What move would you have made at the trade deadline

Kidnap Dragic and force him to commit to Houston

 

Mo Williams. Low Risk and potentially good reward. Mo Williams wouldn't have missed 7 3's in a row against Toronto....

 

With the cap going up, IT would have been a bargain and shouldn't have prohibited Morey from chasing Durant in 2016. I don't mind Prigioni but would have preferred another point guard to come with him versus McDaniels. Jack or Ridnour would have been nice and given the Rockets the ability to go super small or plug and play certain point guard option depending on the opponent.

If Philly is trying to hoard young, relatively cheap assets, then why are they trading KJ?
I think Philly realized that KJ was going to try to get more money than he's worth and decided to take a flyer on another project who they have control over and get an extra pick. KJ only makes sense if he can be signed again, which is maybe 50/50 at this point given the cap situation and his unique place in the CBA as an early RFA.

Like Morey said about other teams moves impacting those we wanted to make, it seems we locked in on a couple of players and didn't cast the net wide in search of depth.

 

OP, I'm glad you made this thread. I'm glad we have Morey because I think he is one of the best GMs in the league. No one is perfect and I think he makes more good moves than bad moves without a doubt. But I also believe as another thread discusses, that sometimes he values cap flexibility and assets too much so that he can get his 3rd star in the future (Durant 2016, etc.), rather than taking a chance on making our team better for the now. I do understand it somewhat because you don't want your team ever locked into bad contracts, but sometimes you also have to take some risks.

That being said, I mentioned this in another thread, so here is my proposition of what COULD/SHOULD have been done at the trade deadline. BROOKLYN was my team of choice to deal with because I think they wanted to get out of tax hell as soon as possible, with the RIGHT deals, because they know their team isn't going anywhere and the owner reportedly wants to get this team below the tax line, remove bad contract and sell the team being in a decent position for a new owner to take over.

2 TRADES WITH BROOKLYN:

1st Trade:

Jason Terry for Jarrett Jack straight up. (we don't add anything because we are doing them a favor to remove salary for next year and the sweetners are in the next deal)

2nd Trade:

Brook Lopez for Papa, Shved, Capella, Canaan, Bev, Dorsey

I did these deals on the trade machines when we had the players on our team and they worked then.

Now we would do these trades with them with an "understanding" that they also will buy out DWill, so that we can pick him up afterwards. DWill will want to come to us because we are the only playoff team that will offer him a starting job to compete for a Championship. We start him with Harden to make it easier on him, and let J.Jack run with the second unit to do his thing. So unlike in Brooklyn, D.Will gets to start again.

We also could have thrown in either a Rockets' future 1st rounder, the NY 2nd, and/or the 2 seconds that were given in the Prigioni trade, because Brooklyn needs picks.

For Brooklyn, Papa, Shved, Terry, Bev (about 14 mil) are all expiring contracts and they are taking in about 3 million less this year also in the trade. Between Lopez and Jack, they shed about 22 mil from the books for next year, plus the buyout of DWill could help them a lot depending on how it ends up structured. They also get promising rookies Capella and Canaan at great bargain prices for the near future, plus the picks that we throw in. Dorsey is only 1 more year for them at about a million, so that's no big deal.

For us, we end up with:

D.WIll/J.Jack
Harden/N.Johnson
Ariza/Brewer
DMo/Smith/Jones
Howard/Lopez

We fill out the roster with buyout guys, or maybe we can still do the McDaniels deal substituting in N.Johnson for Canaan with the 2 second rounders.

Whomever else we picked up would just be insurance for injuries anyway, as only the guys on the list above would be playing most games and come playoff time. But maybe we could still get a R. Allen, N. Robinson or those type of players to help fill out the guard spot, especially a backup SG behind Harden.

With those deals, we are in Championship compete mode THIS YEAR, because with Harden having an MVP year, this sures up our PG rotation to compete. It doesn't make us better than any other team in the PG position, but it brings us up a level high enough compared to where we were, to put us in serious contention conversation. D.Will has experience and will do great playing off of Harden for the minimum this year, and J.Jack upgrades our second unit PG by leaps and bounds as he is a capable scorer to say the least, and able to get you 20 on any given night.

IF Dwight comes back, we are overstacked with bigs and someone will lose minutes, probably Jones this year. But we get to keep him as insurance if by chance we do lose Smith in the off season, or in case of injury or foul trouble during the playoffs. If Dwight doesn't make it back, you still give Harden a decent center to play with our other bigs to have a better chance at competing this year for a chip.

In the offseason, you only have to worry about trying to resign D.Will, Smith, and Brewer; or McDaniels if that trade is made and whomever we picked up as a FA or buyout after the deadline.

But this Core is there WITH CHEMISTRY to fight it all out again next year:

Jack
Harden
Ariza
DMo/Jones
Howard/Lopez

You bank on that with a good playoff run or winning the chip, you can get back at least 2 of Smith/Williams/Brewer and you still have a strong team with even better chemistry going into the season; plus the NOs pick.

That's what I wish we would have done.

 

Is that a basketballholic alternate account?

I don't know why people won't get passed the Deron Williams buyout theory.

I'm also not sure why we would give up all of our assets for someone that will be playing 20 minutes a night for us.

 

What theory? it's well known that he doesn't want to be in Brooklyn anymore and that they want to shed salary to save tax and sell the team. These aren't theories.

What assets? The only rotational players being givin up are Dorsey and Terry, being replaced by D.Will, J. Jack and Brook Lopez. Those are upgrades and if you can't see that, there is nothing else to discuss.

 

I would have signed Vassilis Spanoulis and Steve Francis.

 

Don't jump the gun too fast. I don't know if you saw my proposal. And others may still come with proposals. Everyone hasn't had a chance to view the thread to share their thoughts yet.

 

It is 100% a theory. He may not want to be in Brooklyn, but there are no rumors anywhere except from Basketballholic that he would walk away from tens of millions to get out of there. As for the team wanting to save tax, a buyout doesn't save them any tax. The salary still counts against the cap for the full guaranteed number. It just saves them the hard dollars that he walks away from, but again, why would he walk away from millions.

It's a theory. It's not going to happen.

Clint Capela, Patrick Beverly, the Papa contract...

This is a bad trade. The Jack part would have been fine, but the rest is ridiculous.

 

Not sure if the math works but a Pap, Johnson, and NY 2nd would seem to be fair value for a player like Jack. The Rockets did have extra pieces to add one more PG to the trade haul. No one must have liked those pieces or they weren't viewed as fits.

Wondering how many of those trades that happened at the deadline were in the works way in advance versus where Morey could have interjected and made another move for PG depth well in advance of the deadline.

The Prigioni and KJ deals look like deadline day conversation deals, as something is better than nothing. Prigioni will help, but the Rockets needed one more guard rotation player. The depth at that position is lacking compared to other contenders.

 

I suspect Morey had these two deals as his fallback and had a variety of trades he was hoping to make that all fell apart.

The Nets were looking to dump Jarrett Jack for nothing to clear him out when they were going to bring in Reggie Jackson. When that fell apart, they probably no longer had any interest in moving him unless they got real value.

WOJ reported that they had a deal to move him if OKC agreed to the Lopez deal. I wonder if it was the Rockets. That would explain why they waited until the last second to pull the trigger on Prigioni.

My theory is that the Rockets were going to get Jack for peanuts but Brooklyn aborted the deal when then the Lopez for Jackson trade fell apart.

 

Everything is a theory until it happens, so if that's your argument, there isn't one. It's a good theory though that other insiders mentioned as well, not just Basketballholic. Buyouts happen because a team wants to save money and a player wants to leave, therefore there is a negotiation to make it happen. With Lopez and Jack off of the books with those trades, it gives Brooklyn more incentive to save some extra money by buying out DWill. They don't have that now because they still have Lopez and Jack, although others may still think a buyout is still possible. I doubt it myself, but we will know by the 1st.

If you think giving up Capela, Bev and Papa for Williams, Jack and Lopez is a bad deal, then you don't know basketball.

People are seriously underrating Lopez because of his injuries. But as a BACKUP behind Dwight, our team would be unreal for 48 minutes. Bev is trash right now, and Papa and Capella aren't getting any run come playoff time without serious injuries.

You must be a Morey apologist and just don't want to consider a possible good move that COULD have been made, but wasn't made by your GM god.

 

Exactly why we should have dealt for Lopez, on the under the table agreement that they also buy out D. Will. It wouldn't be the first time that agreements like this are made under the table.

 

I mean there is no sense in even having a discussion with someone who is going to start getting pissy and resorting to insults if you won't agree with them that the clutchfans original rumor about Deron Williams walking away from tens of millions of dollars is real. Deron Williams is not going to leave enough money on the table to make it worth it for the Nets.

There isn't even smoke there. Some clutchfans insiders who have been wrong about literally every prediction they have made have suggested it. You can hang your hat on that all day. Maybe one of these days they'll finally get one right and you can say I told you so.

 

Hey, my apologies, I didn't really intend to or mean to get pissy with you and start throwing insults....so again, I apologize.

But I will say again that BBHolic is not the only one that mentioned a potential buyout of D.Will. It's in the Cyberx thread if you care to go through it.

But I do agree with you that it is NOT LIKELY to happen now and just a pipe dream. I only think that Brooklyn would have CONSIDERED or AGREED to it, IF, IF, IF, IF, they had also gotten ride of the Lopez and Jack contracts at the trade deadline. WIth those 2 still on the books, I personally think there is no chance of DWill getting bought out. I could be wrong of course.

 

Cyber is the only one who has even a shred of credibility. The rest of them, Progs, Plowman, Codman, BBallholic, etc. have been wrong about everything. I don't mean weather man wrong, I mean wrong like that investment genie in that commercial wrong. And to that point, I don't believe Cyber has said there is any smoke at all to a DWill buyout. He was asked about it and I think he said he hadn't heard anything along those lines.

 

He actually alluded to there being a "possibility". And that's without the other two trades I mentioned, which is why I believe that if they had happened, the buyout would also happen. Maybe you missed some of Cyber's comments.

 

A little off topic but one clutchfans insider rumor was that Morey wanted to get Arron Affalo but was beat out by Portland.

Denver received Will Barton, Victor Claver, Thomas Robinson, a lottery-protected first-round for 2016 (which becomes two second-round picks after 2016) for Affalo and Alonzo Gee.

I would've thought Morey could've topped that offer if he had wanted to do so. I wonder what Denver's asking price was for Houston, if the rumor was true.