Official Trade Thread Part XLVI

[The Consiglieri]

Hide aight is always 2020. You really want to avoid being so bad moral is gone we are almost there but you can't just trade everyone under value the players don't respect that.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using RealGM mobile app

I don't think that's really right. If you're not going to have an asset for '24-'25, or it won't be meaningful. You should probably flip it. One of the reasons I wanted to trade Kuzma in the present, rather than wait longer is what just happened to the Guardians. The Guardians just turned what was a CY Young caliber pitcher, into a deadline asset for trade in '23, but Bieber got hurt right before the deadline, so they couldn't engage in talks (for which they were only half serious), then decided against trading him during the winter meetings in '23-'24, and now saw him just go down after 1 week of the season with Tommy John surgery. A key building block asset for the team was flushed down the toilet for nothing because they waited. That is the worst case scenario of course, but then again so are the wizards, most of the time.

Now add in this key piece: bad team morale, & players respecting the build and the F.O.'s. This can matter. But the question is, why would it matter with us? We aren't competing until '26-'27 at the earliest for much, and how many of the players on the current roster are building blocks (Bilal, Deni) or key assets long term (Tristan?). The answer to that is largely none. What do we care about the team morale or potential attitude issues with regards to players who aren't going to be here in the first place. You can have glue guy vets to try and ensure a bottom line level of professionalism and dedication, but I don't think you should be keeping that, over flipping for assets, when you are #1 bereft of virtually any talent to speak of #2 starting from a point that rebuilds never start from (virtually no assets worth a damn because you had too much pride and stupidity to trade guys like Beal when you should have) and #3 not working with the players that will have any relevance to your long term future anyway (in terms of trade pieces or long term value).

I agree with all this of course, but the problem with trading Kuzma is you aren't going to get anything for him.

So he averaged 22/6/4 on 33/46/77 splits on a dreadful team.

Okay.....so is he viewed any differently now than a year ago? no, of course not. Hell a lot of people thought he would average 25 here his first year status post new contract. The reality is decent teams didn't want to pay him much last year......what's changed? Nothing......

I just don't see the incentive to move Kuzma. He's not an asset. And since he's not a real asset, may as well keep him because:

1) he is a high usage player that doesn't contribute to winning for the wiz(obviously lol), which is exactly what you want
2) Although none of you guys care how 'watchable' the product is, it's best to be very bad these years to ensure as high a pick as likely possible, but yet within that spectrum of bad you just want to be a 'normal bottom of the league bad'. Kuzma is a high volume/usage generally losing player who fits in perfectly with the wizards goals but also ensures that they are at least playing
nba level basketball.(just a bottom of the league team each year and not a bottom of the league in nba history team)

The rumored offerings for Kuzma on the market were better than nothing. You've insisted that in two posts in this thread but there isn't really evidence that we were getting nothing for him, the question is, would it be worth what little we might be getting. There was already an offer in place with Dallas, if Kuzma was good to go, he wasn't, and we weren't super exciting anyway, so we said no.

I get what your saying, but you're underselling what we'd get. The Dallas offer was rumored to include two firsts according to SI, and a '27 first as a part of the deal according to bleacher. It was always more than a couple of 2nds. Apparently our ask was two firsts, I don't think Dallas had the ability to do that since they already had made deals that blocked their ability to trade multiple firsts. Maybe they middle grounded it with a '27 first, and multiple 2nds. I have no idea. Not sure. But we could have gotten more than some trash/later 2nds as you imply.

That's worth it to me, and we run are playing a game of chicken w/his value going forward, between age and injury risk on the one hand, and less of a nasty contract on the other if we wait....

[The Consiglieri]

Kuzma was *never* going to be a player who brought anything back at that contract. He made it very clear he was just signing for whoever paid him most and allowed him decent usage. Teams didn't want to pay him 25-30 million a year last year and nothing has or will change since then.

Except for one key thing. His contract. It declines every year, down to $19m his final year.

Too your premise is incorrect that Kuzma will return nothing.

The Wiz were offered a passable deal this year from the Mavs. Essentially the team was offered the deal they did with Gafford, plus reportedly some part of the Grant Williams deal. So: a late 1st this year (Gafford), and possibly a first rounder in 2027 (The Grant Williams deal).

The Wiz have made it clear they expect a package of two firsts. Otherwise they are happy to keep him. For all the reasons you detailed, and the fact that he made it clear he is happy to be here. Good team player, locker room guy, excellent tank commander. A nice highlight reel every now and again. He's a solid player on a good team, rebounds, can play good defense (key in the bubble championship), a willing passer. On a bad team as a high usage shot creator, well, he is not as good as his shot selection suggests he thinks he is.

Ahhh, thanks for detailing that, i couldn't figure out what the other piece was, SI said two 1sts, bleachers implied one for sure, and something....

For me it will be interesting to see this thing play out....will a late '24 first in a crappy draft, and a speculative '27 1st be more valuable than what we get, if anything, going forward. It's definitely a game of chicken to me, w/what we can get now, versus running the risk of injury and less of a return, or more of a return with less of an anvil contract as it gets reduced year by year. It's now just 3 years 64 mill, next year it will drop to 2 and 40.8 in the '25 summer....so we're looking at a 20% reduction in cost already by next summer.

But its scary, I think I would have taken the bird in hand because this is the wizards and things nearly always go down in the worst case scenario format, but I get why best practices and good process maybe make us more interested in dealing him next winter or summer when the contract angle is significantly cheaper and the demand probably a touch higher (plus, it will involve picks in better drafts, '24 being the worst class in a decade at least, its hard to believe getting picks from non '24 classes could be worse in tangible value going in).

[The Consiglieri]

Can always package multiple late 1sts to move up. Someone out of the Buzelis/Holland/Clingan/Castle group will fall outside of the top 10.

Sure. I'm not opposed to it. Particularly if we can package a handful of future 2nd's to move up higher into the first.

I'm just saying that I want some 2025 and 2026 draft capital instead of loading up on 2024. Generally speaking, buying assets further in the future costs less than buying assets from the current draft. And since our time horizon for the rebuild is multiple years long, we're going to get more value for our assets by having a long term view when we make trades. Also factor that you can only develop so many rookies at the same time.

Ultimately, it just makes more sense to trade Kuzma for future assets than for more 2024 assets.

100% in agreement here. The '24 class is viewed as god awful. Additionally with '24-'25 a lost cause, and '25-'26 a lost cause as well, it's better to push this down the road not only for the very relevant reasons you make but also because 1st rounders w/that long rookie deal will simply have more value and calorie impact on wins when there's more of a team built down the road. We've already got 3 rooks coming out of this well know blech draft, no reason to add more, add more for down the road, and have years of their rookie deals not wasted on a 15-25 win team the next two years. I much prefer your idea, spin that loom, more value when they come and are team is hopefully better, and more flexibility to build with as well long term.

[The Consiglieri]

I mean, I’ll gladly take Devin Carter and Daron Holmes over a single 2025 protected 1st.

People always initially overrate the next draft. Who the hell knows what 2025 will look like this time next year.

Highly unlikely it will be this bad. This draft has gotten grades analogous to 2000 and 2013, but probably worse than '13. It's rare I come across drafts w/this of a universalist "Yuck" perception. Is it possible future ones disappoint? Yes, but I'd put the odds at about 1 in 10 to 1 in 15 that it could be as bad, going in, as this one is perceived.

[The Consiglieri]

We may never see a first round pick from Phoenix, but just getting out of the Beal deal moves that trade to a B, at minimum.

Agreed. But I am more optimistic on those 2026, 28 and 30 pick swaps. I could easily picture a meltdown scenario when Phoenix crashes and burns in a couple of years...

I think we're still going to be terrible in '26.

I know we are. I was just talking about this with some delusional (to me) WFT team fans that think we might be able to pull a Houston Texans. I counter that by saying that every single position group on the team would receive an F or D before Free Agency except DT (where we got our biggest value selection in the draft) and that of the entire roster there was less than a half dozen players another team would actually consider an improvement on their own and would be willing to trade for (and most of them are overage). That rebuild will take years because just like the Wizards, they got NOTHING from 2019-2024 draft classes, behind an absolutely minimal amount of impact (a McLaurin here, a Brian Robinson there etc)....

We don't have depth, we don't have starters anyone would want either beyond maybe Deni, and a project in Bilal. We have some rotational depth that's decent for a bad team but basically this team needs to build everything from scratch (scratch being '23), and it basically turned it's '18-'22 draft selections into nothing of trade value whatsoever beyond Deni, and turned its chief veteran pieces into literally nothing. If not for talentless drafter Sheppard managing to get Gafford and Kuzma for largely nothing, we'd be getting largely nothing to begin with....so its rock bottom without a starting lineup of any players that matter beyond Deni on a great contract, and some prospects like Vucevic and Bilal, we're way behind the 8 ball. A normal reboot from dumpster fire trash, like we did with Wall-Beal-Porter takes about 3-4 years. Because we botched a similar rebuild in '08-'09 with a bad Arenas deal and a horrifically terrible trade, that rebuild was also blown apart early, and delayed, that time, it took us from 2008-2013 to become competitive with us largely unable to flip much of anything for anything and hitting on high draft picks in '10, '11, '12, and '13 (something that's much harder to do now). Five years.

To my mind, this build should take at least as long and perhaps longer because the lottery is much crueler these days to the truly bad teams. Five years is probably the best case scenario, and lets note that in year 1 we got a Wall, not a Bilal, 15 years ago next year. So probably, to my mind anyway, the best case scenario is competitive by 2027 and let me add, I'm not entirely sold that's a best case, because we made to have a high pick in '27 too since we're not pulling a whole lot from '24 (its basically like the Vesely disaster redux, but with a lesser talent from the '23 equivalent to '10 (Wall vs Bilal) and the reality that our picks could be much lower in '24-'26 than they were in '10-'13. What makes this particularly interesting is the harsh reality that a guy like Deni, one of the few building block pieces, might actually instead be the best trade asset left (if he continues to develop with that dream contract). He will be 25 in '26, 26 in '27....that is a player's prime, but its also somewhat close to the end of an athletic prime (maybe I'm stretching). It may just be that flipping him in '25 or '26 makes sense....depends really on how far away we decide we are by winter '25-'26. If we were to deal him, it probably makes the most sense to do so in '26 or '27 at the latest.

It makes for a real interesting watch going forward. The craziest part being, this won't be successful unless we're really lucky. The good news is: we were kind of lucky with Gafford and Kuzma (got those guys for nothing) got lucky with Deni, got lucky/smart with Bilal. We'll see. If anyone deserves some luck (in future drafts, not this one) it's us. I think it would be reasonable to say that this team hasn't drafted and developed a player with legit top 15 potential talent in my lifetime of watching the team. Beal and Wall came close, but neither were ever truly locked in top 15 players, and that's kind of crazy considering I've been watching for 38 years. We are do, and it sucks that that doesn't matter (see San Antonio, getting All Decade Team level players nearly every time they're near the lottery even once (Robinson in '88, Duncan in '97, Leonard in '11 via trade, Wenbanyama in '23).

[The Consiglieri]

We may never see a first round pick from Phoenix, but just getting out of the Beal deal moves that trade to a B, at minimum.

It's kind of like the Wall deal. In both cases we turned elite trade pieces into nothing through bad luck (Wall) and stupidity (Beal), and yet, while we had both on incredibly horrible, impossible to move deals, we still managed to turn them both into assets (Wall became Westbrook, another stupid contract, which inexplicably got us Kuzma), and the Phoenix detritus. The Phoenix piece is exciting. It's probably a fantasy to imagine the Phoenix trade turning into a diet Boston-New Jersey, heaven sent scenario, but it's nearly impossible to believe that Phoenix is doing anything except imploding going forward. They flamed out in the playoffs AGAIN, except now, they are stuck in a scenario in which they can blow this disaster up for someone else's picks, and accept that the pick swaps and firsts they gave multiple teams the rest of this decade could end up being enormously valuable, or they can plug their ears, cover their eyes and desperately keep trying to be a 5th-8th seed in the west and lose in the first round every year, but players being players, I simply do not believe the vets on that team will be interested in tanking, or in sticking around on a team they know can't and won't win. It makes the pick swaps in '26, '28 and '30 really valuable and lest be straight, they don't have anything to trade for other peoples competitive players other than old players, so they can't just swap out talent and try and reboot with a different mix. It's hard not to see Booker, and Durant leaving, especially Durant. Beal, well, Beal doesn't matter. He's a hot potato, nothing more.

I hate that we got NOTHING for Beal of tangible value in the short term, but there's real potential that the '26, '28 and '30 swaps could be valuable. Certainly '26, and '28, I can't say about 30. No way to no for sure, and admittedly we are gonna suck in '25-'26, but it's nice to backstop lottery bad luck with the idea that maybe the Suns end up doing a tear down in '25 (I doubt they do it this year, this is the denial offseason, in my view, next year is the "abandon ship" trade deadline/summer if this plays out the way I expect).

Those swaps will have real value, potentially anyway, if what happens is what usually happens with old, deluded, build outs like normally happens. I could be wrong, but with the cupboards largely bear, the trade pieces for more moves, gonezo, its hard not to think they'll try another time in '24-'25, and give up afterwards (which is part of the reason having a '26 swap instead of '25 is doubly valuabe: in '24-'25 we will suck too, and far worse, but in '25-'26 they might be where we are now).

[The Consiglieri]

We may never see a first round pick from Phoenix, but just getting out of the Beal deal moves that trade to a B, at minimum.

Agreed. But I am more optimistic on those 2026, 28 and 30 pick swaps. I could easily picture a meltdown scenario when Phoenix crashes and burns in a couple of years...

I think we're still going to be terrible in '26.

If they crash and burn, and the entitled vets abandon ship after another disappointing year in '24-'25 (I dont expect them to bail this offseason, but in '25-'26? Yes), then the first pick swap will occure in a rock bottoming year, where it would give us twice as many lottery balls for the '26 class, and that's a win in its own right (especially if we land a top pick). I think '26 and '28 are real possibilities, its hard to project to '30, otoh, its hard to see how Phoenix can build anything w/so many pick swaps, and picks traded away the rest of the decade. The only chance they have is something they'll be in denial about: trading their pieces now (or winter deadline '25) so they can at least play the lottery game with someone else's balls. I just happen to think they'll be in denial about this until the first half '26 (the players and management) at which point they do the reboot, and recoup the benefit. Of course this is a possiblity, no guarantee, and while Phoenix is no LA, it's still popular as a destination: solid city, warm weather etc, so they could draw FA's, maybe...

But yeah, all of us have been watching basketball play out for decades, and the Suns look distinctly like a team about to implode at some point in the next 3 to 16 months. The players themselves can smell the rot. They know. They just might be in denial for all or 3/4's of one more regular season. If I were to bet, I would bet Booker and Durant are gone by winter deadline or summer trade window '25 at the latest. They will likely come back to try again next year, the denial year, and then eject either if things go sideways at the deadline, or the summer of '25. That makes the '26 swap, the first truly valuable one. Rock bottom for them, if they do implode, is most likely in '26 and '27....and w/so many assets flushed, '28 is probably pretty bad too.

One thing to remember if we're ever good, never do pick swaps lol.

[NYG]

Is the culture upgrade from Jordan Poole to getting Bradley Beal back worth considering swapping the two?

[Lucky Once]

Is the culture upgrade from Jordan Poole to getting Bradley Beal back worth considering a return in a swap?

What does this even mean? Poole was not a good player this year but everything out of Washington is that he is the hardest worker on the team and well liked. He was just in France with our rookie Bilal Coulibaly last week.

Why would Beal accept a trade back to a team that is worse than the one he left?

[NYG]

Is the culture upgrade from Jordan Poole to getting Bradley Beal back worth considering a return in a swap?

What does this even mean? Poole was not a good player this year but everything out of Washington is that he is the hardest worker on the team and well liked. He was just in France with our rookie Bilal Coulibaly last week.

Why would Beal accept a trade back to a team that is worse than the one he left?

I thought Beal liked it in Washington and was a good leader for the young guys while he was there... am I wrong?

[Tyrone Messby]

uh no, who did Beal help develop/mentor while he was here? Westbrook had more of an impact on the players and team identity in one season than Beal ever did.

[doclinkin]

For me it will be interesting to see this thing play out....will a late '24 first in a crappy draft, and a speculative '27 1st be more valuable than what we get, if anything, going forward. It's definitely a game of chicken to me, w/what we can get now, versus running the risk of injury and less of a return, or more of a return with less of an anvil contract as it gets reduced year by year.

Kuz contract is seen as an asset by other teams. Cleverly constructed, better value as it goes. The front office is confident they will be able to trade it. Murmurs seem to agree. They are not pressed to ditch him, but a lot of deals get done on draft day. Knock wood he doesn't injure himself over the summer, but, I fully expect this is when we swap him out. A team with win totals in the teens has cover to trade any player anywhere. But listening elsewhere, Kuz does not seem to be getting the blame for the Wizards poor season, just that given the lack of talent in the pool(e), he tried to do too much. I tend to watch the away feed; other team's broadcasters like Kuz, and seem to think he is really skilled. I think we get a decent deal and return on the exchange. This is not your mother'sWizards front office.

[doclinkin]

It makes for a real interesting watch going forward. The craziest part being, this won't be successful unless we're really lucky.

Lucky yes. But that is every NBA team. If you don't land LeBj or Curry in the draft, you simply don't have a chance. HOWEVER, I don't think it is entirely luck that determines the outcome here. Our front office seems to be reliably savvy in how they build from within in both player development and acquisition. We suck now, but players did improve over the season and seem to be motivated and clearheaded in how they intend to continue that process. I expect next year we take some significant steps. We will have to do some interesting line-up tanking to contend in the tankstakes. *Fortunately* we have no all-stars so we are not subject to the load management penalties and can rest any guys we've got if they are messing up the stat sheets in the +/-. Not saying we will risk being good next year. But in getting better all the time, that way lies perfection.

[doclinkin]

Those swaps will have real value, potentially anyway, if what happens is what usually happens with old, deluded, build outs like normally happens. I could be wrong, but with the cupboards largely bear, the trade pieces for more moves, gonezo, its hard not to think they'll try another time in '24-'25, and give up afterwards (which is part of the reason having a '26 swap instead of '25 is doubly valuabe: in '24-'25 we will suck too, and far worse, but in '25-'26 they might be where we are now).

What I loudly said at the time of the trade. The swaps are the real heart of the Beal deal.

All PHX has to do is miss the playoffs for those picks to add value. Essentially if they miss the playoffs we get both our lotto combinations and theirs, since the swaps don't happen until after draft position is determined. Lets say we are the worst team in the league. PHX can be better than us by 20+ games and still flame out in the play-in contests as the 10th seed. Suddenly we no longer have a 52.1% chance at a top 4 pick but a 60.5% chance. Are no longer tied with the #2 worst team in the league with a 14% chance at the #1 spot, but now have a 16% edge.

If the prize is a generational player like Wemby or LeBJ, you want every possible percentage lining up in your favor. Give yourself the best chances in the world to be lucky. And if PHX craters? Very likely. With aging injury prone players, max contracts, no trade clauses, and all their picks either traded or freighted with swaps. By 2028 or 2030 they could have nothing but dead bugs and rat poison in their cupboard. MLEs and G-League call-ups. Even if we were still terrible, we could have a near 100% chance of at least getting a top 4 pick. And a 28% chance of that number one overall.

https://tankathon.com/pick_odds

[The Consiglieri]

For me it will be interesting to see this thing play out....will a late '24 first in a crappy draft, and a speculative '27 1st be more valuable than what we get, if anything, going forward. It's definitely a game of chicken to me, w/what we can get now, versus running the risk of injury and less of a return, or more of a return with less of an anvil contract as it gets reduced year by year.

Kuz contract is seen as an asset by other teams. Cleverly constructed, better value as it goes. The front office is confident they will be able to trade it. Murmurs seem to agree. They are not pressed to ditch him, but a lot of deals get done on draft day. Knock wood he doesn't injure himself over the summer, but, I fully expect this is when we swap him out. A team with win totals in the teens has cover to trade any player anywhere. But listening elsewhere, Kuz does not seem to be getting the blame for the Wizards poor season, just that given the lack of talent in the pool(e), he tried to do too much. I tend to watch the away feed; other team's broadcasters like Kuz, and seem to think he is really skilled. I think we get a decent deal and return on the exchange. This is not your mother'sWizards front office.

I hope its not for '24 assets. I want assets down the line. We already have 3 picks in this admittedly blech draft, don't need more, better to spin it down the line, of course less certainty then, but I'd prefer getting guys that will be younger, and fewer years of their contract used in tanking seasons (I viewed this year, '24-'25, and '25-'26 as locked in tanking seasons, '25-'26 may be unintentional, but it will happen, '26-'27 is contingent on our lottery luck in '25 and '26).

[The Consiglieri]

Those swaps will have real value, potentially anyway, if what happens is what usually happens with old, deluded, build outs like normally happens. I could be wrong, but with the cupboards largely bear, the trade pieces for more moves, gonezo, its hard not to think they'll try another time in '24-'25, and give up afterwards (which is part of the reason having a '26 swap instead of '25 is doubly valuabe: in '24-'25 we will suck too, and far worse, but in '25-'26 they might be where we are now).

What I loudly said at the time of the trade. The swaps are the real heart of the Beal deal.

All PHX has to do is miss the playoffs for those picks to add value. Essentially if they miss the playoffs we get both our lotto combinations and theirs, since the swaps don't happen until after draft position is determined. Lets say we are the worst team in the league. PHX can be better than us by 20+ games and still flame out in the play-in contests as the 10th seed. Suddenly we no longer have a 52.1% chance at a top 4 pick but a 60.5% chance. Are no longer tied with the #2 worst team in the league with a 14% chance at the #1 spot, but now have a 16% edge.

If the prize is a generational player like Wemby or LeBJ, you want every possible percentage lining up in your favor. Give yourself the best chances in the world to be lucky. And if PHX craters? Very likely. With aging injury prone players, max contracts, no trade clauses, and all their picks either traded or freighted with swaps. By 2028 or 2030 they could have nothing but dead bugs and rat poison in their cupboard. MLEs and G-League call-ups. Even if we were still terrible, we could have a near 100% chance of at least getting a top 4 pick. And a 28% chance of that number one overall.

https://tankathon.com/pick_odds

I tend to think what's going to happen is that they are probably going to run it back next year rather than panic, because GM's are always like that, they want their paycheck, and will always prioritize now over tomorrow, but if next year is another slide, and it will be (how do they get better than this, when this isn't enough?), then the panic trade the guys now/trade demands by the players in a lost season, either happen in season, or after the season: so basically I expect these guys to make trade demands in winter '25, or summer '25. The only thing that gives me pause are the ages of Durant and Beal. Durant's 36 before tip off of the '24-'25 season, Beal will be 31, Durant will be itching to move quicker because his decline will sharpen sooner, Beal's decline is already obvious...could their demands happen this summer? Maybe, but Beal's deal isn't moveable for now, the one and only time his horrible deal helped us (making it harder for the Suns to blow this up sooner, forcing them to blow it up in '25-'26 at the earliest-probably).

Durant: Age 36 tip off '24-25: 4 Year/194 mill expires in '26
Booker: Age 28 tip off '24-'25: 4 Year/221 mill expires in '28
Beal: Age 31 tip off in '24-'25: 5 Year/251 mill expires in '28.

Looking at that, it definitely seems like:

There's a chance, maybe 15-25% that Durant or Booker try to get traded this summer, but I think its more likely
40-50% chance that they demand trades during the '24-'25 season or after.

The thing that is exciting, beyond what we've talked about, is that it's pretty easy to imagine Durant and Booker bailing before the '25-'26 season is done, probably at the latest, deadline early '26. the way the contracts work, its pretty clear action will happen by the end of '26 at the latest, but probably sooner because I doubt Durant and Booker are going to want to spend their last years in Durant's case, and end of prime in Booker's in a totally lost cause pair of seasons.

So the sense I get is '26 to '27 are probably the draft classes most effected by the implosion initially, maybe '28 too. Trying to figure out how this works, and if you're Phoenix, you really can only do one of two things:

1. Play this thing out, because you don't own your own tank, and just hope for the best.

I think that's non-viable because the players will go full Harden if that happens.

2. Sell off these guys before they crater in value like Beal has, for as much building block potential as possible, and build w/o them w/other teams picks.

There's probably another option, the stupid half-way strategy, but it does seem clear they have to do something because Durant and Booker will not be on this team past probably '25 or '26 at the latest.

What's great for us, is, as you said, its more than likely that the Suns are in the lottery for at least 2 of those 3 swap years, and maybe all 3. If nothing else, it will improve our lottery odds of hitting significantly.

Needless to say, I pray we never do trades like the Suns did with us. Just insanely stupid and needlessly risky.

[gambitx777]

The only thing the league gives you free is a R1 & a R2 pick every year. If you draft well, you will get better over time.

OTOH, it's almost impossible to get better reliably by way of trades unless your team is in a destination city like NY or LA. Not saying you can't do it, but you have to be awfully clever & equally lucky.

Plus, as doc hints, being good in the draft is what gives you the player capital you need to make useful trades.

I'm still an isaff sannon truther lol I'll admit it lol.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using RealGM mobile app

[Jay81]

looks like the suns are trying to move their #22 pick. IF we could get that pick with a sign/trade for Tyus...i would be all over that

[nate33]

looks like the suns are trying to move their #22 pick. IF we could get that pick with a sign/trade for Tyus...i would be all over that

They can't take on his salary. And they're over the 2nd Apron so they can't package multiple low-salary players together to form an outgoing salary total equal to the incoming salary of Tyus.

The only trades that make sense for Phoenix are ones where they get back a useful player who is still on his rookie deal (and therefore still very cheap). Some sort of trade involving Kispert might make sense financially, but Kispert is not the type of player they need. They need a PG and some wing defenders.

I guy who would make a ton of sense for them is Dyson Daniels. That #22 pick isn't enough to get it done though.

A trade that I think could work would be Kevin Durant for Ingram + Daniels. It balances out their roster roster, saves them some money and lengthens their window (albeit while imposing a lower ceiling). They could probably get New Orleans to throw in an extra pick. That pick and the #22 pick could be used to add some young depth and suddenly Phoenix' situation looks much more stable.

It's better than standing pat, which only gets them maybe one more long-shot run at a title followed by a long, miserable rebuild with no high picks until 2031.

New Orleans gambles on the health of Durant and Zion to hopefully win a title before OKC becomes unbeatable.

[pcbothwel]

looks like the suns are trying to move their #22 pick. IF we could get that pick with a sign/trade for Tyus...i would be all over that

Tyus to Suns
Grayson to 3rd Team
Filler from 3rd team + pick to DC