stashing assets for the 2023 nba offseason

i don't think jrue makes a lot of sense for the heat. they need more offensive juice.

i feel like they get two protected firsts and salary filler for jrue and this trade basically ends up as the herro + three firsts + swaps deal everyone obsessed over except you get ayton instead of herro

Also - do they keep Ayton? I guess that dude finally got what he wanted: purgatory. Now he can coast and be ignored by the media for a few years.

I mean how do they get two protected firsts from Jrue when he's got those issues? I'd be shocked if they get more than 1. Maybe a 1st and a 2nd.

real loser in all this is Mike Budenholzer, gotta hurt to miss out on this opportunity.

this trade basically ends up as the herro + three firsts + swaps deal everyone obsessed over except you get ayton instead of herro

well except those mil picks and swaps from the late '20s could be really incredible assets. miami will always be at least semi-competitive

Who is playing defense on the perimeter for the Bucks?

Holiday would fit in great on Philly. I am wondering if they could route Harden somehow in order to make that happen.

holiday to philly, cp3 to portland where he gets bought out, harden to dubs what could go wrong

Sign me up.

maybe this is the year all the "wouldn't it be cool if..." trades actually happen. I mean we're off to a good start

lets do this

trades baby

well except those mil picks and swaps from the late '20s could be really incredible assets. miami will always be at least semi-competitive

― Clay, Wednesday, September 27, 2023 4:40 PM (ten minutes ago)

yeah maybe. maybe not. pat riley is gonna be 84 in 2029. i think if someone did a data based analysis on the potential value of heat vs bucks picks in 28-29-30 the answer would be that they project to have roughly the same amount of value

honestly from a pure basketball spectacle standpoint would love to somehow get dame on the giannis bucks

― Clay, Wednesday, September 13, 2023 2:20 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

from a pure spectacle standpoint i would love to become suddenly wealthy

Super EXCITED for my next chapter. @Suns ☀️☀️💪🏻 pic.twitter.com/H6mLmAgXKg

— Jusuf Nurkić 🇧🇦 (@bosnianbeast27) September 27, 2023

ok fuck the suns for real now

blazer FO is probably thinking 'maybe if ayton gets away from PHX we can fix him', which is almost always a delusion. it's not like the suns haven't been giving him plenty of minutes to show off his game skills. you can see exactly what you're getting with him. dame playing w/ giannis shld be interesting as heck.

i wonder if theyre even that into him or he just fit into the deal good

he gives them a young big guy who balances out their roster, i think it makes sense for them in a very unexciting way. maybe cronin is big on him idk but he fits their roster well. it's only when the conversation is held on the grounds of whether the blazers got a justifiable return for a player of dame's caliber where you're kinda like :-/ ... but that was always gonna be the case, this is just a different flavor of :-/ than we thought

yeah hes fine and its not like theyre worried about him showing up in the playoffs

Book and KD went to the Bahamas earlier this summer and worked out together without Ayton. There was no way the Suns were going into training camp with him still on the roster

— sreekar (@sreekyshooter) September 27, 2023

what a horrible timeline for the guy you took number 1 over luka, lord

ayton will put up better numbers for sure. but you just cant teach a guy to care beyond his capacity to care.

they just need to put him on one of those screen time apps

yeah blazers could use a young big with some upside, and it’s easy to tell yourself it’ll turn around somewhere new. dumping nurk’s deal is a plus. taking a flyer on a guy who went 18 and 11 last year isn’t the worst idea.

The Phoenix Suns got a lot better and a much deeper roster with Jusuf Nurkic, Grayson Allen, Nassir Little and Keon Johnson. The Lakers are the best in the West followed by Phoenix and Denver behind them.

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) September 27, 2023

did the suns really get a lot better going from ayton to nurk, adding grayson allen, and two guys have never moved a needle

rare miss from magic

i am pumped to watch this suns team, such a strange roster construction

Watch this moment from last season’s All-Star Draft.

Giannis picks Dame with his first pick instead of Jrue. LeBron smells fish and calls it out. pic.twitter.com/I1nQW9uwfj

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) September 27, 2023

we'll never know how much of it was dumb luck but the blazers choice to take this deep into the offseason appears to have worked out how they wanted--not sure this deal was available before giannis started his september media tour.

i guess the part that was clear dumb luck was the suns having decided they'd take just about anything to get rid of ayton.

windhorst said on his podcast that the nurkic for ayton swap was agreed to a week or two ago. it seems like they were just waiting around to potentially build it into whatever dame trade portland ended up executing. it explains why phoenix is in the middle of all this just to get nurkic, grayson & little. it seems like now that he's gone the media guys feel comfortable saying that the team was never going to bring him back this season

that's crazy, i don't know what else to say

Suns big thing for me is I just don't think KD is ever going to stay healthy

even when hes healthy hes just not nearly the player he used to be, even when hes putting up crazy numbers

his lack of playmaking and physicality has always kinda combined to be a playoff achilles heel but that just didnt matter when he was on the dubs super team, and now hes lost a lot of mobility too

celtics shut him down last year and people were like fine maybe a fluke they had the perfect roster to do it, then the nuggets did it this year too

speaking of durability, nurkic's games played for the last 4 years: 8, 37, 56, 52.

yeah really curious to hear what went down with ayton and the suns that they were all in on this version of nurk, a shadow of who he was when he was gonna be someone

tbf to nurk, the 19-20 season was basically cancelled just as he was returning from the catastrophic leg injury, he missed two months with a fractured wrist in 20-21, and he was mostly held at the end of the last two years for tanking reasons. he's signed through 2026 when he'll make 19.4m

right, so he'll scale right up to playing 85-90 games during their deep playoff run next year

for nuggets reasons, nurkic going to the suns is the biggest heel turn possible and I will enjoy rooting against him, but I do think he can be a championship piece if he stays on the court

i'm just saying the stuff i assume the suns' FO is telling itself, i don't see nurk doubling his work load or anchoring a porous and weird perimeter defense which the latter is honestly laughable xp

oh yeah i know you are, i think the suns are insane and their team is even more of a house of cards now

i feel like on the defensive end a lot is going to be asked of whoever plays center for the suns… i don’t see nurkic being up to that task. when it comes to high level playoff games aren’t they just going to be playing small and switching everything? they need a mobile athletic big. it just feels like a bad fit to me.

i seriously can't wait to see what this suns team even is and also what they are in february

they don't know what they want to be/they want to be whatever booker and kd tell them to be

KD as a small ball big works if you have draymond to pair him with, or prime ibaka.

now they have two big question marks in their 'best five'. the ghost of eric gordon and nurk?? i dont like that one bit.

lol theyre mad

Trail Blazers acquire Deandre Ayton, Jrue Holiday and Toumani Camara in three team trade with Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns.

Learn More: https://t.co/VGHyYr4nwZ pic.twitter.com/TZjcMBQe6A

— Portland Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) September 28, 2023

an official corporate-approved statement isn't indicative of anything but what the corporation thinks will be the most favorable framing for maximizing its current and future profitability. iow, it says nothing worth discussing.