And that... ladies and gentleman is why we need a trade if we wanna be elite

Hey guess what...for all the reasons you post for why each one of those trades, well, I'm not exactly sure why...but the point is every single one of my posted trades happened in the last 18 months. Grant Hill for Ben Wallace??? Kenyon (2004)? Fine. Joe Barry Carroll for Parish and McHale! What just happened?

And I don't understand how RJ's contract is "much, much worse" when a) it's shorter and b) it's less per year than Vince's extension.
If you want to say the value MIL gets is less than NJ gets from Vince, that's an argument you can make. But the contracts themselves? I think you're wrong on that one, and there's not much wiggle room. www.storytellerscontracts.com

All I'm saying (and have been saying) is that for every Rod Thorn and Gregg Popovich, there are at least a couple of Wallaces and Baylors and Isiahs. For every Paul Allen, there is a couple of Herb Kohls, Robert Sarvers, Don Sterlings. To insinuate there aren't, or that lopsided (to your eyes) trades don't happen in revisionistic. And for better or worse, you have to include economic factors in trade scenarios too. Penny pinching for some is worth giving up talent. Saving $$ is worth giving up talent. A #27 pick to KP is worth much more than it is to Steve Kerr.

 

I'm willing to debate the 2nd point. I only get to watch a few Nets games a year on LP, and MIL doesn't interest me much. But my understanding was that Vince was almost Zach-level radioactive in trade talks, since his contract was a year longer than RJ's (who's younger, right?).

For the first point, I'm very willing to concede that the trade landscape over the last 2 years has been very different than it has before. I just don't think "lopsided" is as easy to define anymore for NBA GMs (who are of differing quality), and that we have all the pieces (young talent, young "projects", big contracts, cash, etc) to make most GMs want to trade with us.