Everything 2018 Off Season

[The Great One]

Philly and Indy had cap space. How did Boston get better?

They'll have Kyrie and Hayward back next year.

[007]

Wizards have added Austin Rivers, Jeff Green and Dwight Howard lmao. Wall and Beal are going to murder someone next season

[magoon]

Philly getting better, Indiana getting better, Boston getting better......

make a fucking move Masai!

With Bebe gone, Masai has one free roster spot. I don't doubt he's looking for a trade that he feels makes the team better, but upgrading the roster is actively difficult right now.

Philly replaced Marco Bellinelli and Ersan Ilyasova with Wilson Chandler and Zhaire Smith, which is probably better, but it's not "holy shit they're so much better now" better. Indiana replaced Lance Stephenson and Glenn Robinson III with Doug McDermott and Tyreke Evans, which will help their offense a lot but probably hurt their defense a fair bit too.

Sure, they're somewhat better, but the reason they're better is because they were able to replace bad players with better players. Masai is trying to replace good players with better players, and that's harder to do.

[magoon]

Wizards have added Austin Rivers, Jeff Green and Dwight Howard lmao. Wall and Beal are going to murder someone next season

The funny thing is that in Fake GM Land, I would take Marcin Gortat over all three of those guys combined.

[KeonClark]

With Bebe gone, Masai has one free roster spot. I don't doubt he's looking for a trade that he feels makes the team better, but upgrading the roster is actively difficult right now.

Philly replaced Marco Bellinelli and Ersan Ilyasova with Wilson Chandler and Zhaire Smith, which is probably better, but it's not "holy shit they're so much better now" better. Indiana replaced Lance Stephenson and Glenn Robinson III with Doug McDermott and Tyreke Evans, which will help their offense a lot but probably hurt their defense a fair bit too.

Sure, they're somewhat better, but the reason they're better is because they were able to replace bad players with better players. Masai is trying to replace good players with better players, and that's harder to do.

[Other Scott]

I'm not crazy. I think we have ridiculously long odds to beat the Warriors (or whomever comes out of the West, but really - the Warriors). But if we get a couple of Finals appearances in the next few years, there's a lot worse in basketball than being this generation's Utah Jazz, you know?

Not to mention that most of the teams that are in much worse situations got there through failed tank jobs that just didn't land them superstars but good enough players to get to mediocre (Orlando, Charlotte, Pistons, etc). The Raptors would be fortunate if this proposed tank job got them to anywhere near the level they are now.

[Other Scott]

Serge is fine if he's played the minutes that his health and capabilities deserve, not the minutes that his contract deserves.

The Raptors simply asked more than he can give last year.

Good Serge is actually a perfect fit in the Raptors offense as a relief valve guy when the defense really bogs in around the playmakers. When Serge was good last year, when he played well, the Raptors were pretty much unstoppable on offense.

He just stopped playing well after Game 2 of the playoffs, which really hurt.

[Primer]

Hayward unbroke his leg and Kyrie unbroke whatever he broke

They had Irving for the majority of the season (60 games) and they got better once he went down, going 14-6 in the 20 games he missed. (That includes missed games throughout the season, it wasn't just the team getting stronger down the stretch).

Hayward probably isn't the same player he used to be, and I could see him screwing up team chemistry since his minutes all come at the expense of Tatum and Brown. I'm not sure swapping one of those guys for Hayward makes them a better team. It certainly makes them worse defensively.

[KeonClark]

They had Irving for the majority of the season (60 games) and they got better once he went down, going 14-6 in the 20 games he missed. (That includes missed games throughout the season, it wasn't just the team getting stronger down the stretch).

Hayward probably isn't the same player he used to be, and I could see him screwing up team chemistry since his minutes all come at the expense of Tatum and Brown. I'm not sure swapping one of those guys for Hayward makes them a better team. It certainly makes them worse defensively.

That's some demographic shift level spin. I'm sure brad Stevens will figure out how to mix in 2 veteran all stars. Tatums minutes will be fine, Brown looks like a role playing scorer who will be fine off the bench

[GLF]

Here is the thing: the team is too good to tank. Seriously, I feel the need to stress this: the team ran up 59 wins last season, with mostly young players still finding their footing and some vets who didn't contribute nearly as much as their salaries would dictate (e.g. Ibaka and Miles). They'll probably be even better as a team this year. Trade Ibaka for player(s) who will actually give you $20m worth of wins and the team will probably improve even more.

If you're going for a rebuild, it's because you want a superstar. But you mostly get a superstar by being really bad. Sure, you can accumulate a lot of first-round draft picks, but any competent GM protects first-rounders that they trade away in the event that they become really bad, unless the team is so good that being bad is extremely unlikely. Most superstar players tend to wind up on bad teams who drafted them with their own picks: the only exceptions in recent memory are Giannis (#16 with the Bucks, and that was a big gamble on a very uncertain prospect that paid off) and Jayson Tatum (and this assumes Tatum is a superstar, which - look, he's gonna be a really good player, but is he superstar level? I do not know), who I'll count because he was the result of trading away a #1 overall pick (and only dropping to #3 in any case), which was part of the Brooklyn Nets trade which, as I have said before, is not a duplicable event.

Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons got drafted with the 76ers' own picks. The Wolves drafted Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns with their own picks. The Knicks landed Porzingis with their own pick. Portland drafted Lillard and McCollum with their own picks. New Orleans drafted AD with their own pick. And so on and so forth.

I keep seeing "let's trade Lowry and DeRozan and Ibaka and maybe JV and tank" like you people don't watch the fucking games and weren't hanging out on RR forums or r/torontoraptors or what have you rhapsodizing about the Bench Mob, who were, and I can't believe you've all forgotten this, often better than many teams' starters. And this coming year, they will all be better: Siakam and Wright's shots both got better as the year progressed, OG got better at playmaking, Poeltl's handles got better, etc. Because they play for a team that has a good idea of how to develop players, and they've been developing all along.

You run the Bench Mob out as your starters, sorry to tell you, you're not tanking. You're running a 38-44 win team that will at least contend for a #6-8 seed in the playoffs, and your own draft picks will be mediocre mid-round picks, maybe the bottom of the lottery if you're lucky. That's what "the treadmill" actually used to mean before people here redefined it to mean "winning almost 75% of regular season games but we can't beat the greatest basketball player of all time or a team that has 5/5 All-NBA starters so what's the point."

If you want to tank, you have to trade basically everybody except OG and let him be the star going forward and see if he rises. That team might be bad enough to get a bunch of star-level picks - although it'll be harder now that they've revised the draft lottery odds so the baddest teams are less likely to get the best picks - but the league hated Philly for The Process and Adam Silver won't be happy about seeing a team try it again, to say the least, and why piss people off when it's not even for an especially good reason?

I'm not crazy. I think we have ridiculously long odds to beat the Warriors (or whomever comes out of the West, but really - the Warriors). But if we get a couple of Finals appearances in the next few years, there's a lot worse in basketball than being this generation's Utah Jazz, you know?

Couldn't agree more with this!

[Primer]

That's some demographic shift level spin. I'm sure brad Stevens will figure out how to mix in 2 veteran all stars. Tatums minutes will be fine, Brown looks like a role playing scorer who will be fine off the bench

The fact they had Irving for 60 games and played better without him isn't spin. They had their best player for the majority of the season and were still trailing the Raptors in the standings. Them being better next year is all dependent on Hayward, he's the only player they're adding to last years team. If they lose Smart then it might be a wash.

[planetmars]

Q: Who is more likely to be traded: Kyle Lowry or DeMar DeRozan? — Mike (Cambridge, Ontario) Marc STEIN: I reported before the recent N.B.A. draft that the Raptors’ roster featured no untouchables, amid a growing buzz that Toronto was trying to trade its way into the top 10. Now? After LeBron James announced that he’s leaving the Eastern Conference after eight straight trips to the N.B.A. finals? I’m inclined to believe that both of Toronto’s cornerstone guards will start the season right where we last saw them. – via New York Times

via NYT via HoopsHype:
https://hoopshype.com/team/toronto-raptors/

[MixxAOR]

The Spurs reportedly want:
- Brandon Ingram
- Josh Hart
- Kyle Kuzma
- Two first-round picks
- Two pick swaps

for Kawhi ��https://t.co/TjRZ3aCrjV

— SB Nation (@SBNation) July 3, 2018

[The Great One]

The Spurs reportedly want:
- Brandon Ingram
- Josh Hart
- Kyle Kuzma
- Two first-round picks
- Two pick swaps

for Kawhi ��https://t.co/TjRZ3aCrjV

— SB Nation (@SBNation) July 3, 2018

Yeah i'll pass.

[planetmars]

So the 4 picks.. are they going to be any good? You'll have Lebron and Kawhi (in his prime) on the same team. I mean how good are those picks going to be in those 4 years (assuming they are in consecutive years)?

And the players were always going to be the players.

Not saying LA should do it.. but this is Kawhi Leonard. Top 3/4 wing in the NBA. It would give me pause as a GM. Might try to save at least one of the picks to use for a trade later on.. but if cap space might be an issue in 2019 I'd really think hard about it.