Sell High on Kevin Martin

This isn't the freakin' stock market.

The point isn't to sell high and buy low all time. The point is to acquire as much VALUE as possible.

Kevin Martin's performance relative to his contract is an AWESOME value. We only trade that if we can get a superstar, not if we think he's reached his career peak. Maybe he has, but the dude is still only 28. With his height and shooting ability, he has many good years left.

You could say the same with Lowry. He might not get much better. But his contract is such a great value that you hold onto him unless you get something really excellent in return.

 

Ding Ding Ding. You win championships by flooring as many great basketball players as you can. Good players with smaller contracts are essential to that process.

I know we've been a pretender for a few years, but have we forgotten what it takes to be a contender? We wouldn't have traded Otis Thorpe for anyone but Drexler, a hall of famer and superstar.

 

SELL HIGH ON HOUSTON ROCKETS! LISTEN MOREY I DON'T WANT NO HOUSTON ROCKETS IN MY HOUSTON ROCKETS!

 

We need to try and collect as many Nets and Kings scrubs as we can before it gets too late.

 

Overall, I have to agree with you LongTimeFan.

There is just a preponderance of forces that makes trading Martin the right thing to do. Most of them have already been outlined -- Martin having his healthiest season in years, this draft being a buyers market, the absence of the first option (Yao) for Martin to complement, the loss of Adelman and his system, the talent of Lee.

Another one is how weak this draft is for scoring 2 guards, especially at the top of the draft. That may make a team (Minn/ Utah) that desperately needs a shooting guard and that wants to make a move for the playoffs to overspend for scoring guard of Martin's caliber.

Also, I hate tanking, but rebuilding is not tanking. When you are rebuilding you still play the players that give you the best chance to win the game -- but you acquire players that give you the best chance to become a better team in the future. Martin was a win now acquisition - trading him say for both of Utah's picks would be an acknowledgement that we can't win it all now and that we need to make a tactical retreat OKC style in order to win in the future.

Also, there are some players in this draft that are underrated, and I trust this front office's talent evaluations to be able to pick out the gems with those high picks the way they have thus far done with the low picks.

 

We need a clean start, we need to draft stud player that loves this team his first team so we can build around him just like the bulls and okc. I wish we could draft a player like durant he sticks to his team. Martin to me doesn't seem like that type of player for us in the sense that he is not a star player.

 

To use your terms you don't have to give 10 shane battiers to get 1 lebron. You can use 1 Shane Battier to get a Thabeet,2 more to get a Rudy Gay, package 4 for a Derrick Favors etc. The point here there is no limit to trading. As long as your overall asset base increases, you can flip those into the assets your trading partner wants. Case in point would be this thread, if really needed we can trade KM (a "quantity" asset in your terms) for a draft pick (a "quality" asset), which would be much more desirable to a rebuilding team a 28 yr old sg making 10M a year. If you will believe the Houston press, the Rox last year had enough assets to be taken seriously alongside Nets, its just that the Jazz didn't want to give D-Will to a Western team. This year we have even more assets, including a promising young guard on a cheap contract in Dragic, another 14th pick and of course PP who's looking like a future allstar. The point is there is progress in this method, whereas when you rebuild its always 1 step forward, 1 step back until you do end up with a superstar.

So what does a failed strategy mean to you then? To me a failed strategy is when the success rate is so low its not worth pursuing. What's the success rate a rebuilding effort will result in a championship? I'd guess around 3.5%, if you divide the 5 winning teams over the 140 picks the last ten years. So you'd rather be one of the sheep and hope and pray for that 3.5% to happen to us, rather than try some new way to get a ring? It might not work, but then again considering the 3.5% success rate of relying on the draft I'd rather just try rebuilding on the fly, the success rate might actually be higher.

Not only that, if you look at the current teams none of them are following the "draft superstarz, build around him" model. The Lakeshow did indeed draft Bryant, but Artest, Odom and Gasol are just as important cogs in their 2 rings. Pierce? He acted more like a sidekick than anything else that series, he did indeed win the Finals MVP but that was more due to his hyped battle with Lebron than anything else (and that lasted all of one game). If you were paying attention KG, PJ Brown and James Posey contributed more than Pierce the year they won a ring. Probably the only team right now that has relied on the draft more than trades is OKC, and they are currently getting whipped by the Grizzlies who's main guns right now were all traded for.

 

keep your Paul Pierce and find your KG & Ray Allen

just need a few more Landry-Martin trade and a little luck in the draft

 

I didn't say you don't have to give 10 Battiers to get 1 Lebron. I said even IF you gave them 10 Battiers, no one will give you 1 Lebron.

1 Thabeet + 1 Rudy Gay + 1 Derrick Favors = a terrible team. 1 Lebron + 4 scrubs will get you close to 60 wins.

This is a star's league, which is why it is nearly impossible to acquire true star power no matter how many Battiers or Kmartins aka ROLE PLAYERS you pile together. Unless the star forces his way to your team.

Is selling Martin for some prospects getting the most bang for your buck? Probably not. But it is the first step in the process to acquire that star power. The conventional way.

A failed strategy is simply a strategy that doesn't work. It has nothing to do with success rates, otherwise no one would even try to win a championship, since only 1/30 get to each year, a low success rate. Like I said, how can it be a failed strategy when nearly EVERY team who has won a championship got their best player in the draft? You could make an argument that it is the ONLY successful strategy.

I already gave you the list that I just came up with off the top of my head. Nearly every team that has won past and present have built their team this way. IE. Artest, Odom and Gasol are the DEFINITION of building around Kobe- the superstarz.

 

Spoiler

 

We aren't collecting role players, we're collecting assets. The assets can be packaged together for better assets, until you can get the kind of assets other teams want. Nobody will give you a Lebron for 10 Battiers straight up, but as long as your asset base is big enough you can make enough incremental upgrades until your assets are enticing enough to the other team. You aren't supposed to pile your role players on top of one another, you're supposed to package them together in upgrades in the roster or better trade bait.

There are other ways to acquire star power other than selling Martin in a loss of value. You can trade Martin later when all the options have dried up like what DM did to Tmac. Doing so now when the other possibilities are still there is just bad management.

Success rates are a measure of whether they work or not, you can't say a strategy works when it has near zero success rate. IRL, almost every single person who won the powerball lottery became rich. However as we all know the success rate of winning a powerball lottery is very low. Would you say trying to win the lottery is a great strategy to become rich? Its the same thing here, only difference is the prize is a franchise player instead of a million dollars. Just as I don't recommend selling everything you own to buy tickets for the lottery, I don't think bottoming out the franchise for the chance to get a franchise player is a good idea as well.

The Lakers didn't really build around Kobe as much as they got good talent around Kobe. Like I said nowadays people don't assemble a team by getting a superstar and building around him anymore, they just try to get as many high quality talent as they can. How can the Celts be built around Pierce when KG serves as the defensive anchor of the team? How can Kobe be the centerpiece of the Lakers when the team still wins games even when he plays like crap? Hell, can you say the Heat are built around Wade when he and LBJ have basically the same skillset?

 

I have to agree unless a legit #1 scorer somehow comes knocking. Even Martin says he'd rather be a Robin.

 

I would trade Martin or Scola for Nene and it looks like Nene is feeling underappreciated in Denver all of a sudden.

 

It only took you 4 pages but thank you for admitting that this was just another tanking thread.

Btw Morey actually has "come out and said" that he would never tell a coach who to play, so by his own admission you are wrong.

 

I swear most of you guys are crazy!

Martin is only 28 years old, not 35. These are not the old days. Guards really don't peak til after 30, and can still be efficient well into their thirties. Ask Jason Terry, Ray Allen, P.Pierce, Kidd, Nash, etc. Also Kevin doesn't have as many miles on him as his someone with his league tenure would.

He has only played in 435 games and started 347 in 7 years in the league with a total of 13,584 mins

Compared to Iguodala who is also 7 years pro who played in 553 games and a total of 21,007 mins.

Point being, Kevin Martin has at least 3 more years with matching performances barring injury. You don't just trade away the most efficient scorer in the league, isn't martin ONE of only 2 players to ever score 20 points on only 1 field goal Thats pretty impressive.

All in all Kevin Martin is not a role player. He is a Second option on a good team. You look at what he was able to do this season without being in a role that is a perfect fit for him. He needs to play off of somebody to be extremely effective. If I am Morey or anybody in the Front Office, I would rather try to acquire someone to help make Martins job a bit easier than shipping him out and making everyone else job Harder.

You look at our team and the players that we have and their contracts.
You consider in our success rate and the way the league is shaping up,
how the Stars are joining forces, yet Anybody can win in the playoffs.

It would be in better business sense to build off of what you already have instead of trying to construct what you already have. By the time you groom up a "potential future star" Miami would probably be into mid-dynasty. It would be better to build now while things are still pretty open.

I would think to ship out Scola to make cap space and flexibility, but i would be more interested in acquiring a Free Agent than making a trade at this point. We want to use Kevin Martin as bait to lure in one of the Top FA Centers to wanting to play here.

One of the best looking teams in the playoffs right now are the Memphis Grizz, a no 8 SEED. If Marc Gasol traded places with us we would have been making the same noise. We are only A couple of pieces away with some small maneuvering from being a team good enough to make run IN THE PLAYOFFS

All this blow up talk is non-sense. WE ARE NOT MAKING ANY TRADES THAT ARE NOT GOING TO MAKE US BETTER

 

@roslolian: Why do think that getting numerous assets to trade for a star and having a lot of good pieces set is a new strategy? It is not like Morey is trying something that has never been done before.

Also why did Artest, Blake, Barnes,etc. go to the Lakers? Because Kobe was there.
Why did Gasol get trade to the Lakers? Because Kobe to management to get me help, and brought him in to help them become a contender.

For the Celtics, Garnett wanted to be on a contender, meaning playing with another star player. Would he have agreed to go to the Clippers at the time? No. He went to Boston because they had Pierce.

What they are saying is that the FIRST piece of the puzzle is drafted, and that FIRST piece is a star player (whether that player is a Tier 1 or Tier 2 star doesn't matter).

@RealRocFan47: No one said Martin is over the hill, or old. What LongTimeFan said is that with the way the team was designed with Adelman as coach and Yao as a dominating paint presence, it would be difficult for Martin to duplicate the success he had this year. This is underscored by him finally having a healthy season despite his history of injuries (which you spin as a reason for him being fresh, but injury is worse than starting more games). Your point is understood and agreed. The argument to trade Martin is for other reasons.

@ashishduh: Morey may never tell a coach who to play, but by bringing a coach who is known as a developmental guy, doesn't that amount to the same thing? Not saying that Morey will do that, but that move would not require Morey tell the coach to "play Thabeet & Terrence?" because the coach would already do that.

 

Well, Yao never ended up dominating the paint, and I don't understand why people are acting like Martin's a guy who can only thrive under Adelman. Guys who can draw fouls, shoot, and play offense as he can will always have a place in the league unless you're Larry Brown, and I don't want him without a thousand miles of the Rockets anyways. It's not like he was force fed the ball - if anything, we complained throughout this year that he didn't get the ball enough. I mean, everyone knew he was a good player on the Kings post-Adelman.

And as has been explained, when we acquired him, Morey felt that Martin's injuries were more bad luck and easily reparable in contrast to someone like Yao. I don't see any reason he can't keep this general health streak up.