NBA 2020-21 reg season 1st half thread

oladipo makes $21M so miami would have to send a bunch of money out and i'm not sure that they have a first-round pick to trade. i guess in that scenario nunn as an RFA is the sweetener to houston? seems like they could do better although victor sure seems to be making it clear that he wants to get to miami so maybe other teams just stay away.

dipo doesnt seem like he has the miami mindset

i know, it's weird but it seems like within the past week anyone connected to any sort of rumor mill agrees that he wants to go there.

the heat have enough salary filler... i think it comes down to whether the rockets can get a first of any sort for oladipo, which seems possible but idk if it's likely given his contract situation. choosing him over lavert signals they obv think he will have real trade value at the deadline. heat could trade 2025 which would be a good trade for houston, idk if the heat would do it but riley prob won't be around then anyway so he might just say fuck it

if the heat think dipo is ok physically and hes willing to resign for a reasonable amount a first plus filler seems like a pretty good deal for them

they built up all the cap equity and have some decent trade pieces when you include picks so i think the question is whether they want to use it on dipo or if they think they can get beal or whoever else might be out there. i don't see how they just do nothing, but the FA class has thinned out so much that i feel like getting dipo in for this year's run makes sense and then you likely end up re-signing him looking at this year's FA market. but it would prob rule them out of the brad beal convo so idk

from houston's perspective he prob has the most trade value when sent to a team where there is mutual interest in dipo being there longterm... which is prob less than 5 teams. but if it gets to a situation where they're just looking for whoever is offer the most for this year's playoff run the pool widens. he's prob the most interesting piece out there at this point in terms of what could happen at the deadline

seems like a bad deal for rockets. he's looked pretty normal of late. is it foregone they dont want to keep him?

unless they just give him an obscene amount of money idk why he would resign there, and that would seem crazy on the rockets behalf

my interpretation of them flipping lavert for oladipo is that they wanted to collect even more assets this year, like as much of a full reset as they could possibly do

the rockets owe 2 first and 2 swaps to OKC so even w/ the harden trade it's not like they're swimming in draft equity i feel like they're prob trying to squeeze another first out of some other team in the league

rebuilding from the ground up seems like a bad move for them. they have wall (un-tradable) and wood (great contract) why not try to win some games and sign a prime oladipo.

lol they also have eric gordon locked up for ~4 more seasons at 20M

if they had no interest in a cheapish, under contract, caris levert, why would they have interest in retaining victor oladipo making a lot more money?

oladipo (potentially) is much better than levert

really no idea what they are doing but if all they get for harden is a handful of picks then i think they lost this trade badly. okc got SGA out of the PG deal plus all the picks. i guess they could just firesale the whole thing

well they could have had allen and/or levert and passed on both. wall-oladipo-christian wood is getting you a first round slaughtering at max and that's assuming health from the first two which feels like a real gamble.

they are sort of stuck in no man's land... the wall trade is understandable bcuz they got a first round pick for exchanging equally toxic contracts but the wood signing indicates they didn't think they would have to trade harden this season

tbh wood ended up signing for so cheap there was kind of a "why not?" factor to it. if he plays well and the background stuff is decent he could have trade value too.

yeah def a defensible signing

i just hate the idea of breaking it all the way down if you dont have to. its still worthwhile to field a competitive team on the way to the next phase.

they have a couple months to get a good look at oladipo

spottie i agree w/ you re tanking, the heat never bottomed out between the big 3 and jimmy eras and some of those seasons were really fun, even after bosh's blood clot stuff. it just seems like that's where they're headed w/ this trade so i feel like if you're going to go the draft picks route you might as well go all in. i also think it's much harder in the west to play the 7-8 seed game because of how much stronger the conference is on the fringes of the playoff race.

exactly. the clippers did it too after lob city broke up and turned themselves into a plug n play desirable place for big free agents. showing competency is important. but the big wildcard here is tilman firtitties money problems.

that guy shd consider sell the team good way to get money

yeah for every team that successfully pulls off a hard tank (i guess the latest example is philly?) there are 3 or 4 more that never recover e.g. wolves, hawks

i'm not sure how good a fit dipo is for the heat in terms of player profile. having two players in butler and adebayo who won't shoot outside the paint is barely viable in todays nba. oladipos breakout season was founded on unsustainably hot shooting which has now regressed to his mean

dipo to lakers makes more sense. even if they know its only for this season. hes set on getting paid as much as possible and reportedly turned down 25m p/a from the pacers

hes gonna end up on the knicks isnt he

probably yeah

lol

bud really sucks huh

yep

wait how the fuck did thanasis get into the game?

dis lebron guy ayy hes pretty good

tbh haven’t seen much this year to convince me that we’re headed for anything other than the lakers going back to back pretty comfortably

yup

i miss the old irrelevant Lakers and as much as I kinda like LeBron and Ant Davis, I hate that they teamed up on the fucking Lakers.

i feel like it has already been forgotten that brow was leaning well into heel territory in his last year with the pelis

Davis isn't such a sweet guy the world can't help but love him. otoh, it was obvious to me that NO is not a very competent franchise and he was being wasted there, so his being unhappy at that explains much. It isn't looking good for NO knowing how to make the most of our transcendent son Zion either.

looks like the rockets are going to pick up kevin porter jr. for nothing

and what a strong culture they will be welcoming him into

dray must have said one of the magic words

just saw it, completely ridiculous

That’s crazy

For those wondering, here's the play right before the ejection: Draymond Green tries to make an entry pass to James Wiseman, but a miscommunication leads to a turnover. As they get back on defense, Green yells at Wiseman and the refs ejected him! https://t.co/L3VbMNprs9

— Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) January 22, 2021

Wtfffff

The Shaq-Donovan Mitchell exchange was awkward. lol pic.twitter.com/JxnxSIKl9F

— gifdsports (@gifdsports) January 22, 2021

inside has needed a cleansing fire for like, what, at least 5-6 years now

the fuck

ugh. that sucks.

they were being so negative about mitchell in the halftime of that game. it was bizarre.

It is a shame to see Shaq going hard like he was some Jordan-esque mind warrior of the game instead of just the biggest, strongest guy on the court. If you were such a basketball ubermensch maybe you would have shot better than 53% from the line for your career.