The more I think about the trades the more I feel like the FO revealed their hand.
Few points as to why:
- We sold to the bottom-feeders instead of the contenders in a trade market that was starving for quality upgrades. There was much more to squeeze from the contending teams, like we saw the Hornets do.
- Instead of wanting young players back who could be closer to being useful for the "Lauri timeline", we took picks.
- Instead of going after liquid future assets that we can save until next years in-season market, we took two picks that are already known to land in the 25-35 range in this next draft and that have to be used now one way or another
- We traded away a 27yo and 23yo who were good fits with us and in Lauri's timeline
- We wanted to trade out KO (who wanted to stay) to give minutes to Hendricks, and its definitely not because "he was ready"
Also if you think about what we will do with those draft picks that are known to land in the 25-35 range in this draft. To say "we want to trade them" means we need to be pretty damn sure that some team is gonna enter a full rebuild who values current picks enough to give something tangible back for picks that we cannot hold for later and have no speculative value, but instead are known to be at 25-35 range. Or then we push one pick marginally up to "get our guy" in this draft, but that doesnt make much sense as this draft is very risky on the top.
So either we are going to get that big upgrade next offseason, or we are punting on this attempt for a quick rebuild and are going to enter a much deeper tank with 3 rookies, 3 sophomores and 3 more picks in the 2025 coming up. Latter also makes sense, as West right now is at all time competitive level and if we sit back for 2-3 more years, some of those teams will die due to cap/tax/lack of assets/being too old.
Its a good time to be a seller. And DA is nothing if not a value guy.... so will he line up with the other buyers or will he continue selling?