2016 NBA Offseason thread

[DG_ThenNowForever]

37 minutes ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

Any guesses? 

 

I don't see San Antonio or Golden State. My guess would be he stays in OKC, especially after the draft day moves. They've improved, Westbrook and Durant are pretty much just now hitting their primes. I say he signs the 2 year deal with player option after 1st. If they don't win it all, they both leave next year.  

 

I see OKC 1, GS 2. San Antonio might be the better fit (though Durant would have to play PF), but I don't see it happening.

 

But yeah, short deal in OKC with the chance to move on next year if it doesn't work seem like the best option. 

[OnWis97]

39 minutes ago, tigerslionspistonshabs said:

Any guesses? 

 

I don't see San Antonio or Golden State. My guess would be he stays in OKC, especially after the draft day moves. They've improved, Westbrook and Durant are pretty much just now hitting their primes. I say he signs the 2 year deal with player option after 1st. If they don't win it all, they both leave next year.  

I tend to agree.  Some people think GSW's loss makes him going to Golden State more likely (i.e., now he's filling a hole instead of just riding coattails).  But I think he stays put.

 

And I am not a staunch follower of NBA contracts, but doesn't Westbrook have one more year left...so I think some thought is Durant will stick around for a short-term (i.e., one year) deal and then he and Westbrook can hit the market together.

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

33 minutes ago, OnWis97 said:

I tend to agree.  Some people think GSW's loss makes him going to Golden State more likely (i.e., now he's filling a hole instead of just riding coattails).  But I think he stays put.

 

And I am not a staunch follower of NBA contracts, but doesn't Westbrook have one more year left...so I think some thought is Durant will stick around for a short-term (i.e., one year) deal and then he and Westbrook can hit the market together.

 

Yes. 

[habsfan1]

If Lebron leaves Cleveland again, I guess there's gonna be another social media explosion mainly from distraught Cleveland fans.

 

I don't know if it will be worth turning the year he had upside down with all the negative attention.

[FiddySicks]

I can't think of anything that would make me happier than seeing Lebron ditch Cleveland again to team up with Durant on the Knicks/Lakers/Heat/whoever. 

[FiddySicks]

D/P 

 

Or both of them land on the Warriors. Whatever ?

[Rockstar Matt]

LeBron isn't leaving guys. He's made it perfectly clear he doesn't want to play anywhere else. 

[BlackBolt3]

I mean LeBron said it himself. There's as much chance he leaves Cleveland as KD comes to Charlotte.

 

 

 

 

 

Or keeping Batum, Lin, and Lee together :(

[fkaKrock5cent]

The main reason LeBron is opting out is so he can restructure his contract. If you wanna play the 'conspiracy' game though, he DID just hang out with the Banana Boat gang today...Maybe they're gonna free up some of that cap space.

As for KD. He's staying in OKC. I don't think any other team in the league gives him as much of a chance to be in the finals year in and year out. Don't forget that if Klay didn't go OFF in game 6 in a historic fashion, they would be in the NBA Finals and who knows what could have happened at that point. 

[dont care]

I could see them getting wade possibly

[fkaKrock5cent]

6 minutes ago, dont care said:

I could see them getting wade possibly

WHY, HERE HE COMES NOW!

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

LeBron isn't leaving Cleveland. Come on you guys.

 

Also, if you know me, you know I love when people dump on Sam Hinkie. Here's the newest Sam Hinkie dump, wherein Deadspin dumps on some ESPN dummy's article celebrating the end of the process being Ben Simmons (who may not even be good!): http://deadspin.com/sam-hinkie-still-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about-1782821624

 

Some choice passages:

 

Quote

Here again is more flat dishonesty by omission. Remember last summer, when the Sixers had to pass on Kristaps Porzingis in the draft because Porzingis and his agent wanted nothing to do with Hinkie’s “Process” and wouldn’t agree to give the Sixers a physical, a workout, or even a face-to-face meeting? That was the consequence of Hinkie’s bad handling of agents, not some bull about him personally being stereotyped as a dweeb. Players didn’t want to come to Philadelphia because of him.

 

Quote

No, what’s unacceptable is both gross incompetence and strategic gaming of a flawed system at the same time. The NBA tolerates strategic gaming of the system every single year. Tanking is nothing new. Being so godawful :censored:ty at cashing in on the spoils of tanking that you lock one of the NBA’s largest markets into a cycle of permanent deliberate failure is new.

 

Quote

Hey, remember when Hinkie passed up Giannis Antetokounmpo and Dennis Schröder to draft Michael Carter-Williams? Maybe let’s not bet the house on his player projections.

 

Quote

Here are the Houston Rockets’ win-loss records from the time Yao Ming broke his navicular bone to the time they traded for James Harden:

2009-10 season: 42-40
2010-11 season: 43-39
2011-12 season: 34-32

What’s that you’re saying? The Rockets rebuilt their team after the unexpected catastrophic end of an expensive star center’s career without ever once finishing a season below .500? The Rockets went from the supposed quagmire of mediocrity to championship contention without blowing up their team? The Rockets acquired one of the NBA’s brightest stars via trade rather than the draft? In fact the Rockets haven’t had a top-10 draft pick in 10 years, and yet haven’t finished below .500 a single time in that stretch? This example roundly refutes the entire underlying logic of The Process, and only a hilarious boob would offer it as a defense of The Process, and only an uncritical dunce would accept this without laughing in Sam Hinkie’s :censored:ing face?

I quite agree!

No “observers” were “scratching their heads” during the three years it took Daryl Morey and the Houston Rockets to recover fully from the unexpected end of Yao Ming’s career. They were trying to win basketball games. They did that while angling for the move that could land them a superstar. It made sense to everybody, because that’s what professional sports teams are supposed to do.

More to the point, Hinkie is completely full of :censored:. The Rockets didn’t have a three-year plan. In December of 2011, they swung a three-team trade that would have sent Chris Paul from New Orleans to the Lakers and landed Pau Gasol—at that time the NBA’s best center and one of its 10 best players—in Houston. If David Stern hadn’t vetoed the deal, the Rockets would have successfully rebuilt their team in 18 months, without suffering even one single losing season in the interim.

Contrast that with Hinkie’s plan to rebuild the Sixers after another expensive star center, Andrew Bynum, unexpectedly imploded. In three years, Hinkie never made a single move that improved the Sixers’ actual on-court product, and the Sixers never got within shouting distance of .500, despite playing in a weaker conference, and despite Hinkie starting out with a stable of assets that, even after the Bynum trade, still included then-23-year-old All-Star Jrue Holiday.

The Rockets don’t testify to the Process. They disprove it.

 

[BBTV]

Are the Rockets really contenders?  Really?  Or are they just a real good team that's realistically not in that top-tier of true title contenders?

 

The Sixers had Jrue Holiday - true - but is he really a building block?  What's he doing now?  They had overpaid nobodies, and the NBA is simply the worst league in the world at seemingly forcing you to over pay for players nobody has heard of and you don't even want.    I don't understand the Carter-Williams part either.  He stinks, and they could potentially get a super high pick for him.

 

He tanked while making tons of little moves that could have resulted in multiple top-5 picks in multiple drafts had the balls bounced right, and they still have a few high #1s coming their way.  He moved money around and did set them up to be able to sign anybody they want in a year once they're (possibly) decent.  He's a total dweeb, and spent each night masturbating to 20-year-old copies of Barely Legal in his mom's basement, but I do think he had a plan, and the discipline to stick with it.

 

That being said, I heard he tried to convince the ownership that he needed a big long-term contract since the plan could take that long, and understandably, they balked since they kind of wanted to know an end date.  

 

He didn't just tank - he lost games while freeing up money, accumulating pick after pick, and setting it up so Dario Saric would join the team right as they are poised to move in to the next phase of "the process".

[DG_ThenNowForever]

He moved money around not for flexibility but to sign terrible players so the team would be terrible. And then all of the good players -- including not-yet-NBA players like Porzingis -- stayed the :censored: away from Philadelphia. It's one thing to lose games while building players and luck into a #1 pick; Cleveland and Minnesota have done that with some success. It's another thing to make losing the entirety of your franchise philosophy. All that does is teach guys how to lose.

 

He didn't have a plan. He had a simple idea -- a very simple idea -- he convinced himself was groundbreaking. But it wasn't. It was unsophisticated, simplistic, and wasted three years of a city's team and potentially nuked the development of a handful of once-promising basketball players. Other teams -- including Cleveland and Minnesota -- showed you can lose while rebuilding. The Cavs are lucky LeBron is from Ohio, but Minnesota is currently the blueprint for building "the right way." It can be done. It just takes patience, canny, and making the most of your assets. Hinkie destroyed his assets.

 

And the Rockets are a model franchise. They win 50 games a year and made the WCF in 2015. Harden isn't Steph, James or Lillard, but he is among the top, say, 15 players in the league. And they convinced Dwight Howard to sign with them. And they remain an attractive free agent destination, even in the competitive West.

 

Here's a good comment from the Deadspin piece:

 

Quote

This is a pretty fair assessment. However I would say there is value in having a watchable team. I’m a raps fan, I go games, enjoy watching the ones I don’t go to, and had a blast watching this playoff run with my friends. I know full well we aren’t a real championship contender. If you told me, “ok we are going to win less then 25 games a year for 5 years for a 25% chance to win a championship” I would say no thanks. There is value for being a fan of team I can watch.

It’s not a zero sum game the way Hinkie heads treat it. It’s not you either win the title or don’t bother playing. I don’t have time and don’t want my team to be unwatchable for half a decade. In his letter Hinke said he can’t be judged for a decade. That’s insane. Who has time for that!

 

And another:

 

Quote

The problem is that recent title teams all kinda dispute Hinkie’s strategy:

2016 Cleveland: Became a title team with crazy, insane luck. LeBron doesn’t come to Cleveland if he wasn’t born there. Also, LeBron doesn’t come back if the Cavs don’t luck into Kyrie Irving and the picks that become Kevin Love. Worth noting that Cleveland actually had a goal to make the playoffs in the year they won the Wiggins pick, they just stunk.

2015 Warriors: Their five best players were drafted #7 (Steph), #7 (Barnes), #12 (Thompson) and second round (Draymond), plus Iguodala who was signed in free agency.

2014 Spurs: Duncan drafted #1 overall. The other key players were drafted #15 (Kawhi), #29 (Parker), second round (Manu). Oh, plus Denny Green, who was so undesired that he got cut from a 26-win Cavs team.

2012/2013 Heat: Drafted Wade at #5 overall, recruited LeBron and Bosh in free agency.

And you can continue even further to the Mavericks (#8 Dirk, plus a mix of free agents like Kidd and Chandler and/or undervalued guys like JJ Barea), Lakers (powered by Kobe outside the Top 10!), Celtics (Paul Pierce at #10, trades for Garnett/Allen) and so on. The whole concept that you can only compete with a bunch of high draft picks sounds good on paper, but doesn’t seem to have any bearing in reality.

 

 

[smoke072]

Looks like Noah might be joining D.Rose in New York, Knicks is shown interest in him.

[OaklandIsBack]

KD met with OKC today, and Golden State will meet with him tomorrow morning. OKC will reportedly get a second meeting after Durant meets with the other teams he is going to sit down with

[DG_ThenNowForever]

NBA free agent moves: deadline predictions!

 

Nic Batum: INDIANA
Kevin Durant: OKC

Al Horford: GOLDEN STATE

Pau Gasol: SAN ANTONIO

Hassan Whitesides: LA LAKERS

Chandler Parsons: ORLANDO

Al Jefferson: MEMPHIS

Timofey Mozgov: SACRAMENTO

Matthew Dellavedova: DETROIT

Dirk Nowitzki: DALLAS

Harrison Barnes: SACRAMENTO

Dwight Howard: DALLAS

Mike Conley: SAN ANTONIO

Dion Waiters: BROOKLYN

Rajon Rondo: PHILADELPHIA

DeMar DeRozan: TORONTO

 

 

[dfwabel]

Everyone who loves to say, "I hate the NBA," is really going to amp up their hatred next week when they find out that the likes of Kent Bazemore, Matthew Dellavedova, Jeremy Lin, and Tyler Johnson are going to earn as much as $12M/season.

 

What the crazy money which will be thrown at the restricted guys to dare his original team to match.

 

 

Who is going to try and watch/listen to The Vertical's coverage?

[TheRicSlick]

Is there really a team crazy enough to throw that kind of money at Matthew Dellavendova? I understand the cap is ridiculous this season, but it's freakin' Matt Dellavendova! 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

You know what's going to be a shame? When there's a lockout in two seasons because the cap dips a bit, and the owners don't want to pay broken ass Joakim Noah $18 million anymore. What's worse is they probably know they're going to do that already.

 

Someone's going to pay Chandler Parsons $23 million next season, and somehow that's going to the players' fault.