Of course, and the Heat would love to pair Dwight with LeBron/Wade and Bosh. If you have a choice between Lee / Bogut / a couple bench guys and Dwight, I think you easily take Dwight. Not to mention you could get a few cheaper assets by trading Lee/Bogut, they are pretty good players. Not to mention that right now they are over tax and I'm not really sure they are going to retain Jack/Landry anyway. It would be super expensive. So it would likely be Dwight vs. Lee + Bogut and his injury issues.
Physical is optional btw. He's an expiring. And he's very good when healthy. A combination of Bogut and Lee seems an attractive trade package if the team has a ton of cap space and wants to get better fast.
Not sure if you guys have been tracking the Dwight thread in the GARM, but the GSW stuff was a fake rumor floated out to the media. Not sure if you guys care or not, but I just wanted to make sure people aren't wasting their time taking this too seriously. Carry on.
What's not true? The Cavs could have close to 30 mil in cap space, depending on where the new cap number is set.
Why would Dwight want to be involved in a S&T? So that the team that he joins loses valuable players, thus making it even harder for Dwight to win? It makes no sense. Golden State is a real long shot. The Rockets should be more concerned about the Lakers and Mavericks.
Bogut played 44 games in the last two seasons. He's a center with a .450 shooting percentage. His PER has been below 15 for two straight years. He's had several significant injuries. Is it possible he could become "very good" again, as he was 3+ years ago? In theory, sure. But it's very unlikely and not a wise gamble whatsoever. As for Lee, if a team has a ton of cap space and wants a PF, why wouldn't they just go after Millsap, Smith or Jefferson? All are younger, better, probably cheaper and not coming off major surgery. (By the way, it cracks me up that someone mentioned ATL as a possible suitor for David Lee. So after letting Josh Smith walk for nothing due to unreasonable salary demands, they're going to turn around and take a 30-year-old David Lee, coming off major surgery, at $16 million/year for the next 3 years? Yeah, that makes sense. )
Except $25 million is 3/5 of the salary cap. What does a team get for paying close to $28 million (Klay included) in salary from Golden state? A TPE and Klay Thompson? Any owner would kill his GM. It's a horrible business decision
Cyberx says the Howard to Warriors interest is BOGUS. EDIT: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?p=7968046#post7968046
the salary cap is 58 mil btw, likely to be at 61-63 next year. i'm not sure what you mean re Klay Thompson. I was talking about the Cavs and a David Lee trade, where they take on a couple of expirings as the price.
Um I hate to burst anyones bubble here but the lakes have been contenders sincr kobe got drafted without any memorable picks apart from Bynum. DH is just using us and GS for leverage, to wrest control from kobe, get gasol shipped out, d antoni fired/have offense centered on him. The lakers have never have never lost a max player in FA, and dh wont leave guaranteed money and the glitz and glamor of tinsel town.
You must think Cleveland wants David Lee. They don't. He's 30. They do want LMA but he's 27. Cleveland wants draft picks and young players not 30 year olds.
You're not busting my bubble. Dwight wants that but I'm betting Jim Buss won't budge. Then what will Howard do?
So Dwight is going to agree to a S&T to GS, and GS is going to give up Bogut, Lee and probably Barnes or Thompson (has to be a reason for LA to take on these contracts beyond a TPE).... and basically got to a gutted Warriors team? The Lakers don't want Lee or Bogut. NO ONE WANTS BOGUT.
Ugh. The "max player hasn't done so and so in free agency" argument is so tired and pointless because most max players never made it to free agency in the first place. If they were interested in leaving, their teams would usually trade them beforehand, like the Lakers almost did with Kobe (who, by the way, wanted out because the team at the moment wasn't a contender and was coming off back-to-back first round exits). This is a new frontier because the latest CBA makes it more valuable for veterans not to sign extensions and to play things out after their contract expiration. There isn't a lot of precedent, period.
There are no guarantees, and I believe that the Lakers are the favorites. However, there is a lot of stuff going on here. Howard isn't going to wrestle the team away from Kobe, and Buss and his enormous ego is not going to fire D'Antoni and move Gasol because that is what Howard wants. Buss thinks he knows best and can rebuild the team.
What is not true is that the Warriors would have to clear out millions and millions of dollars of cap space to acquire him. They can acquire him in a sign and trade for as little as Barnes and one of Lee/Bogut. Remember...Dwight is the one with the hammer. He's the one with the leverage. If he wants to go to GS and GS wants him then a S&T deal can be worked out provided the Lakers agree. Dwight's hammer is teams with cap space that can sign him outright. He can tell the Lakers to trade him to so and so or I'm walking to Team X. The deal then becomes how do the Lakers trade him for something of value that doesn't distort their future player acquisition possibilities but enhances them. If the Lakers trade him for nothing more than a TPE, that is something of value. They will want to do it. BECAUSE.....they can then trade Pau towards the deadline for as much young talent as possible and use the Dwight TPE to create a new TPE extending well into 2014 to acquire talent. It beats them not getting anything for Dwight. The tradeoff is what amount of tax are they willing to pay to trade Dwight. The answer is probably logical, probably not much if they aren't contending for a ring. However the flexibility of a TPE allows them to make those decisions later instead of sooner. And as I mentioned in several of my previous 20 posts....the open cap space by teams like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Milwaukee.....where free agent superstar players most likely do not want to go.....can be used by those teams to acquire players that they are going to need to fill out their cap. Remember there is now a 90% rule. 90% of the salary cap has to be used by each team. They gotta spend it one way or the other. See http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q15 So these teams gotta spend 90% of the cap. When you take all the factors into account, believe me, if Dwight wants to go to GS and GS wants him then the odds of GS and LAL being able to work out a Sign and Trade agreement for Dwight is very high.
Bogut is an expiring btw. There's no big gamble. Anyway, PER is a miniscule part of the story. Bogut was pretty awesome defensively when he played. And getting better as the season went along. Overpaid, sure. Health concerns, sure. Still a very good player and healthy lately? Sure. I don't know if he has trade value on his own, this is kind of a Pau Gasol-ish situation. But combined with Lee? I think so.
There is far more open team salary cap space available this off season than there is superstar talent to fill it.
