Merged: blazers linked to serge ibaka

To be clear, I don't think Harkless is a special player or anything. In fact, Scalma's point about Harkless' shooting month by month is pretty compelling evidence that Harkless didn't discover a three-point shot, he just had a really strong start to the season. But yeah, contract is a big deal when it comes to player value. It doesn't matter for a star in his prime, but for role-players and reserve quality players, contract is arguably the most important part of value.

I hope you're right and I'm wrong.

 

Harkless' name shouldn't be appearing in this thread. The Magic GM would be humiliated around the league. Yet Harkless is dominating this thread.

But the bigger point is...This isn't the kind of trade that Olshey wants. He made us the 2nd-highest payroll for a losing team, planning to trade our high-paid garbage (which he doesn't think is garbage) for lower-paid stars, thus returning us to a reasonable payroll while increasing our wins.

As ridiculous as that plan seems, some on the board say that it was the only one available, and they may be right. I don't know. But I do know that if we re-sign Ibaka, it will increase the payroll after re-signing him, not decrease it.

I guess you could justify this trade by saying that the goal is to NOT re-sign Ibaka...It's just an emergency trade...The goal is to get rid of a couple of summer signing mistakes....The goal is to reverse last summer's financial errors, not to improve on the court.

 

They won't trade Noah unless they have completely given up on him, which is doubtful. Dude would be in his senior year of college, extremely hard working gym rat who has shown the ability and desire to improve. Vonleh should be in the long term plans for the direction of this team, or Olshey should be fired.

 

I'm thinking

ORL Gets: Crabbe, Vonleh, Layman, 2018 POR 1st
We Get: Serge Ibaka, Jeff Green

When you compare this trade to what they gave out, it stacks up.
Oladipo >> Crabbe (They get a lesser SG, but add shooting, which they need)
Vonleh = Sabonis (Young, Lottery pick PF)
Layman and Future 1st > Ilyasova

They get a little less value, but would recoup most of it.

We get Greens expiring contract, which is valuable. We could possibly flip Green to Dallas for Wesley Matthews who would be a Crabbe replacement. Dallas would shed the $17M contract of Matthews while they start their rebuild.

We'd still have Plumlee, Harkless, and our 2017 first as trade assets, Maybe we could work something like:

BKN Gets: Plumlee, Harkless, Leonard, POR 2017 1st
POR Gets: Lopez, Bogdanavic

We'd then have:

Lillard / McCollum
McCollum / Matthews
Turner / Bogdanavic
Ibaka / Aminu
Lopez / Davis

Note* May have to add another pick to the Orlando deal, which would make it harder to do the Lopez deal, but we could work something out.

 

That'd be stupid of them lol.

They need to rebuild, holding onto the $17M a year contract of a player nearing the end of his prime and who hasn't proved he deserves that kind of money is foolish.

I assume they'd be willing to rid themselves of his contract. They could try to pursue someone good like Jrue Holiday in the off-season with the money saved, or they could absorb similarly bad contracts such as Matthews' but get picks for them taking on that type of contract.

There's nothing to be gained by them holding onto Matthews.

 

We can't make this trade! We have to sit on our assets like a grumpy pelican for the Day That Never Comes!

 

Oh, i can just imagine that phone call...

Neil: Rob? how are you? i heard you might be interested in trading Iba..

Hennigan: Ahhh you motherfucker! not you again!

Neil: lol

 

Dallas is stupid, so don't expect them to do the logical thing here. They should've started their rebuild two summers ago.

 

This is tough, Ibaka is a either a 25-30 game rental, OR, a max re-sign.

Orlando wants young scoring wings & pick/s.
Orlando does not need Plumlee.

Here is a trade idea, but do not see it happening.
Out: Crabbe, Aminu, and either Pat, Tim or Jake, and then either Cleveland's 1st, or a couple of seconds
In: Ibaka, Augustin, Meeks

Not sure Orlando would want Chief, or Crabbe's contract? We could swap out Davis for Chief, both have attractive contracts.

Meeks is expiring filler. Augustin could be a decent BUPG. and then hope Ibaka re-signs.

I would not risk two firsts on Ibaka in case he does not re-sign.

 

It shouldn't be that hard to outsmart the Magic front office.

 

I mean if we're giving up clevelands first and say another protected first in 2018, I think I would risk that for Ibaka. He's just so perfect for our current team.

 

Here's what sucks, 1) because of the past failures to make a significant move it's hard to get excited for this or anything else we think could happen 2) considering this is out there for the public to hear it's not likely to happen and 3) it just makes too much sense so it isn't going to happen. I hate that I feel this way but the last few times have numbed be a little

 

Another positive about ibaka; he's used to being the third option and would know how to play off of Lillard and McCollum

 

Does a half-season rental convince Ibaka to resign here and is he worth the cost if he did? I'm not sure either is in the affirmative.

 

Is that what he wants though?

 

Well for those that are hopeful the Magic and Wolves just started if you have league pass if you want to see him in action