But Kyrie isn't going back to Cleveland. You'd have to engineer a three-team deal and hope that whatever team you find is going to be pleasing to Irving (and more importantly, Irving's agent) and give you the picks and players that Cleveland desires. Sure it's doable but it's complicated.
Is Kyrie going to quit and leave 22 million on the table? He’d play there for a year and then try to work a sign and trade, which would net Cleveland more assets. So Cleveland gets at a minimum the Sac pick, whatever they get for Kyrie when he leaves in a sign and trade, plus probably a few other assets (maybe Memphis, maybe Rozier to move). That’s a great get for a sign and trade.
Kyrie broke up a championship-level team in Cleveland because he hated the organization. He literally threatened to get surgery and miss the season if he they didn't trade him and they settled for what became pennies on the dollar. You think Cleveland is just going to welcome him back now? You think Kryie goes back willingly? Also, Kyrie shares an agent with Jayson Tatum. You're going to tell Tatum's agent that they are shipping Kyrie back to the team he demanded a trade from to bring in a player that is going to steal his other client's minutes? That's not how any of this works in real life.
Yeah, there is no way we'd need to include Tatum and we clearly wouldn't. Capela is a nice player but what exactly does he do for a team like Cleveland that is rebuilding and which already has a no-offense big man in Tristan Thompson clogging the paint for another 2 years? A team like Cleveland will want young players and valuable picks and Houston has a lot less to offer in this department than other teams.
And yet we heard that Hayward was given a ton of on-court stuff about how they will unlock even more of his potential. Lesson learned?
Plus, in Kyrie, Horford, and Hayward, we have three stars who chose to come here.
Maybe. I think the off-field stuff might have made more of an impact if he wasn't going to a guaranteed championship team, though.
Kind of a shame* the Celtics are so good already. Ainge would be the one GM who could squeeze 3 distant future unprotected 1sts (just in time for Houston to be terrible) for taking the contracts Houston needs to unload, and would be comfortable enough in his job to do it.
Hey buddy, this is the dreamer thread. Rational thinking doesn't belong here. And I don't think Houston needs any additional urgency on the LeBron front. They will be collectively hyperventilating trying to land him.
OK. Point made. You're on record that SAS is making stuff up and LeBron absolutely won't have a conversation with the Celtics. I guess we will find out for sure soon.
No I said getting excited because SAS dropped a comment is silly.
Fine, whatever, you add a third team. Either way, this is ridiculous. LeBron is going to end up where he wants, period. If he wants to come to Boston, there is a 100% chance Kyrie is traded to Cleveland or somewhere else in a 3-way deal to make it happen. Kyrie is not the piece the Cavs will be getting to facilitate it (that’s the draft picks), he’s just a salary match and potential asset. One hundred percent.
Kyrie didn’t really choose to come here at all. He was traded and got lucky. I’d love for him to remain healthy and sign a max next offseason, but if LeBron says “pick me,” Danny’s pushing Kyrie all the way to Logan.Plus, in Kyrie, Horford, and Hayward, we have three stars who chose to come here.
The sense that something is being built here has become and should continue to be big plus in drawing talent here--especially since the weather is cold.
What are my motivations then? Because it was tooling on people for listening to SAS, I was pretty fucking clear about it.
Because you poke and prod and then when you’re called out on it you play the “you guys started it card”
While I think LeBron and all parties involved would love to have him in Houston they have a lot of work to do to make numbers work especially with Chris Paul as President of the Players Union which essentially means that he cannot take a discount or be involved in facilitating a discount being in his position. Dumping Eric Gordon's salary will be easy and you can always renounce Nene but finding a taker for Ryan Anderson's remaining 2/$41m will be quite a bit more challenging without much else to sweeten the pot.
Yea, you can do a Anderson + Gordon + 2020 + 2022 + a pick swap or something. Anderson is pretty useless but Gordon could be flipped and fetch them an asset as well.
Yuck, that's a pretty brutal return taking back $70m in contracts for role players and only getting a couple picks likely in the mid to high 20's.
I'm not sure....I don't think anyone has any real idea what the 2022 pick will be, do they? I guess you have to assume Harden re-signs and thus it's not a great pick but that far out, you're post everyone else and Harden has FA in between so there's some upside (as there was wtih Brooklyn). Maybe the owner will decide to get cheap in the interim too?
The only thing missing in that article is any mention of Larry Fitzgerald coming to Boston.
Assuming Houston has Harden and LeBron, along with Capela, in 3-4 years this isn't remotely close to the Brooklyn scenario when we knew Garnett and Pierce would retired and the team would be rebuilding when these picks came due.
From a pure basketball standpoint, it does make sense. But we’ll see what LeBron wants. I would love to see what Ainge would do if LeBron said that he’ll come to Boston only if Horford and Kyrie stay, which would mean Hayward. I think he would ultimately do it but that would be a tough one PR-wise.
As the writer in The Ringer article points out, Ainge moved IT after the guy jeopardized his career playing with an injury. DA has proven that he will do any deal to make his team better. Ainge owes nothing to Hayward, loyalty-wise. How does this move look to NBA players? It looks cold, calculated, and exactly how a player looking for a title would want their GM to act.
Truly nobody really knows what he's going to do. I don't think many had him going to Miami the first time he left Cleveland.
I think the one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that Hayward won’t be shipped out in a Lebron trade. Yes, indeed, all things equal, Danny would do it. All things are not equal though - Danny probably does not want to antagonize his coach.
My feeling all along has been that it's the Lakers, period. But that's a boring story.
I’m with you. Have long felt that Magic will reel in his guy. He has the cap space and the necessary young players to tweak the roster.
Right, I forgot Harden's second extension which does make the pick a lot less interesting.
Yeah, I'm not seeing it. As of right now, their top assets are:
Absolutely. James, Bosh, and Wade were in talks for months (if not longer) about playing together. He knows the players he wants to play with, and most likely the place he'd like to do it. Going to be an exciting summer, because pretty much any place he chooses is going to be involved in multiple major deals to bring in the player(s) he wants. This stuff isn't decided at one 4 hour glorified powerpoint or whatever. Hell, the Lakers laid the groundwork last summer by doing Rich Paul a favor with the KCP bailout.
That's the right choice. Tjarks piece is awful, in significant part because he doesn't understand the salary cap at all. For example, he operates from the premise that salaries need to match when the Celtics actually only need to get to 80% of Lebron's salary. He also, as a smaller issue, is proposing the Chris Paul pick up option and trade move but is using Lebron's salary next season as the target when that trade would happen this season because the whole point is to preserve his Bird rights by trading him not in his final contract year. I can forgive the latter mistake as it is pretty nuanced and new, but the matching issue is pathetic as that rule has existed in relatively similar form for a long time.
Other than all the mistakes, this article is objective FACT. Outside of Golden State, there is no better choice to build a winner than Boston for the next 5 years or so. And there are a multitude of ways to get it done pretty easily. Danny doesn’t give a shit about loyalty, this is a business and nobody’s better at separating emotion from logic in it than Danny Ainge.
