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1) Granger for Calderon
Granger is injured, but he'll come back soon I guess, here is the latest ESPN update:
"Granger (knee) was off his crutches during Monday's practice and walked without a limp, the Pacers' official website reports. (about 2 hours ago)"
So he might be back playing ball in a couple of weeks, maybe a month. But even if it was in a couple of months I'd like to see our Raptors trade for him.
Pacers are likely to use him in a trade come February as they got Paul George doing Granger stuff at 1/5th of the price. They would be interested at getting a good PG or an SG. I think Pacers might also be interested in dumping his salary.
In either case with Calderon we're in the game. If nothing more interesting presents itself for Indiana, they just might pull the trigger for Calderon and use him to dump salary or even re-sing at a more reasonable price.
Of course Granger comes with a ralatively heavy price tag at 13 ml, but he would fit nicely into our starting 5 and also there are only 2 years left for this contract, so we don't run a large risk.
2) Donatas Motiejunas for T.Ross
If we got Granger, T.Ross becomes less interesting to keep, as we would play DeRozan and Granger a lot, so he wouldn't get much of playing time between those 2. Also we got Fields and Kleiza on the bench and both of them I see as impossible to trade. So Fields could play SG and Kleiza SF off the bench respectively.
Houston's half roster (no kidding) consists of young, very talented PFs, and so they just can't play all of them. I think they would be willing to trade one of them for a guard to back up Harden.
I would trade Ross for D-Mo (Big PF) as they call him in Houston (Donatas Motiejunas). Another really nice young (22) lithuanian 7 ft big with incredibly polished post skills, athleticism, speed and size. He's like a better version of Bargnani (in my eyes) and would come at 1/6 of the price (1.4m) of Andrea.
D-Mo tends to play way more in the post than Bargnani, but also has the same shooting range of Andrea. He can't do worse in rebounding (his stats during pre-season were very attractive and they had sent him to the D league for 2 games recently, where he tore up the competition with 24ppg, 9.5rpg, 3apg). He would be our future PF to play alongside JV. I'm sure they'll play many summers to come together for the lithuanian national team and we should be interested in the chemistry they could develop. Also him being european, he wouldn't leave town for a "bigger market" in the US at first occasion.
Here some video from D-League:
NBA pre-season:
Summer League:
My idea is improving the team, while also getting young talent for the future (kind of rebuilding). The only problem remaining is what to do with Bargnani. I honestly tried to look into some trades and none of them make any sense to the other teams. Bargnani might be interesting at a lower price, but...
There needs to be a team that gets into trouble (trade demands) with some heavy priced guy out there to make that team desperate enough to pull the trigger and trade him for Bargnani no matter what. Otherwise I just don't see it happening. We might just as well amnesty this guy. I can't take it no more with him being around...
One possible trade I see is Bargnani for Gerald Wallace, if we don't trade for Granger... As Wallace is struggling in Brooklyn's system. He has some really good D as a SF and also has the same salary as Bargs, but only 2 years left (not much risk for us). But I don't know if this makes a whole lot of sense for Brooklyn either. Maybe they would be interested in Bargs as a scoring punch off the bench. There a lot other half-assed trades possible with Bargnani, but really nothing that works for both teams in a perfect way, there is always gambling involved.
So what's your thoughts?
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