Board 8 > NBA Finals Discussion

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think that's a legitimate concern for some players but KD is probably the one guy I would never be worried about that sort of thing from. By all accounts, playing basketball is basically the only interest Kevin Durant has. I'd be shocked if he ever voluntarily sat out of a game.

If playing basketball is his only concern, he wouldn't be asking for a trade imo. He wants to win imo, and he decides what he thinks is enough to win. If they ship him to a team and he's like "da f is this?" then that's a problem for that team.

KD might have been the one guy I wouldn't have worried about before this. But then he asked for a trade. So now I do. Not to mention him being friends with Kyrie makes me raise my eyebrows. Remember that he was on board for the nets lifting the team-restriction on kyrie when they started losing. I don't think he's as opposed to rather dubious methods as you might think. Maybe I'm jaded but I just do not feel good about it.

We all know how petty KD can be.

He probably wants to go to Phoenix because of Barkleys bus driver comments and wants to take PHX to its first ring. Something Barkley couldnt do.

or he just likes joining #1 seeds

One summer league game down, Chet is obviously a hall of famer

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/5/8/AAB6RfAADa9a.jpg

Cade Year 1 vs. Year 2

he's put on a lot of muscle in the offseason

He got braids

the NBA equivalent of going super saiyan

Honestly I dont know if KD even gets traded now

Think the smart thing is just to stick it out this year for the Nets and hope the situation resolves itself

https://www.instagram.com/p/CfzHg0UsnPq/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Ok this is actually pretty cool

(Jokic got a Nuggets sweatshirt when he was 5 as a gift despite knowing nothing about basketball)

I hate overreacting to summer league but Banchero looks so much better than I thought he was.

Also RJ Hampton's basketball IQ has to be amongst the lowest in the league. He seemingly plays entirely on very bad instincts

LiquidOshawott posted...

Honestly I dont know if KD even gets traded now

I feel like the Nets are intentionally trying to not trade him at this point. Literally offering him to the Wolves in exchange for their best two places plus 4 draft picks. It's absurd to trade your two best players for one, even if he probably is top 3 in the league. What good would be on a team with no other great players? Also, as a Wolves fan personally I would not trade Edwards for Durant straight up. Durant may be better now, but he's 13 years older than Edwards, who is on the brink of becoming an all-star. Why would you want to give up the future of the franchise for a dude who has proven he'll leave the moment he's unhappy (and I have to imagine that would be immediately in a small market team like Minnesota).

you can blame your own franchise for that asking price - there's no way KD should be less valuable than rudy gobert, yet the wolves paid an unprecedentef king's ransom for him. so now KD is basically untradable.

It also might just be a case of the nets not feeling beholden to the request. He's got what 4 years left? And the odds of him pulling a simmons seem less than...well, simmons. Might as well just wait till some team gets desperate, getting a haul of picks is the only way they can salvage this since houston owns all their stuff

I feel like the ESPN ticker must have misphrased it when I saw it because it said they were unwilling to include either of them (i.e. individually) rather than both.

SeabassDebeste posted...

you can blame your own franchise for that asking price - there's no way KD should be less valuable than rudy gobert, yet the wolves paid an unprecedentef king's ransom for him. so now KD is basically untradable.

It was a stupid trade and we gave up too much, but I'll take that trade any day over the Nets trade. I can't say all those role players and draft picks are of equal value to our two best players and all the draft picks, can you? I'd rather have this team with Gobert on it because at least we have like 4 former/future all star players rather than having a team that would have been Durant and Russell with like no one else.

Pistonz 2-0 in summer league

Ivey rolled his ankle midway through and sat out, causing pistons lead to blow a 25 point lead, but still held on to win by 6

Hopefully nothing too serious for Ivey and they were just being cautious

Whoever trades for KD at this point is going to struggle because as good as he is, you still need to shape your roster correctly and how you structure it with and without him is different. The trade needed to happen pre FA really

What complicates things is the following

1) Wolves trade setting the standard

2) KD is injury prone, hes only played 90 regular season games in the last 3 seasons and hes 34

3) Ben Simmons having the rookie extension complicates trades unless they can ship him away in a 3 or 4 team trade

4) Team that makes sense, Suns, has a key piece in Ayton likely getting an offer from the Pacers that could be very close to the max. They could still see if they could ship a possible sign in trade for Turner and maybe build that to Brooklyn but eh

5) Another team that makes sense, Raptors, doesnt want to mortgage the future on Scottie. I guess you can build a package around Pascal but I dont think thats as appealing and the team as a whole gets a lot weaker without him I feel

Harden went for the full bag of 4 1sts and 3 swaps (which is the de facto biggest 1st rd package any team can ever offer unless they also own other teams' picks), AND allen/levert/dinwiddie just a couple of years ago. There is 0 chance imo that the gobert trade has somehow outpriced the market for durant because the market was always going to be that. The nets HAVE to ask for too much, just like the rockets did with harden, because that's the only way they're getting out of this mess they created by giving the farm away for the aforementioned harden trade.

Durant just overplayed his hand putting it out there that he only wanted to play for Phoenix or Miami, and only if they didn't send back any of their good players in the deal, because he just created a no-win situation for everyone. Those two teams don't feel the need to put huge packages on the table because they know they have the leverage of being his preferred destinations. Other teams, of which several have the ability to offer more attractive packages if they were so inclined, are reluctant to do it because Durant clearly has no issue with pulling the ripcord the second things get a little tough. And the Nets don't have to do anything because he's still under contract for four years.

It's a staring contest that's not gonna give anytime soon. I'll be surprised if he's not still a Net by the time the season starts.

but 2021 harden was still an MVP caliber talent, like KD is. gobert isn't.

the market was more normal before gobert, as you can see from the pretty reasonably priced harden-simmons trade

but yeah, brooklyn should probably just hang onto KDfor now and have an adult conversation with him

Yeah, I don't expect KD to get traded before the season starts.

SeabassDebeste posted...

but 2021 harden was still an MVP caliber talent, like KD is. gobert isn't.

the market was more normal before gobert, as you can see from the pretty reasonably priced harden-simmons trade

but yeah, brooklyn should probably just hang onto KDfor now and have an adult conversation with him

This is true, but what I'm saying is that although Gobert was overpriced, it still didn't eclipse the harden package, or even the AD package if you want my personal opinion. The Nets imo were always going to expect a harden-like package because durant is as good as harden was then. The gobert trade affects that 0.

The NBA having a cap on how many picks you can trade puts a hard ceiling on the trade market, and gobert did not hit that ceiling while harden did, this is why I don't think gobert's trade affects durant at all. It's not like the nets were gonna go "Well we were gonna do durant for 4 1sts and some players but after seeing gobert get this much now we'll ask for the farm" no they were going to always ask for the farm.

https://twitter.com/IveyJaden/status/1546179196359020545

phew

gobert fetched more picks than he was worth but less talent than he was worth. the wolves basically traded no players of note (33 year old patrick beverley hardly counts) and made up for that by adding in additional picks.

plus it's a seller's market right now, you basically have to overpay to get any trade done for a star player.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/8/9/AAaTquAADcex.jpg

Players Association won't survive the next CBA. The ravaging is coming.

Only 5 players played all 82 games last season compared to over 50 twenty years ago.

Leonhart4 posted...

Only 5 players played all 82 games last season compared to over 50 twenty years ago.

what's the data look like 3 or 4 seasons ago? It seems like an unfair comparison when many players who otherwise could have played all 82 games sat out a few games due to Covid protocols.

I'm certain that it's still far less than 20 years ago but 5 seems far too low for a non-covid year

nvm looked it up myself:

21 players in 2018-19, 26 players in 17-18.

so yeah it's about half of what it used to be roughly

no ivey = no offense for this summer league team

just playing duren + end of the bench guys for this one

Ayton to the Pacers (unless Suns match LOL)

https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1547656439832801282

edit: I guess the expectation is they WILL match and then just have a pissed off Ayton until January, who can veto any trade after that?

Time to see how cheap Sarver is

also will laugh if the Knicks trade for Mitchell

Unless something strange happens, the Knicks trading for Mitchell feels inevitable at this point.

Suns matched

Whew

Now we just have to hope he actually wants to play in Phoenix

Leonhart4 posted...

Unless something strange happens, the Knicks trading for Mitchell feels inevitable at this point.

well they would easily have the best offer considering they have like 8 picks they could trade and a bunch of young players. just whether or not they can find an agreeable deal

the Spurs did what was best for the Spurs, which isn't always what's best for the fans and the growth of the game, which is where the conflict lies

Still have nightmares of Sheed leaving Horry open at the end of game 5

If not for that would have been back to back titles for pistons

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

Still have nightmares of Sheed leaving Horry open at the end of game 5

If not for that would have been back to back titles for pistons

Big Shot Bob

UltimaterializerX posted...

The Spurs were three plays away from winning eight rings in 15 years.

Wat

Ray Allen, the Ginobili foul on Dirk, and the impossible Derek Fisher shot

so yeah

Two of those didn't even happen in the finals, and the West team ended up losing anyway! And the Fisher shot was game 5

That's far from "one play away"

spurs indeed have had some insanely memorable painful/humiliating losses though - from the "one play away" variety, to the blowing commanding series leads variety, to the getting massively humiliated in an upset ones

it's been pretty painful even for me

MZero posted...

Two of those didn't even happen in the finals, and the West team ended up losing anyway! And the Fisher shot was game 5

That's far from "one play away"

Oh, it's not guaranteed that they win the Finals if things go differently. I get that (other than the Ray Allen shot, obviously).

It's just as a Spurs fan I immediately knew the plays he was referring to because they've kept me up at night

Thank goodness the league appropriately suspended Amare for Game 5 so a break finally went our way

UltimaterializerX posted...

Youre out of your damn mind if you think they lose the finals in either of those two years. The disrespect for what that team accomplished is unreal.

Also I love that Leon knew the exact 3 plays without me even listing them. The league had to change rules around after that BS Fisher shot.

How in the world is that disrespectful? If they can lose to the Lakers they can lose to the Pistons who destroyed the Lakers (and nearly beat the Spurs the following year). Same thing in 2006. If the Heat could beat the Mavs they could have beaten the Spurs. I'm not saying they would have lost, but it was certainly not a lock. If anything, you're disrespecting the Pistons and Heat

Hell they didn't even force a Game 7 against the Lakers, so they weren't even one play away for winning that series!

Leonhart4 posted...

Thank goodness the league appropriately suspended Amare for Game 5 so a break finally went our way

Suns would have lost anyway tbh :(