Rockets acquire Suns picks, return Nets picks to Brooklyn

By 2027 Brooklyn should still be trying to crawl out of the nba basement. Phoenix should have imploded and either is looking to move Booker for their picks back to rebuild, or they’ve managed to cobble together a supporting cast for Booker that keeps them on the mediocrity treadmill - mid-first round/late lotto.

 

... players randomly get shot in the leg (Carl Landry), and players who drive off in half time (you know who)...

 

Man... y'all think Brooklyn gonna be bad in 2027. They are trying to be down bad for 1 year. They are trying to start the 2025 off-season with Claxton, Sharpe, Cam Thomas, a top 5 pick, and $100M+ in cap space. They are trying to compete in 2025 - 2026.

 

Brooklyn has one of the largest sets of assets in the league and will be competing against us for the exact same star names we are going to be coveting. I wouldn't count that 2027 as a given for anything just yet.

 

2 yr rebuild? I'll believe that when I see it.

 

then we should have gotten more in this trade. Because for sure the nets were going to suck this year with or without Bridges.

 

No star is going to Brooklyn until they have a decent infrastructure. Perhaps they can build that in a couple years, but it would be very difficult. At the end of the day, true stars don't get traded to or sign with rebuilding teams.

 

We should have.... like Cam Johnson - either straight up for Brooks or some combo of Tate/ Landale / (gulp) Uncle Jeff / Adams

 

There is no uncertainty there. The only road ahead is downhill.

 

Phoenix will blow it up after this season or before if one of Booker or Durant get hurt early. I don’t want KD, but Booker could be a good target if Jalen doesn’t pan out or Amen can’t take over for JVV and is a SF.

 

Goodness. Maybe Stone isn't such a bad gambler after all?

Although Phoenix is unlikely to find any takers for Bradley Beal. Not to flog a dead horse, but taking on that contract was so very very....

 

They are going to ride out the largest salary ballast in the history of the Game in the top 300 player called Bradley Beal, while deploying financial gymnastics trying to handout minimum contracts left and right. My body is ready.

 

Yeah it completely blew up any flexibility they had. Now they have to trade both Booker and Durant to re-build. Before it could have just been one. Nobody is going to take Beal’s contract. Nobody!

 

Yea but their owner said 26 teams would trade their roster for that

 

They can always trade Beal for John Wall. (Is Wall's contract finished yet?)

 

Think this is not exactly true. But close. See Bobby Marks post below:

 

They could have made some moves to be a middling team, 35-40 wins in the East.

They had assets to work with and money / cap space available ..... they could have even gotten rid of Simmons contract with ease (stretch or trade).

The Nets gave up twice the assets they got in return and all it bought them was a 2 year window.

They get two chances to draft top talent, then they give the Rockets their 27 pick and even if they hit on a star, it's unlikely that player moves the win total a hell of a lot in year 1.

Just for perspective, we just went thru 17, 20 & 22 win seasons and didn't strike lottery gold.

Detroit has been bad even longer ....


Now they are pretty much the 2020 Rockets.... except they don't have that top 4 protection on that pick.

 

Stone is positioning to trade back the suns 1st to Phoenix for Booker

 

the 25’ swap isn’t much of an asset. And if they mortgaged future picks to be mediocre their fan base would never have forgiven them. No one was going to games at Barclays last season. The narrative around Brooklyn was terrible. They had no where to go. Now they have a bright future. We should have driven a much harder bargain. Stone is really not good at this.

 

I don’t understand the harder bargain talk. They are star hunting and the phoenix picks are a tangible path to a star that fits into our team’s timetable. Picks next year are neither guaranteed to be a star nor guaranteed to be better than what’s on our team the next two years. There is no strategy for incremental improvement that makes sense over organic improvement. Showcase the value of our current assets and let’s see what shakes down at the trade deadline.
As an aside, the superstars they listed as targets play the same role as Jalen. So it’s going to be the Jalen showcase at the start of the season.