Just have to take a step back here. We're discussing if Love, Rondo or Melo is a better option for the Rockets to match with James Harden and Dwight Howard. Imagine if this was mentioned at this point in the 2012 offseason.
I'm sure people will check their " sources " first before posting something as fact. I mean there is not one person who would legitimately place credibility in a random post by a fan and label it as a source. *devilish smile*
Here is another new article. http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on...eport-warriors-think-they-can-land-kevin-love
A trade of Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes and David Lee from the GS Warriors for Kevin Love + another player (e.g., Martin, Shved, Barea, Rubio, Pekovic) works and is a better deal than what Houston can offer. GS can also throw in a trade exception. Love also would be ok with playing in Golden St. and returning to California. The Warriors have an incentive to make a big move because it will allow Kerr to make his imprint on the team and not have to live in Jackson's shadow. I think Love is likely to end up in Golden St.
We can beat warriors deal if we want to... They most likely Wont trade Thompson ...and if they do parsons and 950k > Thompson 100% on t-jones > Barnes as a prospect. Barnes proved himself as barely a role player this year after a fantastic rookie season. Depending on twolves mindset They could theoretically choose Asik or Milsap as main piece We could offer Asik and Nyk 2nd rder for Milsap swap Then we have our draft picks and they don't.... Again... That's if we actually want to out bid them... I doubt morey will and will target deng or melo for minimal trade costs on SNT deals
As I previously stated _ they can't just trade Love anywhere. There may be 6+ teams willing to trade for Love but that doesn't mean Love wants to play and is willing to commit to all 6+ of those teams. What part of that you don't understand...??? We went through this with Howard. You should know this.
The part where you missed the fact that all these teams are willing to take Love without the guarantee that he'll re-sign? Only the Rockets and the Lakers among these teams can sign Love next offseason flat out. All other teams REQUIRE a trade to obtain Love in the first place.
We need Melo over David Lee. Sorry...Melo over David...f*** stick....Melo over Kevin Lee. There we go! LoveIsOverrated...
Rondo is a good fit. But, there are more pressing needs. Desperately need a consistent third scoring option. No denying we need a starting PG as well. It's just a far easier fix. Far more options.
As far as picks go, the only team with a significant advantage in picks is Cleveland because they have #1 and are willing to trade it. But there's simply no way they trade that pick for Love without him opting in for 2016 and he isn't likely to do that. Only way Love possibly opts in (or commits to Cleveland long-term) is if Lebron calls him up and tells him he's going back to Cleveland: Cavs: #1, pick swap rights between Miami and Minny for 2015, the Cavs 2016 first rounder, Cavs 2018 first rounder Lakers: #7, first round pick swap rights for 2016, 2016 and 2017 second rounders. Celtics: #6, #17, the higher of Miami's or their 2015 pick, Clippers 2015 pick, the higher of theirs or Brooklyn's 2017 pick, the higher of theirs or Brooklyn's 2018 pick. Sacramento: #8. Chicago: #16, #19, #49, some sort of crappy pick swap between them, Sac, Cleveland in 2015, pick swap rights in 2017, and their own picks in 16 and 18. Rockets: #25, pick swap rights in 2015, 2016 first rounder, pick swap rights in 2017, 2018 first rounder All these picks above from 2016 to 2018 are basically crap or a long-shot gambles. There's no way to know which of these teams is going to possibly suck and yield up a quality lottery pick that far down the road. So.....those picks really don't matter. Besides who knows how many of these teams will actually be willing to give up those 16-18 picks unprotected anyways. As far as picks...what really matters is what quality picks can Minny get for Love right now in 2014 and possibly next year in 2015. Obviously if Cleveland offers up #1 then that deal is most likely going to go down. But the only way Cleveland does that is if they get the obvious signal from Lebron that he's coming (I think highly unlikely). So it's a unique situation unfolding. Cleveland's pick at #1 may actually be the player that Minnesota wants out of this draft. I can see Cleveland actually calling Flip and telling him they are willing to take the player that he would want out of this draft and essentially letting Flip make the pick for them while they hold the pick and wait to see if Lebron (or possibly some other free agent) is going to come to them so they can then generate a trade with Minnesota based on putting together Lebron, Love, Kyrie. But even in that scenario I don't know if Lebron would want Kyrie as the third superstar. ---------------- ---------------- It really boils down to which direction Minnesota wants to go. If they trade Love are they going to look to go to the lottery and rebuild? Or are they going to look to retool and make a huge push for the playoffs? I have seen no indications which way they are leaning here. They're doing a good job of holding their cards. But the retooling idea has to be considered in light of possible trades because that changes the trade scenario quite drastically. And I think it is under careful consideration. Rubio is going to be coming up on his extension/restricted free agency after next season. So if they are planning on building around him, I don't know if trading for a bunch of picks and some mediocre rookies does the trick. They're exploring all avenues right now. I still like the Spanish angle here. Especially if Joerger walks there as the coach. Pau this year and Marc next year. But to do that they've got to get the assets/options/cap space in place to execute. If Minny can convince a team to take a huge salary dump from them (Martin/Budinger) while trading out Love they could sign Pau outright for around $10 million per for 3-4 years and still have the cap space to sign Marc Gasol away from Memphis next season.
Rondo would bring a lot with his passing skills. Assist are equivalent to scoring. He has great court vision and could also be a good defender. I would like kevin love because offensively he is an ideal fit and although his defense is questionable, him and Howard would be getting a lot of rebounds ( adding more possessions for us, which means less for the other team) which kinda makes up for the defense. I don't want Melo(sorry melo) We already have a melo. Our wings already get tore up defensively. We need a safalosha/Tony Allen type player to make up for hardens struggles on defense. and I'm assuming parsons is gone (its been fun) in any deal that we get or due to his contract(coming up)so we need to make up for him. So in conclusion......Morey don't screw this up.
"Fact"? What fact? Is there a documented source that says 6 teams are willing to trade for Love without him agreeing to resign with them? Even if teams were willing to trade for Love without him agreeing to resign/extend, you can bet that the offer would be much less than if he agreed to resign. So far all I'm aware of is a bunch of speculation as to who would be interested and what they might offer. Sure there are teams that COULD make killer offers for Love without an agreement to resign but realistically nobody is going to do that. My fear is the fact that Minnesota is dependent on Love agreeing to resign with a team is going to be an issue for the Rockets. If Love is only interested in going to teams that will be instant contenders then that will greatly limit the offers the T-Wolves get. If the offers from those teams aren't an overwhelming, no brainer, can't refuse it type deal then Minnesota can potentially decide to wait and see if the offers increase closer to the trade deadline. If that were to occur then Houston would have to turn their attention to Anthony, Rondo or something else this summer rather than waiting for a possible Love deal. The only way Minnesota has to move Love right now is if there's 2014 draft picks involved. If those picks aren't involved then they could wait and move Love during the season.
Phil Jackson can get into the act and give up Tyson Chandler, Iman Shumpert, Amare Stoudemire and Tim Hardaway Jr for Love, Pekovic, Martin and Turiaf. Minnesota gets to unload a ton of long-term salary commitments, pick up basically a 1st round draft pick in Hardaway, a quality young #2 in Shumpert who could blossom alongside Rubio, one of the best pick and roll bigs in the game in Chandler and a massive expiring contract from a fairly serviceable Amare. Knicks get Love, a ton of salary, but will definitely be able to support scoring alongside Melo.
I guess the Knicks could also add Lowry in a sign-and-trade with Toronto for a future #1. That would give the Knicks Lowry/Martin/Melo/Pek/Love. All kinds of offense and basically zero defense. Unless you consider Turiaf some sort of defense.
Aelliott pretty much responded to this. I seriously doubt non playoff teams could take the risk of trading for Love with him not committing on staying. Houston, Chicago, and Golden State are the teams I could see Love "wanting" to go to (out of the teams J.R. posted) and Golden State has the most to offer out of the three teams if they seriously want Love.
Not really. With this trade, Minny would basically become the 2013-2014 Warriors minus Curry and with Rubio instead. That would def make the team 'better' in the short run but do nothing to help them begin to rebuild. And they'd be very unlikely to retain Thompson and Barnes when thier contracts are up, barring any RFA situations. Draft picks are going to be crucial and priority #1 to Minny for any trade that they would even remotely consider involving Love. That said, and at the moment, the Rockets don't have the picks needed to pull off a trade either. There's no doubt that both Houston and GS will be looking to flip assets for late lottery picks once the Finals end.
The bottom line is what is the advantage that you gain or lose by the addition of the player. You can add all the defense in the world but if the net result is that you lose more on the offensive side than you gain on the defensive side then you didn't make your team better. It's really popular right now to pile on Harden's defense but the fact of the matter is that on a nightly basis we have a huge advantage at SG. Despite popular perception Harden does more for us than just score and last season he put up a PER of 24.8 at the SG position. His opponent's PER for the season was 13.9. That's a NET PER of +10.9 for us at the SG position. An advantage of 10.9 PER at a single position is elite. To give you a baseline, the average PER in the NBA is 15. That means that Harden's opponents are performing under the league average PER and that Harden's contribution is close to double that of his opponent. For another reference point, Howard's NET PER is +7 which is great but way below Harden's. On the very high end of the spectrum, Lebron's NET PER is +21.8 as a SF and +13.0 as a PF while Durant's NET PER is 19.7. If you'll examine Rondo's NET PER over the last few seasons you'll see that it's nowhere near Harden's. In 2014 Rondo had a PER of 15.9 and his opponents had a PER of 18.3 for a NET PER of -2.4. Rondo was obviously returning from an ACL tear but even his prior two years aren't at Harden's level. In 2013, prior to injury, Rondo had a PER of 18.5 and his opponent had a PER of 15.2 for a NET PER of +3.4. In 2012 Rondo had a PER of 17.6 and his opponents had a PER of 10.7 for a NET PER of +6.9. You can certainly argue that team defense helps cover for Harden and Parsons but the fact is that their opposing SG and SF were both below average in PER this year (Harden's opponent 13.9, Parson's opponent 14.6). It's not like we were getting torched by wing players on a nightly basis. If those guys were playing no defense as suggested by many here, then you can bet that their opponents PER would at least be above the league average.
