Sometimes who we target in trades and free agency baffles me. I view this somewhat akin to building a house and before doing drywall and finish work you move your couch and bed in. The obligatory response to questioning the timing is "dude WTF we're going to need a couch!" Basketball reasons aside, even from a business/financial standpoint this is a head-scratcher. Post-draft there's a lot of excitement among the fanbase, especially when contrasted with the past two years. If they committed to playing the young five and gave minutes to hustle guys like DMC and Evans, there's going to be good attendance and lots of interest irrespective of our W/L record. To have that kind of a guarantee coupled with one of the lowest salaries in basketball positions then to make a killing this year. Mayo, financially, wouldn't add anything to excitement or wins that would translate to increased revenue.
From the basketball side this is still just as silly. What's our goal next year? If the FO thinks the fanbase wants to be titillated with a possibility of squeezing into the postseason then great. Signing him would signify the end of the Burks experiment (which was never an experiment to begin with). In any case, we have four other guys that will likely cost is in the future, three if which coming soon (Hayward, Favors and Kanter). With the way salaries will be distributed it will necessitate a lot of foresight to project how you'll want to structure and enable a contending team years in advance. Which one of those three do we want to drop in the future to secure Mayo now?
I think the direction for this franchise should be painfully clear at this point: next year is a learning year strictly for development and secondarily for landing something in this hyped draft. After the season is over, the rebuild is done. We go into balls-to-the-wall win mode. This is where we'll make decisions on extensions and fill out the rest of our cap with complementary players and look to make a run over our ~4-5 year window.
