Just because I have the opinion that CJ is too selfish for the role that we try to put him in on this team, doesn't mean that he won't work somewhere else in a different role. Stotts gives him too much rope to do whatever he wants. I have never said he's a bad player. I have said he's a frustrating player and I don't particularly care for his brand of basketball, but guess what, there are a lot of GMs out there who are morons. Someone traded for Melo.... twice. Someone traded for Steve Francis. Someone traded for Allen Iverson. Someone traded for Stephon Marbury..... at least twice. I could go on and on listing selfish iso type players who have held high value around the league.
I didn’t even notice the Bucks are only 16-13. If the Bucks flame out in the playoffs again, Middleton would also be a great get for CJ. Something like CJ, Hood, and our 2023 1st for Middleton. Then re-sign Gary and go into next season with a starting lineup of: Dame/Trent/Middleton/Covington/Nurkic
. But you’re hypocritical. You prefer Trent to start at SG?? He doesn’t pass at all! CJ’s playmaking was All-NBA level before he got hurt.
But you can't tell me that he added size or defense. We already have shot makers and people who will pass the ball. We need to keep Gary starting and upgrade another position. If you didn't forget how good CJ looked on offense neither did the GMs in the league. The fact is if Dame were a dominant defender then I wouldn't mind having CJ back and here to stay but Dame is not even close to a dominant defender. We need Gary next to him in the back court for the majority of the minutes at SG. Also what is Zach's value in a sign and trade? This idea that the Dame/CJ back court is as good as the sum of its parts is absolute insanity. They are not complementary players on offense and they are terrible, absolutely terrible together on defense. I don't need to look for proof. We literally have a better record without CJ than with him and people can talk about the team settling into the defense or schedule but the fact is if CJ were so great next to Dame (good enough for 30M per year) we wouldn't see anything but a huge drop off without him.
I really want Middleton. He is a solid all around SF that we have needed for a long time. With how much we are giving up, I bet we could get Augustin too
Getting Augustin doesn’t make too much sense to me at $14.3m over the last two years of his contract. I was thinking that ideally, Simons would play spot minutes at backup guard behind Dame/CJ/Trent for the rest of the season when CJ is back, then we re-sign him to a reasonable 3 year (maybe 3 yr/$30m) deal and he can enter his 4th year as our 6th man and have a clearly defined bigger role. Maybe he will turn into what we intended CJ to be and for the next 4 years, we’ll be getting a more explosive Lou Williams who will continue to get better with his playmaking coming off the bench to back up Dame and Trent. But to do that, Simons will need as many minutes as possible to continue to develop. Augustine doesn’t look like he’s been any better than Teague, and you could probably get Teague for cash considerations right now if you’re just looking for a backup guard who can play spot minutes.
I like the idea of getting Jrue more. CJ and change for Jrue would set us up to be a more balanced team and Jrue/Covington/Jones switching would be nasty.
I don’t see that it’s time to trade CJ. He’s taken a monumental leap in offensive efficiency this year. He’s rivaling Dame. Sure CJ gets 2+ fewer assists than Dame but he also has 2 fewer turnovers. That’s probably a wash. Dame gets a lot more FTA but CJ offsets that with better shooting. CJ has always been less efficient than Dame but this year for the first time, he’s not. Here are CJ’s improvements per 36 vs past 3 years: TS% 0.620 up from 0.543 Assists +48% Turnovers -35% Steals +65% Points +35% FTA +28% We definitely need him. Average players are hard to come by and he’s way above average. Who knows if he’ll keep this up but I’d like to find out.. Anyway, I do agree he’s not a good fit. So if you can get a better player or an equal player who’s a better fit, then it makes sense. But isn’t that always true for every player? I don’t think there is more reason now than before to try to trade CJ. I don’t think a small-sample hot streak is much to go on.
Ok, so you're okay with having a massive part of our salary cap in our guards because Trent is about to get paid. He has shown he can be a very good starter and he's going to get a massive offer this summer. Plus we have Ant waiting in the wings. So we're about to invest a ton of money in our guards while we have some pretty massive holes in other positions.
This thread was started over a year ago. And it was probably started a couple years late. It's been time to trade CJ for quite a while now. Except right now, of course, while he's injured and his value is depressed.
Depends what we can get for CJ. Trent hasn’t proven he’s as good as CJ. Ant hasn’t proven that he’s even average. Things are looking good but not proven. I’m fine with trading CJ if we get equal value, better fit. I’m not fine with ditching CJ for lower value because we imagine that Trent and Ant are equal to CJ.
Nobody is saying firesale him. We can be patient, but it's time for him to go. We have Trent who can be a VERY good starter. CJ has the most value.
In my mind it’s basically always time to trade for better value and/ or fit and never time to trade down out of frustration.
Yeah, agreed on this. I think the earliest we see a deal involving CJ is after the draft after our pick has been conveyed. Giving anything to the Rockets to make this year’s 1st unprotected will signal a trade coming and will probably hurt team morale. The playoffs will give us a clearer picture of what we need to do. We still need to see if Gary can play like this in the playoffs and that Anfernee can continue the production with increased minutes. Another big playoff showing might also up the value in McCollum. Plus no sense in rushing to get rid of him when teams like the Bucks/Raptors/6ers/Celtics haven’t expressed any indication they’re looking to get rid of Middleton/Siakam/Simmons/Brown/etc.
As someone else said, as always, it depends what you could get for CJ. Or, what can we get for Trent. I'm not opposed to trading CJ. I just don't think he's bringing back someone like Siakam, definitely not someone like Tatum. There's not a lot of young veteran star power at PF that I can realistically see as obtainable for him. Especially when you consider team direction. We can throw out SIakam, Tatum, Sabonis till we're blue in the face, but does anyone have a compelling reason for those teams? Whereas with Trent, if we worry about paying him and having all that money in our guards, he's SO young, he can fit a rebuilding ish team that might want to move a younger player. I've seen Atlanta fans want a SG to slot next to Trae. A Collins for Trent swap would be inteersting. Especially if we threrw in Zach, they threw in a lesser SG/SF prospect.
I don't even know if I agree with you but great job defending the team. Oh and I do agree with you. Even though Olshey has said in the past that CJ is untouchable we don't know what he was doing during that Harden madness.
I kind of like that idea. And a Collins/Covington forward combo might be really good. Might not be as good as RoCo/Jones defensively, but a major upgrade on offense two teams trade their upcoming RFA headaches. I'm curious which one of Trent/J.Collins signs for more money this summer
