The 2022 Trade Idea Thread, now with more urgency!

with guards that can actually defend yeah. Smart gets assigned to wings all the time and is known for his ability to lock down much bigger players. Dort is 6’3 and is constantly assigned to opposing teams best perimeter players. DiVincenzo is one of the best perimeter defenders and he’s 6’3. Draymond is one of, if not the best defenders in the last decade, and he’s undersized every night.

 

I think you could do three guards if two of them were like Powell. Or Powell and Smart alongside only one of Dame/CJ/Simons.

I don't think a 3rd guard along with the DameCJ duo is good. The DameCJ duo needs big forwards as we had with Aminu and Harkless. If those 2 forward positions had guys who could hit wide open threes that would be an ideal frontcourt. We had good defenses those years too. The problem was in the playoffs opponents would trap Dame, then Aminu/Harkless got exposed on offense. Even with that we made it to the WCF, multiple first round wins, and two years of #3 seeds.

Dame and CJ duo can work. The 3 guard lineups with Powell can work. The problem is you can't do both at the same time.

 

fine, but it's still MY preference to get height. i want no part of watching smart try to defend guys 6 inches taller than him in a playoff series.

 

the same would be true with a dame/ant lineup. prolly worse, tbh.

 

This is overpaying.

 

So how is that line of thinking different than saying I don’t wanna see Draymond defending any centers?

 

draymond was also surrounded by all NBA defenders like Iggy and Klay who are both tall/long for their positions. Then they added a 7 foot Durant next to him to protect the rim. And they switched 2-5 for nearly 5 seasons. You want a 6'3 Smart switching onto guys like AD?

You don't see the difference in comparing Smart (next to two short defenders who are consistently among the worst in the league with Dame/Simons) with Draymond and all the defensive talent and SIZE around him?

 

This is true

 

Possibly or possibly not. We have a huge sample size of CJ defense, he is full developed, plus was a 4 year college player.

Simons has 0 year of college basketball, is taller, and obviously much younger so I don't think we know as much, what defender he will be in his mid to late 20's.

Also Simons would be more of a split starter/backup even next season, as opposed to CJ being the teams 2nd key player along with Dame. Dame should play less minutes in each future year as Simons role increases. Again very different than two players with only a few months of age difference in their peak minute mid 20's together.

So the negatives of a Dame-Simons duo could ultimately be very different than the negatives we had of a DameCJ duo.

 

You're assuming that we wouldnt have size in this theoretical scenario? My dream is to dump CJ for a wing and Powell for Smart. You start Smart at SG with Simons as the sixth man. At forward you have proper sized players. I dont see the issue

 

then that's different from starting dame/simons/smart and playing them together for the majority of the game. dumping CJ for a longer wing would be crucial.

that said, i do project Ant as a starter. I think he's outgrowing the jordan clarkson comps.

 

One thing I never believe in mortgage the future if I don't have to. I also don't believe building around one player either. I believe in build around a system and get players that's fit into that system on both side of the ball. Do I believe trading Dame no I think he can fit Billups system but others don't. Simons and Nas are the future so you don't trade them. But you see last couple games the players are playing together a lot better because there playing team basketball and everyone involved on both ends of the ball. Sometimes when you got star and couple guys supposed to be close to it and making the big money they kind fill there untouchable with there playing time. But they kind forget one thing the team aspect of the game and eventually that usually fall in the long run.

 

Yeah, what im thinking is you pay Ant starter money and he's the sixth man for one season. Then we either make a deep run next season, turn into a contender, keep Dame and trade Ant----or we dont and we trade Dame and build around Ant.

 

I believe Simons should be the starter next year. I also more he plays better he will be a defender. But until we find more on Dame I don't see CJ getting traded by deadline but possible in the off season. Really the only 2 players that might get traded is Roco and Nurk because there expiring contract. But if we continue to put up wins that could change with Nurk especially if you can't find someone as good.

 

Smart is actually at his best guarding 2/3s. The really quick 1s give him the most trouble. He could play some 3 minutes and we wouldn't be in 3 guard lineups more than 10-15 MPG (Dame could get 36 and it would still leave 30 mpg for both Ant and Smart with no 3 guard lineups).

 

I think you're wrong on this. Bogdanovich's average salary is only $18M per year.

 

still deficient and you'd have to work around the fact that you have three short dudes with staggering nonsense. i'm so tired of being shorter than our opponents at so many positions every night. if we're truly going to embrace a rebuild around dame, height and athleticism are my top goals. smart is far more capable than powell admittedly, but still, guys like luka/lebron/kawhi could simply shoot over him. and we couldn't switch as much as we'd want to in the playoffs in certain matchups.

think chauncey is tired too, and this was in december.


When Toronto came to town last month, some reporters who cover the team were curious about Powell, the former Raptors guard, starting at small forward. Before the game, a Toronto reporter asked Billups if he was concerned about the four inches Powell would concede to Raptors forward OG Anunoby.

“We give up size every night, man,” Billups said. “We are a small group, especially at 1, 2 and 3. They are all pretty much 6-3. But you have to find a way to just make multiple efforts defensively.”

I asked, then, if Billups thought giving up that kind of size every night was a sustainable model for success. He tried his best rope-a-dope answer, talking about how he was trying to figure out how to best use all three guys at the same time, how he needed to do a better job of putting them in better positions to succeed … but eventually he tired of coming up with an excuse.

“We’ll see,” Billups concluded.

As Billups left the interview room, some of us reporters chuckled as we remarked that his “we’ll see” sounded an awful lot like a diplomatic way of saying “hell, no.”

Two weeks later, nobody is laughing and there is no more we’ll see. The three-guard lineup has been seen, warts and all.

 

windhorst also had an interesting nugget about OKC being about 20 mil under the salary floor with their current roster. so apparently, they'd have to cut a check to the rest of the players on their team in lieu of being so far below the cap.

they can absorb powell's contract completely if they wanted to. if we can extract a pick while dumping 15 mil of salary, that would be amazing. I'm not sure OKC would be able to use that space to acquire more assets-- think the market for that is saturated with so few dumpable albatross contracts around the league.

here's an idea. OKC gets a player they can potentially use for the future on a relatively reasonable deal instead of simply paying their guys more. We get a pick out of it while clearing our cap a bit for upcoming extensions to Ant/Nurk, and Cavs get a much needed starting 2 guard.

 

lol You don't give Norman Powell away 6 months after you just signed him. He's a great value. This is not the way to rebuild.

 

in a vacuum, yes, Powell is on a good deal. but he's a terrible fit, whether next to CJ or Ant. I'd rather have another liquid asset like a pick and a 13 mil TPE to play around with this summer. We're in rebuild mode.

And you're not just dumping his contract here, you're getting fairly commensurate value back.