What to do with this team? (POLL)

I voted to trade KD. I think firing Stone and trading KD would be the best path forward. Need someone new to oversee the franchise from a different perspective and will not have the pressure to make a success out of bad decisions previously made. No player should be 'untouchable' this upcoming offseason.

 

Stone has also traded for swaps for likely better picks, such that the Rockets will likely only have one of their picks until 2030. Tanking would help, but with new rules likely coming, not by much, and there is no guarantee that the picks acquired through tanking would lead to a better young core than the Rockets currently have.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with you (though I wouldn't trade Sengun for anything less than 3 firsts), but again, ownership is not going to pivot into a KD deal, and they are not going to go backwards. I like these creative exercises, but there's a line between creativity and delusion.

 

Well, our ownership strike me as being deeply unwise people, so you are probably right.

 

The tanking in a few years would be different as very likely the league and Silver had totally altered it.......

 

Udoka can play Sengun at 33 mpg and get accused of relying on defensive players to maintain a good defense. Adams is an okay defender, and Capela has seen better days, but Udoka can craft a scheme with Reed on the court with one of them on the court that shuts down opponents.

 

I think you have to trade Amen as well if you do this. It's the unavoidable conclusion, you can't have two non-centers who can't shoot, especially while also not having a stretch 5. I don't know what you can get for him, but it probably won't be enough. Maybe a sign-and-trade for Austin Reaves? Ugh. The Lakers would love to have Amen. Don't know how the cap math works on that.

You also still need a stretch 5 IMO even with Amen gone. Giannis has never been successful without one. The obvious conclusion is to add FVV to the Giannis trade and get Myles Turner.

So now you're trading Amen, Sengun, FVV, DFS, and Clint Capela, plus even more to make the salaries work on whoever you're trading Amen for unless it's some other rookie contract guy (in which case, who??).

You start to see why trading for Giannis is kind of a ridiculous proposition. It's most of the roster gone if you want to actually have a chance. And then after all that, you're one major injury to Giannis or KD, both toward the ends of their careers, from being done as a contender.

 

soft rebuild. fire Ime and trade KD. then see next year if you want to keep Stone & Sengun.

 

Adams this season was the reason I crashed out and stopped watching games. He never stepped outside the freethrow line to defend. The weight loss also made him weaker when defenders bump him off.

 

FVV, DFS, and Capela were short-term remedies. I doubt Amen would be traded. If he is, it will be for someone good.

I just don't see Amen and Sengun working. Giannis is a lot better than Sengun. If Amen is not good enough to play with Giannis, that is on Amen.

 

What I'm saying is you can't just "trade for Giannis". Our second and third best players don't fit with him; Amen and Sengun both like to operate in the same areas of the court and neither of them spaces the floor at all, and we also don't have a stretch 5, which Giannis needs beside him. It becomes a whole domino chain if you want it to make sense.

Of course you can try to run Giannis out there alongside either Amen or Sengun. But it won't work, and IMO that's so blindingly obvious it's hard to see how he'd even want to play here.

 

Sengun almost has to be traded because he doesn't fit whether it is Giannis or someone else in a couple of years.
Everyone else is short-term and will be gone in a year or 2 anyway. Heck, I think you've even made a post or two advocating trading them.
The only question is whether Amen is good enough to play with Giannis, Turner, Durant, and Reed.

 

When Drayton McLane owned the Astros, he was known to frequently ask people in the organization what they had done to "be a champion today". I don't believe that thought ever crosses Tilman's mind while he's entertaining dignitaries at the US embassy in Rome.

 

I agree with all of this. I personally don't think Amen can play alongside Giannis, especially if Ime Udoka is still the head coach. It's hard enough having one non-shooter on the perimeter. You know I'm a huge Amen booster, but his lack of jump shooting is unavoidable, unless he improves massively in just one more offseason.

The problem if you trade Amen as well is that he isn't getting paid enough to match salaries with anything but marginal roleplayers and rookie contracts. So you're adding even more players to that deal too if you decide you have to trade him.

It all just seems like a mess. Our roster is not a good fit for Giannis. I suspect he won't even want to play here for that exact reason.

 

Two things that must happen are -
1. Part ways with Ime - he’s no longer the right coach for us.
2. Part ways with either Amen or Sengun. In today’s basketball, you can’t win it with more than one player who can’t shoot from distance.

I don’t think we’ll get much far if none of these two happen. Even if Fred and Adams were not injured, and we would sit relaxed on 3rd or even 2nd in the west, I still don’t think we had much chance winning it. Surely we would pass the 1st round with KD instead of JG, but the basis of our offense play is still rotten with Ime on the drawing board, and Amen+Sengun zero ability to be a threat from distance.

Also, Stone has to go. Not doing any move this deadline was really disappointing. He did almost every possible mistake after the KD trade. I was naive, thinking he’d make some move in the deadline, but boy was I wrong..
I’m sure other GMs could have built a championship roster following the kd move. Stone is a soft fish swimming in a sharks tank.

 

Well he clearly hasn’t yet.

 

Why do you have to win a championship in the next 2 years, if you get away from this idea/concept you can keep Amen and Sengün.

Relocate Stone, appease Tilman, do whatever it is necessary to do a soft rebuild.....

I am also fearing that those who are scared of the Expansion want to contend before it is a chaos with the league adding 2 new teams that would get good odds at the Number 1 pick.

 

That's my preferred plan. (I would trade Sengun if the return was good enough, and I think we will probably have to sooner or later.) I was just talking about the "why" of Giannis being a bad fit really.