Rockets acquire Suns picks, return Nets picks to Brooklyn

EDIT: Thought this wasn't accurate but you may be right. Looking into it further.

 

According to fanspo we can trade the pick back to them. I don't know if they are the most reliable, however. I suggested a trade in the random trade thread for both Booker and Durant and giving them back their picks plus FVV, jalen, Dillon and Reed not including any of our core. We might have to add another pick or two, but we would be contenders this year and the next two if Durant is healthy for the playoffs (a big if). He would ride off into the sunset giving back almost 60M in cap space and having an Amen, Booker, Jabari, Sengune, Tari, Cam core with more experience and room for depth. The trade was cap neutral this year.

 

Worst trade has to be the nets getting kg and Pierce for what turned out to be Jaylen brown and Tatum

 

We have not won anything until this pick from the suns turn into a top 3 pick.

 

That's bad but the harden trade was considerably worse imo, if that trade doesn't happen okc wins multiple titles and the warriors run never happens.

 

Why? The 2025 nets pick wasnt gonna be top 3 if we own it since Nets are gonna do everything they can to be competitive.

 

Or they could have traded Westbrook instead of Harden. Westbrook would get them more because he was a more established star than Harden at that time. Harden and Durant in their prime together with the assets they could get from trading Westbrook would probably be better than the Warriors.

 

Yup easily, or just keep russ.

 

Rockets should be no 2 or no 3 in this list, the author just counted picks and didnt acknowledge we have 6 (maybe 7) young prospects on the roster. The quality of our picks are higher than other teams, PHX looks like its all gonna be lotto+ and the Nets 2027 pick is also prob gonna be good. Nets have a lot of picks but they come from NYC, Milwaukee and Dallas as well as least favorable swaps from good teams like OKC and Rockets.

Utah is even worse, majority of their picks come from Minny, Lakers and Cleveland. Those are all low Frps dawg.

I guess you can argue Nets and Utah can tank and get high draft picks but thats what we did and we already done with that so we should be ranked higher than these 2 teams and arguably even Spurs (depending on how important you think Wemby is).

 

The Harden trade wasnt that bad as it didnt cost OKC future assets or set them back in any way. OKC cant afford 3 super maxes so one of them had to go regardless. GSW had already beat OKC with all 3 of them and Lebron was still in his prime so multiple titles arent guaranteed even if KD stayed, in fact that was why KD left he didnt want a 3 Kingdoms situation he wanted something guaranteed.

The SGA trade was a lot worse Clippers traded SGA and multiple picks for a player who is worse than SGA, more expensive than SGA and also injured all the time. The KG/Pierce trade was also a lot worse it set Nets back by almost a decade and Celtics already won a title and have a young team ready to contend for the next 7 yrs.

Id argue the Gobert trade is also a lot worse than the Harden trade it basically cost Wolves all their future picks and swaps including Walker Kessler who is like a young Gobert. It also caused them to trade KaT breaking apart the only good team they've fielded in the last decade and soured relations with their franchise star.

 

You’re nuts. The OKC/Harden trade was terrible. Among the worst of all time. It didn’t cost them anything? It cost them a perennial contender. And yes, they absolutely could have kept Harden.

 

It's true, kinda. The wording is a little confusing. The rockets can't trade their OWN 2025 pick because of the Stepien rule. The rockets don't actually own the Suns' 2025 pick, they own a pick swap.

They can however trade swap rights back to the Suns.

 

They cannot do that because PHX doesn't own any pick this year to swap with. HOU cannot at any point be without a 2025 first round pick, until after the draft.

The only way it could be possible to trade the 2025 PHX pick back to PHX, either directly or via swap, is by either HOU or PHX acquiring another separate unprotected 2025 pick from someone else for HOU to have instead of PHX's.

This is really unlikely, and has never been done, because who is going to compensate that other team? PHX doesn't have anything to compensate them with, and obviously we're not going to send out our own picks to do it.

 

I should have added that OUR Westbrook trade to the Wizards brought back the pick that ultimately got us Alpy. So we exited our position on a down, but bought into some nice stock that bounced pretty well.

So really, the trade hasn't worked out for the Thunder as well as it might have seemed it would at the time (so far!).
I think our Harden trade to BKN has been much better in that it netted us a lotto pick, and then flipping those same picks into the Suns picks has offset the swap in a huge way, and may again give us a lotto pick (or possibly more).

 

It's maybe not that difficult though. The only way the Suns want their 2025 pick back before the draft is if they decide to blow it up before the deadline.
They might sit back and think they'll come good and scrape into the playoffs, and also think they have a good enough squad to contend. In that case they sit tight at the deadline. We luck out if they slide to the lottery, and then we can arrange a trade of the pick (which would take place in the 2025 season, hence making someone like Green easier to salary match anyway).

Of course, if they choose to blow it up before the deadline, they would (I assume) be looking to move Durant to a contender, in which case they could choose someone with a 2025 first available, and flip that pick to us for their pick back (while giving us Booker). Ie - they would just put that pick into another level of swap with their current pick.

Yeah - ok, I agree really unlikely, but moreso because the Suns will probably think they can make the playoffs rather than the difficulty in blowing it up.

 

Agree, believe OKC is only team better positioned with young talent and future assets. Stone has managed to position us to compete now and in the future.

 

The point was that PHX we can only realistically "unlock" tanking for PHX starting in 2026-27, and for that year only, because their swap is owed to 3 separate teams for 2026 and impossible to recover, and because sending them the 2025 PHX pick back is exceedingly unlikely too. Hence the larger point that the picks are less uniquely useful to PHX than people think, and more just valuable in general as trade assets to anyone across the league.

So in your first scenario, they're not tanking this year, so exactly that - the 2025 pick would be the same value to PHX as anyone else.

Your second scenario is still very very unlikely IMO, for the reason you described, and also because they would have no chance of getting into the bottom 7 of the standings at this point -- and because finding a team to give back an unprotected 2025 pick when the other team knows PHX desperately needs a 2025 pick to get their own pick back, and has no other avenues to do so, will lead to PHX getting fleeced, like we fleeced BKN this summer.

 

This. OKC and then Houston.

 

I might be biased against Russ. I think trading him would be addition by subtraction. Harden might not be fully unlocked playing behind him. I believe they would be better off building around Durant and Harden with some high end role players, using what they could get from trading Russ.

 

You are right, but KD and Harden aren't a lock to beat GSW who beat the season record and Lebron and with 2 All stars in Cleveland. It would be a three way battle and if OKC loses again I can see KD still going to GSW regardless.