An idea: TRADE 1: POR Gets: Wesley Matthews, Josh McRoberts DAL Gets: Evan Turner, Meyers Leonard OR Moe Harkless, 2018 POR 1st, (plus maybe 2019 2nd or 2020 1st?) TRADE 2: NYK Gets: Napier, Frye CLE Gets: Lee, Dotson, NYK Future 2nd, POR Future 2nd POR Gets: 2018 CLE 1st, Cedi Osman TRADE 3: MEM Gets: 2018 CLE 1st, Noah Vonleh, Meyers Leonard OR Moe Harkless POR Gets: Tyreke Evans, Brandon Wright, James Ennis That would leave us under the tax line, without Moe, Hark, and Leonard, improved, with the only big future contract being Wesleys for the next year and half (he'll opt in). His contract will be tradeable next offseason, and if we did, we'd have max cap space. However, I really like this lineup: Lillard / Baldwin / McCollum / Matthews / Osman Evans / Connaughton / Ennis Aminu / Collins / Swanigan Nurkic / Davis / Wright Say we trade Wes at seasons end... we'd have apx. $20M in space counting contracts or cap holds for Dame, CJ, Nurk, Collins, Evans, Aminu, and Connaughton. That's a solid 7 man rotation already.
Not just here but all across the Internet I am amazed at how huge value people seem to attach to that Brooklyn pick Cleveland currently own, probably based on the past evaluation of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum who were both selected with Brooklyn picks recently (well Tatum was actually selected with Kings pick but you can kind of get where I am coming from) . This year Brooklyn are a bad team in a league full of tanking teams. Last year there were no teams that tanked from the beginning until the end of season. Of course Suns, Kings and Lakers started their tank job at one point but they still had a headstart because they were better than Nets before they did. This year the league is packed with teams that went into season with the desire to tank, as well as teams that started to falter very early. Won't be surprised if Brooklyn pick ends up as no. 10 or so, which really is not that valuable.
