The Lauri Thread

[KqWIN]

The Warriors offered multiple first round picks and multiple pick swaps along with Moses Moody for Lauri Markkanen. We wanted all the picks and all the swaps plus Brandin Podziemski.

That to me seems like 3 picks and 2 swaps. Or 2 picks and 3 swaps type of offer.

I’m not sure how 4 picks and 4 swaps just based off of pure volume isn’t better. Are we sure Detroit is going to be good in 2030/2031/2032? I’m not. Controlling a team’s draft for 8 years straight is bonkers. Something bad is bound to happen eventually.

It's actually 7 years of control either way. Lowe misspoke because you can't actually trade 8 years into the future. So you'd have 4 picks and 3 swaps at maximum from DET. This was "all the picks" from the Warriors.

Lemme play!

Podz and Moody = 2.5 unprotected picks
3 super swaps (25/27/29) = 2 unprotected picks
3 basically unprotected (26/28/30) = 2.75 unprotected picks
1 normal swap way out in 2031 = 0.75 unprotected pick (due to how far out it is and upside value)

I count at least 8 picks worth of value there.

 

[KqWIN]

Why is Lowe so fixated on shipping Lauri off to Detroit?
Because that’s the industry: guys like him build careers by issuing grand, authoritative proclamations about what teams should do, handing down verdicts from the studio desk like NBA Solomon, without ever having to live with a single consequence of being wrong. It’s all abstract chess moves to them. Draft picks, assets, timelines… none of it has a human cost when you're not the one sitting in the arena watching your team trade away its top players in exchange for “flexibility” and “future upside.”
For fans, however, those decisions matter. Losing high-end talent isn’t a parlor game; it’s years of watching a team struggle because someone thought a theoretical return sounded clever on a podcast. Whether the Jazz get better or whether the fan experience improves is, frankly, background noise for Lowe. It’s not part of the entertainment product he’s selling.
It’s the sports-media equivalent of romantic advice: incredibly easy to dispense, infinitely harder to follow, and if it blows up in your face and condemns fans to yet more years of losing basketball? Well, that’s your problem, not theirs.

It's not that deep.

 

[gomretat]

i'm convinced - as of three minutes ago - the jazz shouldn't trade lauri* (i reserve the right to change my mind three minutes or more from now). it's kinda crazy to trade a 28 year old star, in the hopes you can draft somebody as good as him.

I agree but we have done it before - which still makes no sense to me.

 

[Schrödinger's Gerbil]

It's not that deep.

Au contraire; it pretty well sums up the NBA (and sports in general) punditry industrial complex.