….. ummm….. the season ends, they renounce RoCo, done and done. They didn’t need to trade his contract.
I really thought I explained why I thought it was a bad comparison. That being that a protected 2025 first from the Bucks + a TPE is not anywhere close to the value of Ant, Little, and a 3rd pick. There is a real thing called acceptable risk. Grant was acceptable risk compared to cost. Siakam wouldn't have been
My first thought was to judge the transaction for what it was a year ago. Now I'm simply trying to understand where your cutoff is for how far the butterfuly effect impacts your view of a transaction. To answer your question: I think the team thought the assets they sent out were less valuable than the opportunity the assets they brought in would provide.
I’m not comparing the trades themselves. I’m saying that they were both measured using the same risk. You’re even agreeing to that. You’re just saying that one was acceptable and one was not. That’s literally what I said several posts up. Regardless, you’re still supporting that the risk of the player re-signing was a key factor in the trade. Well, even with lower risk that was determined to be acceptable, if Grant leaves for nothing, I will think the trade ended up being a bad one.
worst part ... watching RoCo come of the bench, play pretty good, help the Clippers sweep Portland last season
Appreciate your permission to do so! I'd grant you the same permission, but you're probably not waiting for me to green light it.
RoCo played 12 TOTAL minutes in 5 playoff games and that was with Kawhi and PG13 being hurt. Think about that.
Well when we fundamentally disagree on something that seems like common sense to me, there’s really not much more to say.
You can share them if you'd like. Had he not beat us, we wouldn't have finished behind the Spurs, so I guess we can thank RoCo for getting us Scoot!
All good... how I evaluate trades actually appears to be a little more complex than the way you do. I think my way is the common sense way, but since yours differed, I was curious to find out how you did it. I don't think there is a right/wrong way; I was asking out of curiosity as I'm always open to improving my methods. I learn a lot from people here!
Ok, let me think of another example.. The Portland/CHI/Cleveland trade. Technically it's not complete because we have not conveyed our pick to Chicago yet. To me that's an unfinished component to that deal. I already think that trade was... not great. But because that pick has not yet conveyed, it could potentially be worse. What if we have to give up a player or other picks to get Chicago to closet the matter? Joe said that he talks to Chicago every single deadline because he knows that he might need to remove the limitations on our future picks. So we can't fully judge how bad that trade was until it's officially done. Similarly, I don't see the Grant trade as resolved until he signs on the dotted line. We clearly got him because we thought he would re-sign here. If he decides to not sign here, that means that the assets that we got from the CJ trade were wasted. We could have used those exact same assets to get Duren from New York. We would have needed to absorb Kemba and give them that pick. That's what Detroit did. So until we know what the outcome of Grant's free agency, I don't think we know how that trade worked out for us.
I look at trades as being judged at two times. There's the initial evaluation of the trade. This is always done immediately. Components such as pending free agents or picks just have their value estimated as best as possible. Then there's the final actual value of the trade years later in hindsight. This includes what happened to free agents, where picks ultimately ended up, what players were drafted with picks, how players acquired or dealt later developed. Some of those unknowns are resolved in a year. Others take up to 10 years or longer. The first initial judgements are far more useful IMO as we will never know all of that information when deciding to do future moves. So it's interesting to see what a trade ultimately ends up, but it shouldn't drive that initial decision making process. Think of it as flipping coins. We should always expect the chance of heads to be 50% and bet accordingly. Yes after a flip if you could go back to place a bet of what would happen you would want to bet closer to 0% or 100% since you now know the outcome. But that should never drive your future bets of a new flip to anything except 50%. The final result also doesn't make a prior 50% bet good or bad in hindsight, because the outcome was never known at the initial decision.
Normally I would agree with you, but I would sincerely hope that we traded for Grant with some assurance that he would re-sign here. I think if he does not re-sign, and we don't trade Dame, that's a huge hit to any chance we have of keeping Dame, or building around him. Kinda makes me wonder if that's why we would be gun shy about trading for OG or Siakam.
I'd assume we did have assurance. But that was with the feelings of the team last year, that had Josh Hart, and had Dame as the sole cornerstone. It was not expected the direction of the team would change so much so soon. Or that the team would lose so much. Perhaps that also changed Grants decision to resign. Those factors were not all known to Grant or the Blazers a year ago. If the Blazers had tried to build a winner around Dame such as trading #3 for Brown then Grant is more likely to resign IMO. But those events didn't take place. So I don't think Grant actually walking or resigning changes how good the trade for him was at the time it was done. The Blazers had to do the best they could with imperfect information and with their best estimates. Now if the Blazers knew there was an extremely high likelihood Grant would walk regardless of these other factors and ignored it yes that would make the trade a worse trade. But Grant staying or going doesn't change the initial grade of the trade.
I agree with your process, in general. Like I previously said, there often becomes a butterfly effect on these things that makes the impact of a trade last decades until it's complete. Of course we all evaluate a trade when it happens and I try to put an estimated weight on the unknown varibles in the future. Whether that be future picks, potential, injury history, etc. I think it can get complicated on trades with draft picks because I'm not sure a GM should get credit/punished if the pick turns out to be abnormally good/bad down the road. For example, if in the spring of 2007, we traded our 2007 unprotected pick for Udonis Haslem, I would say that was a bad trade. The unknown at the time would be that our pick would turn into the #1 pick, and that consencous #1 pick would be Greg Oden, etc... Despite Haslem having the better career than Oden, I would still say the trade would've been bad move by Steve Patterson. On the flip side, I'd say people would over-state how good the Gerald Wallace to the Nets trade was for Portland. Wallace for a pick between 5-10 in the draft was a good move, no doubt. However, I can't give the GM credit for knowing Lillard was their guy and that he'd be available. I'll give them credit for that selection seperately, but not bonus credit for the trade itself. If that makes sense.
