stashing assets for the 2023 nba offseason

new wizards president says he has permission from ownership to do a rebuild, wiz have some dece guys

will be funny when they get more for kuz than beal or zinger

wonder what toronto will do too, fred declined his option and is gone, they could get an absolute haul for siakim if they feel like getting a lil younger

they really ought to trade him if they want to be Good again in the near future and not just okay for a while

seems like a guy whose value is gonna fall off quickly from here and they're not currently contending so

yeah toronto has so many good players but none that are like focal points offensively to make it all work. they owe SA their 2024 FRP unless it's top 6, so they have some incentive to suck next year.

i'd think that OG and siakam could get them a ton of young players+picks. they have basically no salaries tied up in the long-term, so they could quickly pivot to a barnes-centered okc-style rebuild if they wanted, though the jakob poeltl trade makes less sense in that context.

yeah, i tend to believe the line of thinking that the raptors tipped their hand by making the poetl trade. if they were planning on rebuilding that would be a weird move to make. it also seems like masai turned down mega offers for OG at the deadline despite his all but certain impending free agency. it seems like they still want to push it

i do think "we're gonna go against all good sense and push for contention in the eastern conference" as a strategy seems less crazy given what we just watched in the playoffs than it did 2 months ago

the skillsets of og, barnes, and siakam overlap too much. if i had to guess, they'll ship og and hold onto the others

in terms of 2024 east contention you'd have to put toronto, at bare minimum, behind the bucks, celtics, sixers, and heat. but i could see them getting into the cavs/knicks second tier next year? brooklyn is dropping out and i still like toronto better than the hawks. given where the heat finished last year, and depending on how you feel about the knicks & cavs, you could reasonably say that 3 of the 6 non-play in seeds are very much up in play next season? i still think the cavs have a high floor for a regular season team & i think brunson gives the knicks the same, but if you want to see a path in the east it's certainly visible.

the last time we saw the raptors in the playoffs it wasn't very good but you can still dream on siakam, OG and barnes as the backbone of a strong playoff rotation if they can make the rest of the roster better

given masai's track record of drafting & developing i think i would be loading up on assets and eyeing the next phase of the east in 3+ years when the current contenders will have aged stars and/or had major roster turnover but i do wonder if

a. ownership in toronto has gotten too used to packed arenas, playoff money, relevance etc
b. masai himself looks at how he won a title w/ kawahi and thinks that a half-decade draft and develop rebuild is unnecessary

id trade siakim keep og just cause ogs younger, try to build around og barnes draft picks etc

it wouldnt be a full rebuild that way could be back in the mix in a couple years

i think part of the issue is that siakam is currently the best player of the three but prob has the least trade value. you have to give up real assets for him & also re-sign him to an enormous deal covering his early 30s that pays him like a number 1 option when all available evidence as of now tells us that he's a good number 2 if you're trying to win for real. maybe the raptors weren't really offered 4 firsts for OG but if they were i have to imagine that outstrips offers for siakam

yeah og might have a lil more value but i think theyd still get a ton for pascal, hed be amazing for a fringe contender looking to step up to the bigtime

siakam for middleton, dooo it

if siakam gets all nba again this season this would be his next deal w/ the raptors. there's no incentive for him to push for a trade or sign a new deal there, but i have no idea why toronto would want to do this. yet a trading team has to swallow the asset forfeiture + mega extension combo... and for what?

2024-25: $50,050,000
2025-26: $54,054,000
2026-27: $58,058,000
2027-28: $62,062,000
2028-29: $66,066,000
Total: Five years, $290,290,000

to get a really good player

whats going on here

The Golden State Warriors are pursuing a trade of Jonathan Kuminga for a high draft pick, per @DraftExpress

(h/t @RealGM ) pic.twitter.com/t2RWw8ILIj

— NBACentral (@TheNBACentral) June 14, 2023

yeah i bet they are

to get a really good player

― lag∞n, Wednesday, June 14, 2023 12:38 PM (twelve minutes ago)

there's just so many constraints once you start sending multiple picks out that i wonder if teams think siakam is good enough for all that. if you could just sign him as a FA it would be a no brainer for practically every team in the league. the same would be true if the trade price was like one pick and a player. but if you have to give up say 3 firsts *and* also sign him to a $50m+ per year contract... doesn't that just put you in t wolves/gobert, hawks/murray range? even for non-contenders it starts to put some handcuffs on how you build your team in the future. if you're detroit is siakam so good that you're willing to forego flexibility over the next 2-5 years to acquire him? maybe OKC gets him, they have enough picks

jonathan kuminga needs to fulfill his destiny and become a fantasy beast for a terrible team

the CBA just seems really nuts & bad i'm scared of what's going to happen

was about to post the same thing, the effects seem like they are going to be massive

there's just so many constraints once you start sending multiple picks out that i wonder if teams think siakam is good enough for all that.

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, June 14, 2023 12:51 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

its def fraught best case scenario its a jrue to bucks type situation, but from torontos pov who cares if its a good trade for the other team or not lol, theres a lot of teams who want to move up in the nba pecking order for whom a trade is the only way to do it

new cba going all in on parity, could be cool idk, def going to force some good teams to be broken up which fans will prob not like

seems pretty bad for Milwaukee at least

bird rights trap becomes even more deadly, signing mediocre guys like say tobais harris to huge deals just kills you

wonder if even very good players like siakim will stop progressing up the max contract ladder

ok good luck everyone

Just In: The Washington Wizards and Bradley Beal will work together to find a trade for the three-time All-Star if the team elects to reset the roster in the near future, league sources tell me and @JoshuaBRobbins.

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 14, 2023

kinda expecting the cavs to pop off next year like win 55-60 games they had the 2nd best scoring differential this year and their guys are all aging in, not aging out. playoffs idk but i think its unlikely toronto is better than them without picking up a major piece

yeah everyones down on them cause they went out like dogs in the offs but i still like their core, tho they do have some work to do around that, obvs still a lot of questions like can mobley play center but still

i would def bet on the cavs being better than the raptors but it's not outlandish to think the raptors could finish above them

i havent looked at what the new cba is like btu guys like tobias harris, bradley beal, siakam were already traps under the current one really

if theres a max salary then you need the guys who are so good that the max is an underpay, not the guys who are worth exactly the max

that harris contract was survivable for the sixers, under the new cba idk

in a cap league its too hard to keep up with teams who are underpaying their players see those warriors contracts from 5 years ago or w/e

the sixers weren't even into the tax this year. i can't remember what their team building constraints were if they were a tax team vs non tax team, it seems like daryl was prob just doing ownership a solid. but they did have more money to spend, in theory

if theres a max salary then you need the guys who are so good that the max is an underpay, not the guys who are worth exactly the max

― ciderpress, Wednesday, June 14, 2023 1:18 PM (four minutes ago)

would be hard to more accurately define the statement "easier said than done" than you did here...

in conclusion they should let teams pay one guy 70% of the cap if they really want to. it would be funny

new cba going all in on parity, could be cool idk, def going to force some good teams to be broken up which fans will prob not like

― lag∞n, Wednesday, June 14, 2023 1:00 PM (six minutes ago)

i'm worried that the combo of no real free agency + new luxury tax penalties + number of teams already w/ constrained assets/crazy caps is going to kill player movement. i guess there is always player movement. but you look a few years into the future w/ a lot of these teams & you're just like, what could possibly even be the realistic plan here

no good players hitting free agency is definitely a bummer

just look at boston and miami, two contending teams with fanbases who are reasonably taking the position of "how can we push ourselves over the top?"

ok well each team has a super max player & a second player who is imminently signing for another $50m a year. so you've already eaten up like 80% of the cap w/ two players. so now what you're either riding it out w/ your roster or making tweaks to the role player rotation. how are you keeping your contending roster intact while also adding to it, without triggering insane penalties that basically no owner is going to abide by? lillard is not ending up in miami if bam is also getting an extension from them. i don't see how bradley beal ends up on a contending team, period

the new CBA goes crazy on teams when they get $17m over the tax -- here are the teams that were at least $17m over the tax this year

clippers ($40 million over)
warriors (+38m)
bucks (+29m)
celtics (+26m)
mavs (+23m)
suns (+22m)
lakers (+17m)

the other two teams that paid the tax were

nuggets (+10m)
nets (+9m

lol clippers

i guess im okay with the idea of making it near impossible for a team to have 3 max players but idk what the best execution of that is

the nba jam era where every team has 2 main guys

i guess im okay with the idea of making it near impossible for a team to have 3 max players but idk what the best execution of that is

― ciderpress, Wednesday, June 14, 2023 1:36 PM (thirty-five seconds ago)

the league is still haunted by the heatles but the thing is no team w/ 3 max players has ever actually ran the league

the heatles ran the east but went 2-2 in the finals. the warriors ran the league w/ 4 max(-ish) players but that was a historical anomaly based on the one year cap spike. if they had just smoothed that out you actually would have had an incredibly competitive top of the league w/ the big 3 warriors, big 3 cavs, KD/russ thunder, harden/cp rockets

i think you could easily argue that big 3s are good for the league -- you get star concentration so you have marquee teams but it's still pretty hard to win over and over w/ a roster that top heavy

the parity era will be good for "competition" but star concentration -- or at least the dominance of 1-2 teams at a certain time -- is baked into NBA history. i'm not sure more nuggets/heat style finals (talking about players involved as opposed to outcome of the series) is exactly "good" but we'll see how it plays out