isn't whether established guys will continue to be who they've been as they enter into the prime of their career, it's whether they're well positioned to add the player(s) they're targeting... whether such a player is likely to take their offer. With the salary cap aprons via the 2023 CBA, I strongly suspect in the short term coming offseasons that teams will be losing their own UFAs at a much higher rate then whats been the norm as they're faced with a Bball version of Sophie's Choice on who they retain and how they allocate their money... see the Luka trade for instance. Following winning another title in 2022, the same Golden State Warriors we've been discussing paid 177M in luxury tax in the summer of 2023 for being 43M over the 2nd apron. I'll step out on a stable limb and suggest that owners generally don't want to incur those sorts of taxes. If a franchise, even one without sunny beaches, a diverse population & large endorsement opportunities is one of the very few able to offer more then a MLE in a given offseason, they're a legit option for UFAs. If that same franchise is also one of the even fewer that is set up with a bunch of young talent & seems staged to win, they become a leading option. Comparing the 2016 Olshey Blazers as any sort of rational as to why a properly positioned 2026 Blazer team in this environment can't swoop in to sign a desired FA when there is likely to be more then usual isn't comparing apples to apples to say the least and is of course only a single & poor example. And when I say desired, I don't necessarily mean an All NBA type. It could be a quality 4/5 rotation guy who gives them a small ball option or a deadly sniper who rounds out the roster. This isn't the only viable route to build going forward, but I'm convinced it is a realistic option that they should at the very least consider and keep open as things unfold. Maybe more likely is utilizing one or more of their expiring deals in a trade for a guy who is about to hit the UFA market who a team is in one of those Sophie's Choice situations with. But again, dismissing the FA route out of hand as you've stated this franchise definitely should is just silly. I'm glad they seem to be keeping their options open... that seems logical STOMP
I don't necessarily think it should be dismissed out of hand (that's how we added Wes Matthews) but it should not be counted on as a necessary means of getting where we need to go. From my perspective we're far more than time and a 4th/5th option away from competing. So we're going to have to get opportunities at very top end talent. I don't think free agency will give us that. Thanks for clarifying your position. Interesting points about the new CBA. That's definitely something to consider. I think maybe we just disagree on how close we are, or have different ideas about what the team should be building for. Nothing wrong with that. Just different perspectives.
How many of those were at the top of the lottery? Certainly didnt need to tank to draft Jokic during a taco bell ad.
Tatum and Brown were picks from trades.... Not a result of a teams loses to get a lotto pick. It's crazy going over that list but Duncan and Wade were the only players acquired from a draft high in the lottery that won a title.
I'm all for it if we can trade for great picks as well. But the reality is you have to trade away assets to get those. We don't have those assets to trade away (as it seems clearly Simon's and Grant are not worth that, nor is most anybody else on the team except the guys we want to keep and maybe Time Lord). I don't think the case is being made that tanking is the absolutely only possible avenue that Portland could ever have to get a big time player. That's just the only logical avenue that we have right now.
We haven't had a single NBA team win a title with a top6 drafted tanking player in the last 23 years. Even that most recent 2003 Wade example was a destination Miami market where Shaq/LBJ stars forced their way there. I think there is a legit argument that tanking for a top lottery pick has to gut the teams roster so much that its extremely unlikely to surround that pick with talent to contend. It seems much more likely to add a gem later in the draft like Giannis/Jokic/Kawhi that can join a roster with more talent and eventually go on to contend. People bring up how many #1 overall picks win titles in NBA history. Amazingly Bill Walton was the only one able to do it for the team that drafted them without a fellow #1 overall pick helping them get to or win their first finals. Now I'm not saying there isn't a situation where tanking has some strategic benefits or can help from time to time. But I do question if it should be a foundational key strategy to a rebuild. NBA history doesn't support that.
I don't think trading Grant and Simons for the chance at a top 5 in this loaded draft is going to move us further from title contention than is keeping them. I also didn't say we needed to keep our picks. What we need to do is improve the caliber and quantity of talent on this team. We don't have enough talent to win a title or enough desirable assets to trade for that talent. With the possible exception of using Ayton and/or Simons as expiring contracts. With the benefit that Ayton could possibly be a reclamation project who we can build into something another team may want to take a chance on. So maybe we're building to that? Boston tanked their way to being as good as they are now. They tanked/traded to load up with talent by having multiple first rounders and high picks (Brown, Smart and Tatum were all top 6 picks) and traded some of that talent to put them over the top. They had 2 or 3 first round picks in 6 of nine drafts.
Boston never tanked for picks. They won 48 and 53 games the seasons prior to drafting Brown and Tatum. Now they did pull off the epic Pierce/Garnett trades with the Nets that got them those picks. We sort of did that type of deal to a lesser degree to draft Dame. Next best player we acquired was Roy and that was from flipping Telfair, again not related to tanking. None of those trade opportunities are related to a team positioning itself for losses and a high lottery pick. I certainly think trading vets for a gamble on younger talent with a higher ceiling is a great way to build for the future.
If we had that kind of talent to make those kinds of deals I'd be all for it. But we don't. Yet we still need to increase the overall level of talent on the team quite a bit.
Gerald Wallace and Telfair weren't crazy talents - they netted us Dame and Roy. But it requires giving up a player today for something that has zero use today, is a risk of being worth nothing, and only has a potential long term benefit. Instead we've had a recent history of prioritized holding onto flawed vets and paying them 100+ million in Grant/Ayton/Ant/Thybulle/Nurk/etc Somehow we traded away all of Norm, CJ, Nance, Hart, Roco and the only youth we took a chance on was a 23 year old Kris Murray.
We traded for Wallace, Brian Grant, Buck Williams and other key pieces that helped us win. Now we have Deni, Camara, Grant and Ayton from trades.
Yep. That definitely happened. But Telfair (because of his potential and youth) was worth more than Simons and Gerald Wallace was worth a hell of a lot more than Grant. And I don't think draft picks were as valued at the time of those trades I had thought giving those guys up was going to lead to us sucking for 5 or 6 years to stock up on top level talent. Since that's apparently not the plan we'll just have to hope Joe can swing more Camara deals or we luck into the next Giannis or Jokic. He hired Mike Schmitz, so maybe it wouldn't be luck?
CJ Grant Ant Norm Hart all had legit value at times to many other NBA teams, none of them are part of our long term future, and none of them have been flipped for young upside.
I'm not disagreeing there at all. If we weren't going to tank for enough talent we should have gotten more draft picks out of those guys. But it may have been that ownership wanted that money off the books right away. Doesn't make me feel any better about the current situation.
