The problem is there’s only so much juice, and if you squeeze too long you’re just left with rind. Or a late 1st round lotto protected pick swap.
Yeah, but seeing as I'm not at the market, I don't know if oranges were offered or lemons, so I couldn't tell you what's being offered.
I got tired of giving my kid money to go shop for groceries, because he kept coming back with a half eaten box of twinkies and no change
Oh god. Please this. I wonder how lightly protected we could get them to go. It would feel like Christmas on draft day 5 years from now when we've forgotten all about this trade but have like a number 8 pick due to it. Could also be 25. Who knows. But I suspect they're going to find it difficult to rebuild after Lebron retires and they're stuck with an oft-injured AD, nothing around him and no draft picks to improve their team. They could potentially clear cap space and bring in another star, but maybe not? This team just doesn't seem to be the organization that we knew under Dr. Buss and Jerry West.
James Harden is being traded. James Harden is committed to Brooklyn. Lebron wants WB to stay. Lebron wants him outta there. Morey's price for Simmons is going up. No it isn't. Seems like every time I hear news, a day or two later, the opposite is reported. The media is flooded with contradictory information probably emanating from the very teams, agents and players in the discussions. Its like a smoke bomb to keep everyone confused and not knowing what's going on. Well, I am sure there are those that do, but I do not.
I just can't square the idea that somehow a pending restricted free agent can build up so much value in one month that they're all of a sudden going to be worth that much more than a lottery-protected FRP. Obviously that's better than the Bucks pick they ended up with, but that does come with the risk of Allen injuring himself and being untradeable, or playing poorly. If you want to say that the Rockets should have kept Allen on talent reasons, I'm 100% on board with you. They clearly missed on evaluating the talent level of Allen, and should be faulted for that. But I'm not going to fault them for trying to pursue an in-season flip on a young RFA. The difference is three-fold this year; the Rockets need to make a decision on an extension for KPJ, they need to see what they have in Jalen Green, and they already have a veteran in Eric Gordon who needs to get minutes to show that he's healthy and build up trade value. They have already shown a willingness to eat potentially $90M in John Wall to achieve the first two goals. They could have easily tried to have him play and build up trade value this year, same as he did last season. Instead they made the conscious choice to distribute his minutes and shots. I just struggle to see where LeVert could have gotten his this year except at the expense of Mathews or Green. Mathews right now, especially on his contract, is already outperforming what you would expect to get out of the 20s pick you'd have gotten back from LeVert; being able to find out Mathews could play is already a huge benefit to not having LeVert this year. And I'm pretty sure most people here would be throwing a fit if Green was benched until the trade deadline just so the vets could build up trade value (and I'd be right there with them). Gordon might have been ok next to LeVert, since he's being ridiculously efficient on very low usage, but putting two guys who know they're auditioning for other teams next to each other every night just seems like a disaster to me.
Losing out on Mathews could have been downside. Or maybe Rockets do not bother with Kurucs, DJ Wilson or DJ Augustin. With LeVert, my guess is EGo comes off the bench but still racks up starter minutes. Similar to his time under MDA and early in season when Harden still on team. KPJ experiment likely ongoing instead of going all in THIS season. KPJ extension would be more economical if this path taken. And the talent evaluation on JA was spot on when Morey was GM. Stone and Silas likely ignored the analytics team. Again.
