slaw wrote:
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It's a gamble that may pay off, but stays in the way of two other strategies available to teams that recently won a championship like the Raptors:
1. Continue to aggressively add value and " win-now" talent to try to stay at the top (what the Lakers are doing now)
2. Flip some of your pieces to high ceiling good prospects and quality future draft picks, so you bounce back more quickly from bridge years like this one. In other words, the sell high strategy, which is most effective when your core still have the championship shine
Right now (so far) it looks like we're forfeiting these two avenues to pursue the Knicks strategy, which is to save cap space and hope he'll come. I'd be more comfortable if there were multiple targets to fall back to if Giannis didn't come (he frankly has no reason to, unfortunately; his team will likely do better than the Raptors this season and will be able to pay him more).
What's iffy about this strategy is that not only it's very unlikely Giannis will leave the Bucks to sign here, but there's also the fact that there are no other realistic max FA targets that year. The 2021 FA "bonanza" is a mirage. We might be forfeiting the 2 strategies above and most likely end up with a Gobert type of player in free agency (or worse), which means we will have punted two seasons and will have lost the opportunity to maximize the value of our championship core as assets, since by then they'll be older and further removed from the championship (where their value as assets are the highest)
That said, I trust our front office, they're one of the best in the league. Each path has a drawback though, you gotta look at it from all angles and continue re-assess as the years go by. I'm sure they're looking at the whole picture.
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