The other thing about a trade like this: either (a) OKC (assuming they don't come back from 3-1 down this year) never do win a title, in which case, YAY!, or (b) They (pretty much inevitably) do, in which case we don't need to feel as bad, because we can still have residual warm feelings for Aldridge.
Yeah, hard to see how anyone in the Northwest could feel bad about Aldridge and Durant winning a championship playing for the Thunder.
lol, riiiight. On the flip side, how in the heck did the Blazers not Pair LMA and Durant, alumni from the same college together.
If I were the Thunder, I'd trade Harden because he's the most marketable to a sad sack franchise (like ours) trying to gain relevancy and a bigger fan base. You can trade him for more and give up less (because Durant and Westbrook can pick up some of the slack, and Ibaka may grow as a scorer too). They're very good at spotting young gems (and facing some tough financial issues) so I would think they would be that rare contending team that is willing to look at draft picks/youth. I'd give up Freeland, Williams and our two first rounders for him, but I doubt that'd be enough.
There's no way OKC trades Harden, Ibaka and Perkins for Aldridge, it's pointless to talk about. I just still can't believe some people would trade Aldridge straight up for Harden.
Neither of those trades would happen. But I'm sure they are fun to think about. Blazer fans are in for a stretch of low-grade mediocrity like hasn't been seen since 79-89. The climate of the NBA right now and P.A.'s unwillingness to spend Portland out of the "Small Market Team" hole makes me very pessimistic about the near- and mid-long term future of the franchise. No, I don't think they are going to move, I don't think Paul will sell (right now, anyway), but I think the sell-out streak ends this coming year, and we settle in for several years of fighting for the 8th spot in the playoffs, or missing and getting a low-level lottery pick, free agents won't touch them, and the lack of team talent precludes any trades that would launch the team upwards. If LaMarcus is smart, he'd realize this and demand a trade to a team that has some vision and potential, if not a "right now" contender. All in all... it's gonna be a tough rest of the decade for us.
The NBA Finals have shown that Harden is a role player. 4 NBA Finals games - 3 times held to single digit scoring, yet people want to trade him straight up for LMA. It's why nobody should take any basketball discussion here seriously. We all have opinions, but some are just so laughably stupid, they are painful. Everybody here has had stupid ideas, myself included, by the way.
At 22 years old Harden has been to the Finals. At 22, Roy was in college at Washington. At 22, Harden had a PER of over 20 on a team that went to the Finals.
Um, you would be correct. I'm pretty sure the Thunder don't do anything yet (even assuming they don't make a comeback) because they don't have to. Teams never seem to trade good players until they're absolutely forced to, and Harden isn't even a RFA until next summer. But they've got to know that somebody is clearing cap space to make a run at him.
At 23, Roy was a franchise player. At 24, an All-Star. Harden is a 6th man who has been shut down in the Finals, and has yet to prove to be a primary scoring option on a nightly basis. Keep on thinking Harden is Roy, though. That's what I meant when I was talking about stupid ideas.
You put Harden on that Blazer team at the age of 22 and he's an AS, too. Franchise player is such a relative term. How good of a franchise are we talking about?
I'd be shocked to see him as the franchise player on a 54-win team that has no other All-Stars. But he's Brandon Roy.
I think it's stupid to trade Harden straight-up for LMA, and to compare him to Brandon Roy. What an unbelievably stupid post, if you agree with it. Harden has been shut the fuck down. He's costing OKC this series.
