Do Not Want. When you dance with the devil, the devil don't change - the devil changes you. You want to wind up like the Nets and Suns, then be my guest. The Suns aren't going to want Dillon and Jalen. The first name out of their mouth will be Amen Thompson. End of discussion.
I mean, that’s obvious. The whole point of a Durant trade would, hypothetically, be to get a #1 scorer for a few seasons without sacrificing Amen, Sengun, or a ton of draft picks. If that’s what the Suns are demanding, the answer is no.
If you ask the “locked on Suns” crew, they feel like Jabari, Tari, and this years pick is fair for Durant. I’m not sure one way or another. It all depends on how many years KD can give us.
Even the dumb ass Suns, know that Amen is off the table. The Nets and Suns gave up a boatload of assets for Durant, and, thus their failure. Durant is gone and it won’t take a gutting of our team or any other team to get him. I think FVV and 2 picks definitely gets it done, but we may not want to spend that much. It depends on what else is available for around the same price.
Oh of course I would prefer to trade Fred since I hope we trade him anyway. Fred either can’t or won’t play fast so I’d like to get rid of him so that Ime doesn’t have any excuses to play slow with the fastest and most athletic team in the league. I don’t know what the Suns want but it doesn’t really matter. The way it’s going to go is: 1) KD chooses his destination and his agent informs the Suns. 2) The Suns will conduct a league wide search of the best offer for KD as an expiring one year deal. I believe that offer will be from a contender. It will be roughly one role player, one mediocre future pick (let’s say 16th) and one bad pick (let’s say 29th). This is the equilibrium line at which the Suns can say F you to Durant’s destination and trade him elsewhere. They will accept ANYTHING above this offer. 3) If we’re the destination, Durant’s agent will leak the offer to us. Stone will offer only a slightly better deal. My guess is a role player (FVV), a good pick (let’s say the 2025 #9) and Cam (better than a bad pick). I would argue even that might be an overpay. 4) Suns will try to play hardball and try to put pressure by leaking to the media that Stone is going to miss a golden opportunity if he doesn’t up his offer. Stone shouldn’t and won’t budge because he has information from Durant’s agent. That’s what I think will happen after Giannis is off the market. Especially if he ends up in San Antonio.
We don't know if Durant has 3 years for us. That's the problem. Most reasonable people would agree that if Durant came in cheap, why not. But would you mortgage your future to get him for a short window? That's very debatable. It all depends on what you have to give up to get him and how much you have to pay him to keep him after his contract expires.
The Durant deal has to have these things 1. Don't Give up much 2. Short Term - 2 yrs tops 3. He will not be our top score. . he will be our CLOSER Rocket River
I absolutely love and agree with your overall argument here -- I think KD is the right play. Right cost (get him without gutting our young core), serves as a bridge as our young guys keep developing, fits the needs/issues of the current team EXACTLY, and is from a team we have leverage on by owning their picks. It just makes perfect sense. However, I think there may be an issue with the trade return as you have it constructed. The suns are a 2nd apron team, which means two things: 1) they can't take back more salary than they send out and 2) they can't aggregate salaries in a trade. And, unfortunately, Jalen and Dillon added together makes just slightly more than KD makes, which means that trade wouldn't be legal. And Suns can't just throw in another contract, because they can't aggregate salaries. I do like the idea of including Jalen in the trade, but it would have to be constructed somewhat differently. Perhaps it could be Jalen and Bari instead of Jalen and Dillon (that, plus Landale, does work financially), and then the Rockets can decrease the draft compensation going back to PHX since they are including Bari rather than Dillon. IDK, just one way to reconstruct it. Perhaps there are others that avoid us losing Jabari, which would indeed hurt.
If we are looking for a combo forward shotmaker I would honestly rather have Cam Johnson, Lauri Markkanen, maybe even MPJ, though the latter two are on bad contracts. Just not interested in KD, he plays 0 defense anymore and is just winding down the clock and trying to climb the all-time scoring leaderboard. I also think he is a career-ending injury waiting to happen, and even if it doesn't he's still due for a sudden and dramatic decline any season now just due to his age. I don't know why we'd be looking at forwards though, we already have 3-4 guys who are starting-caliber at those positions.
Start with who else wants Durant and then add what they have to offer. Then look at which would be his most desirable option of those. I think the asset price for Durant is low. Take the team option for FVV and trade one good Phoenix pick probably the 27 pick and one future Rocket pick, FVV and filler to make the salaries match. At the deadline, the Suns could jettison FVV for peanuts which would solve their cap issues. I really don’t think anybody else will overpay for him. If it takes more than what I outlined tell the Suns to stuff it and move on. We are in the driver seat as long as Durant is ok with playing for us.
Will the trade restrictions on second apron teams like the Suns depress the market further? I don't really understand them other than that I know the Suns can't take a single extra dollar back in salary.
There is starting calibre and starting calibre on a championship team. Dillon and Tari are not starting-calibre on a championship team, in my opinion.
The apron will definitely limit their options. FVV + Jock + their pick is probably the most I would do with his salary, age, and track record the last few years, but I'm sure they wouldn't be stoked about that return.
I think Dillon probably is, as long as he's shooting 36+ percent from three. He only shot 34.5% during the series against GSW but that's probably just random variance/bad luck. I give him a lot of credit for our smothering defense--individually I don't think he was that good of a 1-on-1 stopper, but his physicality really threw their shooters off their rhythm for long stretches of those games. You gotta have a Patrick Beverley type of bad guy to go deep and I think he can play that role. Tari, I don't know. You might be right, I worry he doesn't have the basketball IQ to start on championship team. But he is still fairly young and missed a lot of time due to injuries so maybe he can still get there. Anyway, I just don't think KD is the answer. I think Amen's timeline to becoming a #1 option is probably going to take at least 1-2 more years. KD will be out of the league or severely declined by then, and he's never been good enough to be the #1A guy on a championship team, that's why he had to join the Warriors and be like a co-equal #1 option to ever win anything. I like the idea of adding shooters to build around Amen, I just want them to be young enough to actually play with him when he's in his prime, if we're going to spend anything more than like 1 draft pick on it.
Please. Jabari is semi-untouchable for me. He is young and hasn’t been put in a position to succeed. If Ime doesn’t use him better next year, then Ime is the one to go.
