2022 NBA OFF SEASON DRAFT FREE AGENCY TAMPERING ETC

need to wait for magics take before i decide

idk if mitchell wants to be on the cavs but from a basketball and also fame perspective he should, getting in on the ground floor of an up and coming teams is better than playing for the freakin new york knicks

'The Cleveland Cavaliers have traded for Donovan Mitchell. I predict we will see him play a lot of basketball as a guard where he'll score a lot of points for his team, but I guess we'll have to wait and see when the season begins this fall.'

xp

m bison, the m stands for Magic.

Utah’s CEO of Basketball Danny Ainge is doing a fantastic job rearranging Utah roster and acquiring 13 unprotected or lightly protected picks. I don’t think he’s done yet!

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) September 1, 2022

boom

lmao

i like this for the cavs, right time to take a swing. don't have any idea what the knicks are doing--either you want mitchell or you don't. you don't tie that to barrett talks or quentin grimes or whatever.

magic never disappoints, what a star

Report: Ecstatic Donovan Mitchell went ‘screaming around the golf course’ after he found out Cavs kept core players https://t.co/XLx78EDvZJ

— Cavaliers Nation (@WeAreCavsNation) September 2, 2022

i guess he's cool with it for now

nice

can this be true

At the start of trade talks in July, New York offered Utah a Donovan Mitchell package including RJ Barrett, Obi Toppin, Mitchell Robinson and three unprotected first-round picks, sources tell ESPN. Jazz turned down that offer and Robinson signed a $60M extension to stay w/ NY. https://t.co/3eDg2Mf7f1

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 2, 2022

you don't want our guy??? ok, we'll sign him to a massive extension!!!

da knicks baby

this is all supporting my theory that the objective of knicks management is to not to get fired for as long as possible

well, yeah

i’m really curious what their plan is. hard to imagine them being in the top 8 of the east

sir we have a plan for the coming season

[knicks gm turns over a piece of paper on which the words BING BONG have been hastily scribbled]

gentlemen, it's a go

well, yeah

― mookieproof, Thursday, September 1, 2022 9:51 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i guess i should express what i mean by that a little better--they seem to want to build 45-win teams. they have found some ok players and signed some prudent extensions but have foreclosed any path to actually being good.

part of me thinks that they leaked a fake deal to woj to mollify annoying knicks fans on twitter

yeah, i think that makes sense. i wouldn't put that past them at all

i guess i should express what i mean by that a little better--they seem to want to build 45-win teams. they have found some ok players and signed some prudent extensions but have foreclosed any path to actually being good

only one team is actually going to win each year; in the meantime, what should the rest do? the east is loaded and the cavs just got mitchell; should the knicks now have a fire sale because they're doomed?

i mean i accept that y'all know much more about the pro game than i do, and i do not doubt the advanced stats. but in the process of having a fanbase that attends games and buys season tickets and is excited about the team, what's the best course? those dudes screaming outside the garden last year were the most exciting the knicks have been in 15 years.

would posit that a front office's real job is not to 'win titles' but to make the team perennially interesting and fun and sometimes if everything goes right they make a run. it didn't work out for utah and it hasn't yet worked out for the sixers, but so it goes

fuck the heat tho <3

The sixers are in the hunt tho.

Being a competent team is good but they’ve only done that like twice in the last two decades.

would posit that a front office's real job is not to 'win titles' but to make the team perennially interesting and fun and sometimes if everything goes right they make a run.

the way to do this would have been to.....trade for donovan mitchell!

that's what i don't get--they've made all these arbitrage moves in the draft to collect picks, the reason to hire ex-agency guys to run the team is to acquire stars, and they've built a team where the two best players might not ever be all stars. it's so weirdly conservative and the rest of the east is just lapping them.

windhorst said on his podcast that the knicks offered rj barrett, quentin grimes, obi toppin and two unprotected firsts. to me it makes no sense that the knicks couldn’t get the deal done if all that was at stake was one more unprotected first. bcuz those three players are > the three from the cavs. i think there are deals the knicks could have done here that would have gotten them killed by the media & fans, but i don’t think that would have been one of them.

windhorst also essentially said that the knicks pissed the jazz off by enacting this fake trade deadline & then signing barrett to the extension and announcing it. the knicks thought there were no other contenders for mitchell & decided to play a bit of hardball with the jazz who were then like “fuck these guys” and more or less immediately traded mitchell to another team for a package the knicks could have beaten. the question for me is whether the knicks were offered the ability to counter the cavs offer and bowed out or if the jazz just took the cavs offer without even calling the knicks back

that is all just really weird

corporations are people, my friend. people are strange.

The thing about Donovan Mitchell is he’s not that good

If the Knicks had done the Donovan deal they would have stunk and the good vibes would be gone by January

RIP our sweet gazelle

After receiving further evaluation, Boston’s Danilo Gallinari has been diagnosed with a torn ACL in his left knee, per sources. This is the same ACL that Gallinari tore in 2013.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 2, 2022

ah damn

nooooo

didnt think hed do much for the celtics except soak up some reg season mins but still thats a bummer

the knicks thought there were no other contenders for mitchell & decided to play a bit of hardball with the jazz

― J0rdan S., Friday, September 2, 2022 10:18 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol this is so dumb of course there were other teams who wanted him

ainge wanting to punish the knicks for fucking around makes a lot of sense

i think they thought they would be able to put together the best package in the end which was prob right and which makes me wonder whether ainge gave them the opportunity to beat the cavs offer and they passed or just decided to fuck them

i would guess the latter

have to say im not totally sure the players the knicks were offering are better than the cavs bunch depends on how you feel about barrett i guess but i dont think its out of the question to like sexton better, however i would def rather have knicks picks than cavs

obvs anything can happen to any team over a ~5 year span but the cavs are looking pretty set up, they could even be decent in a season where one of their main guys was injured a bunch or whatever

anyway, thanks to ainge for saving the knicks from themselves. not that this experience makes it any more likely that they will succeed with whatever trade might happen next.

will thibodeau actually play the young players they didn't trade? no.

who knows maybe theyll be able to trade for someone better than mitchell

already hearing rumblings about them targeting SGA now

well yeah you'd much rather have him than mitchell, but the knicks' draft picks are presumably less valuable to the thunder, who already have forty first rounders, making their package less attractive than it might've been to the jazz.

all of this is making me even more annoyed that they completely punted this year's draft

obvs anything can happen to any team over a ~5 year span but the cavs are looking pretty set up, they could even be decent in a season where one of their main guys was injured a bunch or whatever

― lag∞n, Friday, September 2, 2022 3:01 PM (ten minutes ago)

the thing is that they essentially have two years to convince mitchell to stay there & if he leaves then they have two or three great young players and very minimal ability to add to them. so it's a gamble. but i support it

mobley's ceiling is the variable that could alter whatever trajectory we're thinking for them tho

at this point in the nba any player is libel to demand a trade at any time so you gotta just roll the dice

we kinda knew this already but turns out the cavs missing the playoffs and not having to give up their first in the caris lavert deal was a great sequence of events for them

The Cavs always have a shot at lebron’s free agency and their moves should be viewed in that context imo

feels like the clock is kinda ticking on that on both sides…