Starting lineup about to be Monte, Kispert, Deni, Morris and Gafford
If they even sniff 25 wins I’ll be shocked.
I don't mind the team taking its medicine and going for a full rebuild. We weren't close, and we weren't going to get closer by creating a "superteam" of third-tier players while drafting in the late lottery.
My issue is that the current group seems dead set on treating what talent we did have as liabilities rather than assets.
We need an actual MVP level player, and none in their right mind will sign here in free agency, so that only leaves draft picks and trades. If you're going to hold up OKC as the model for a rapid rebuild, don't forget that they traded their core for
multiple firsts and landed a young star in SGA right off the jump. OKC would not be where they are now if they just gave their stars away for nothing and tried to rebuild one lottery pick at a time. That requires losing for MANY consecutive years and drafting
perfectly. We had #1, #3 (twice), #6, and two #9 overall picks in the John Wall /Bradley Beal era. There's no margin for error when you go one lottery pick at a time. Everything would have to break our way. The Thunder picked
three future MVPs in the lottery and still couldn't get it done.
Cap space can be an asset, but parking another team's bad contracts (as OKC did in absorbing Al Horford, Chris Paul, and Kemba Walker's deals) isn't going to create the same return as trading a
good player.
What are we doing here? With the new lottery rules, you get the same chance at a #1 pick if you finish with the fourth-worst record as you do if you're an historically bad team with a single digit win total. I don't see the point in dumping even our young players on team friendly deals, like Jordan Goodwin, just to get empty roster spots, and rushing to find takers for what few talented players we have without maximizing the return. We need young stars and
multiple lottery picks.
I don't know what the "draft compensation" would be with this proposed deal, but it had better net us more than just a future 27th overall pick, or else we'd have been better served trying to extend KP and THEN trading him. Winger seems to be in a rush to tear down whatever we had, and we need to absolutely
maximize our value there, as Utah did, if we're to have any chance of competing before the end of the century.
But hey, all those second round picks might be just what he needs to take the Capital City Go Go over the top.