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NBA Off-Season 2019 - Bridge Over the River Kawhi


Relic

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4 hours ago, Proudfeet said:

The Raptors were also a four bounce three pointer away from crashing into a second round exit. 

I don't see what you guys are arguing over. Whether its the draft or trades or free agency, you can both succeed and fail. I don't think there is a specific reliable strategy either. You just do what you feel is appropriate for your situation. If you want to win a championship, you need to succeed on multiple fronts.

Pretty much this. You have to consider your market and if you're a destination team. Given that OKC is neither, and one of the least appealing cities to rich young black men, getting as many picks as possible and throwing them at the wall to see what sticks makes perfect sense to me. 

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9 hours ago, Maithanet said:

On the other side of the trade, I honestly don't know why the Rockets did this.  Maybe the Paul/Harden drama was worse than we all assumed?  Because to me the Rockets look worse today than they did yesterday, and they traded 2 firsts, 2 swaps, and took on an additional year of a horrible contract to get it. 

Westbrook and Harden are like the dictionary definition of a bad NBA fit.  Both players are really bad without the ball in their hands.  Neither are good defenders.  Both are so ball dominant that it's hard to imagine either one passing to the other readily.  And since both will be seeing the ball less, that also means fewer looks for their 3 point shooters, which is the backbone of this offense.  Even if you assume that Westbrook makes some compromises of his style and cuts down on midrange jumpers, he's still a bad 3 point shooter, which means he's like a dead spot on the court when Harden has the ball. 

I feel like with the Harden/Paul Rockets, you could see a realistic, (if difficult) path to an NBA title.  They match up reasonably well with LAL, DEN and PHI.  LAC is clearly a problem, but who knows, maybe someone else beats them or someone gets injured.  Can you say the same thing about the Westbrook/Harden Rockets?  I cannot see that team beating any real contender in a 7 game series.  A second round exit is like the best case scenario now. 

I see this differently Maith. I'll concede that, as everyone observes, they seem like a bad fit. That is the one potential downside of this trade.

However:

  • I don't think there was a realistic path to an NBA title for this Houston team with a 34 year old Paul and Harden, given how other teams are loading up. They would be contenders again, and that's it, and Houston is clearly well aware of this.
  • I do think a Westbrook/Harden team that still has Gordon and Capela mind you, is a strong contender. Its a feeling.
  • Chemistry between these two guys might be excellent, and that can count for a lot. It will never be an ideal fit but apparently they both think it will work and they might surprise us.
  • Above all this deal makes huge sense from a Rockets POV. They needed to upgrade. There was no one better available than Westbrook. They had been left out in the cold when LeBron passed on them last year, and now Kahwi and Butler again. They needed to offload Paul and upgrade and could that in one fell sweep. They've gone from a team with one superstar and a great no. 2 in Paul to having two superstars.
7 hours ago, Fez said:

 

Sixth, yes, Presti tried twice and it didn't work. And Westbrook specifically may not be someone you can build a champion around. However, trying twice doesn't really mean you've exhausted your possibilities; and the Thunder have some other good pieces on their team already.

Considering how vital superstars are to winning in the NBA, and how difficult they are to obtain, I'm astonished at how happily some people are to trade them away. If I were Daryl Morey, I'd be laughing my ass off at this trade. Not only did I give up almost nothing that affects my championship window, I managed to dump my other bad contract so my cap situation didn't get any worse.

I do think Morey is and should be very pleased with this trade.

In their view, getting Westbrook is their best path to win or get to the finals, With Paul and Harden, this team wasn't winning the West anymore, I think that is safe to say based on the evidence we have seen. Westbrook is and should be considered an upgrade even if he is a very differnent type of PG. Plus there is the fact that Houston took Harden and Westbrook's pulse and both have  indicated that this is the trade they wanted.

Plus, the market had dried up for Houston, they were not getting anyone else. And I'm not even sure that Butler, their initial 2019 target, would actually be better in Houston than Westbrook.

I'm not gonna judge Presti, clearly he had very little better choices. And what he did get, while not a big haul in my opinion, at least fits in his strategy. And they will trade Paul now, that is as good as certain, for more assets.

I generally agree that all these far future picks for Oklahoma.....I get what they are doing and I get that this is the path they have been mostly forced on after failing to make it with all their stars... but dam their near-mid term future looks so bad because free agents already didn't want to come to OKC and when is one going to come now? Will you be getting real star players for all these picks you gathered, even just one or two? I'm just sceptical of such a long term rebuild, mostly because it takes sooooo long. OKC is now going to be bad for years.

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13 hours ago, Jaime L said:

You know who else wanted the Raptors to rebuild? Masai Ujiri. That was his plan all along from the second he got there...but then Lowry/DeRozan turned them into a surprise 45-50 win team and he was forced to go with it. But he kept finding ways to add talent with low picks and when the opportunity to get a top 5 player, if even for one year, he broke it up for the chance at winning it all. In the end he played it perfectly and won a title. Was a ballsy, risky move and it paid off completely. He deserves a ton of credit for it.

And if he was GM of this OKC team, I guarantee you he does exactly what Presti just did. There's a time where a full rebuild is the only reasonable option and OKC was 100% at that point. 

Exactly. 

I wanted a rebuild. I liked the Leonard trade more because I thought it’d mean an actual rebuild after he left rather than because I believed he’d get us a chip, but that was an additional potential attraction. When the Lowry trade fell through and he kinda just settled into it, I really despaired, and stayed there until the Spurs deal, but while I credit Masai with successfully drawing a backdoor straight, it’s not exactly the strategy i’d advocate trying to replicate.

That said, teams will. Winning breeds imitation in pro sports. But I feel this will inspire a lot of failed attempts like that last Pistons ring; get a bunch of almost-stars who fit perfectly and grind it out...sooooo many teams tried to copy that, a lot was written about thus new ‘no-star’ formula that would put an end to chasing lottery balls, but no one else pulled it off. 

As for the Harden Westbrook pairing, I admit i’m struggling to see how it’ll work. Again, many people pointed to Harden/Paul having contrasting styles and both needing the ball, but they made it work because they are both, for want of a better term, basketball intellectuals. They both think about the game and how it should be played ALOT, and both mostly beat you by out-thinking you. So while it may have ultimately led to their breach...in the end they both have strong and fully formed philosophies about how to play the game that overlap but also grate, and the grating got too loud is my understanding (plus maybe Harden...imo unfairly...was irritated by Paul not playing through some injuries that he would play through) but it did lead to success for a couple seasons.

Whereas RW is...er, not a basketball intellectual, let’s say. He gets by on athleticism and motor. Maybe Morey is seeing something we’re not, maybe he’s just thinking in terms of market value if RW has a big year under MD (he thinks like this way more than most GMs) or maybe not...and maybe MD us the guy to herd cats again. But how it will work is not hitting me in the face, let’s say.

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The NBA is so so indebted to the Raptors and Leonard for finally burrying the Dynastic monster from the West. We now have a very wide open league that is anything but certain who will win rings next year.

From a fan standpoint, this is such a better view, I'm anxiously awaiting next year's competition.

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55 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

The NBA is so so indebted to the Raptors and Leonard for finally burrying the Dynastic monster from the West. We now have a very wide open league that is anything but certain who will win rings next year.

From a fan standpoint, this is such a better view, I'm anxiously awaiting next year's competition.

Do we have the Raptors to thank for that, or Durant himself who decided to leave? Cause that to me is what makes the field wide open.

He could have chosen to come back and sign on for 5 more years of Warriors dynasty. And then the league still wouldn't have been cracked open.

Even next season would have had a Warriors narrative  of "once Klay comes back, they will be much better, and then Durant might be back for the playoffs". And the years after that, well you'd still have had Curry, Durant and Thompson. The Raps won this finals against a GS team without Durant, let's not assume they would finished this dynasty if Durant didn't decide to play with Kyrie.

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12 hours ago, James Arryn said:

As for the Harden Westbrook pairing, I admit i’m struggling to see how it’ll work. Again, many people pointed to Harden/Paul having contrasting styles and both needing the ball, but they made it work because they are both, for want of a better term, basketball intellectuals. They both think about the game and how it should be played ALOT, and both mostly beat you by out-thinking you. So while it may have ultimately led to their breach...in the end they both have strong and fully formed philosophies about how to play the game that overlap but also grate, and the grating got too loud is my understanding (plus maybe Harden...imo unfairly...was irritated by Paul not playing through some injuries that he would play through) but it did lead to success for a couple seasons.

Whereas RW is...er, not a basketball intellectual, let’s say. He gets by on athleticism and motor. Maybe Morey is seeing something we’re not, maybe he’s just thinking in terms of market value if RW has a big year under MD (he thinks like this way more than most GMs) or maybe not...and maybe MD us the guy to herd cats again. But how it will work is not hitting me in the face, let’s say.

I'm also trying to visualize how it will work. These are two of the highest usage guys in the league so both have to be happy with touching the ball less. Though hopefully Westbrook takes the bigger usage hit as Harden is the much more efficient offensive player. 

The advantages I see is if you stagger their minutes, Westbrook is a huge asset captaining the bench unit and can maybe feast on backup guards. And when they're playing together, Westbrook can just take over on certain possessions and let Harden rest and be a spot up guy. Westbrook is also bigger and more physical player than Paul and probably a better defender at this point in their careers. He'll require opponents to exert more energy on both ends of the floor which means theoretically they'll have less energy to devote to stopping Harden. 

But yeah the loss of basketball IQ and spacing that Paul provided will be felt. And it'll be an adjustment. I wonder how much the Rockets adjust to Westbrook or vice versa.

Even though I thought Presti did a great job on his end of the trade, I totally get Morey's side of it. You could argue the Rockets were the best team left standing from last year after the Warriors and Raptors lost their superstars. But sounded like the situation with Harden and Paul was no longer tenable. And even if they were getting along great the issue remains that Paul is declining fast and is no longer a true second star...more like another useful role player (just one who doesn't know it yet). Westbrook is still a star, even if by advanced stats, he was only about half as valuable last year as during his MVP season. They're an elite contender whose window is right now - have to go all in. And it's a worthwhile bet to see if a change in scenery and being back on a true title contender inspires Russ to work his ass off this summer and get back to his old form. 

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Supposedly Harden and Westbrook really wanted this trade, which I assumes means they discussed what playing together would look like. I would hope that would mean they realized they can't both keep their current usage rates, even if their minutes are severely staggered from each other. We'll see.

As for Chris Paul, yeah its big court IQ loss. But he took a pretty big step back last year, and with a lot of guys when that happens after that many years playing, it's all over pretty quickly. He certainly wasn't terrible or anything, and maybe he can make some adjustments; but when there's a noticeable decline like that I think the odds of long, slow gradual end of the career arc, a la Tim Duncan or Dirk Nowitzki, start going down.

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9 hours ago, Triskele said:

Chris Paul never made the finals did he?

He played for New Orleans, the Clippers, and Houston... so, no.

Honestly, it’s hard for me to remember that this is the guy all the league owners revolted over and forced the NBA to void his trade to the Lakers.

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3 hours ago, Rhom said:

He played for New Orleans, the Clippers, and Houston... so, no.

Honestly, it’s hard for me to remember that this is the guy all the league owners revolted over and forced the NBA to void his trade to the Lakers.

It wasn't the league owners though, it was David Stern. The league office owned New Orleans at the time and had horribly conflicted interests. They wanted to sell the team and thought having a star on it for marketing purposes would make it more attractive to potential buyers, so they vetoed any trade that wasn't crazy lopsided in their favor. The Lakers deal wasn't a great one for NOLA, but it wasn't outrageously terrible either. And remember that the league office also vetoed the original Clippers deal and forced them to give up more stuff more approving that one.

Looking back, its insane that there wasn't even more outrage over this.

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On 7/13/2019 at 10:38 PM, Jaime L said:

I'm also trying to visualize how it will work. These are two of the highest usage guys in the league so both have to be happy with touching the ball less. Though hopefully Westbrook takes the bigger usage hit as Harden is the much more efficient offensive player. 

The advantages I see is if you stagger their minutes, Westbrook is a huge asset captaining the bench unit and can maybe feast on backup guards. And when they're playing together, Westbrook can just take over on certain possessions and let Harden rest and be a spot up guy. Westbrook is also bigger and more physical player than Paul and probably a better defender at this point in their careers. He'll require opponents to exert more energy on both ends of the floor which means theoretically they'll have less energy to devote to stopping Harden. 

But yeah the loss of basketball IQ and spacing that Paul provided will be felt. And it'll be an adjustment. I wonder how much the Rockets adjust to Westbrook or vice versa.

Even though I thought Presti did a great job on his end of the trade, I totally get Morey's side of it. You could argue the Rockets were the best team left standing from last year after the Warriors and Raptors lost their superstars. But sounded like the situation with Harden and Paul was no longer tenable. And even if they were getting along great the issue remains that Paul is declining fast and is no longer a true second star...more like another useful role player (just one who doesn't know it yet). Westbrook is still a star, even if by advanced stats, he was only about half as valuable last year as during his MVP season. They're an elite contender whose window is right now - have to go all in. And it's a worthwhile bet to see if a change in scenery and being back on a true title contender inspires Russ to work his ass off this summer and get back to his old form. 

Yeah, we agree that Paul was probably past the beginning a steep decline...though I would not be surprised if he has a big year this year if he can stay healthy...and I agree Westbrook will attract a different kind of help away from Harden. But he can’t really shoot, which seems a big problem, and his inefficiency seems like a major drag on D’Antoni’s offence. 

Certainly he’s a name, and he’ll help more than a role player, but my faith as a Rockets fan has to rest in one of 3 places: Morey’s ability to understand hidden values, D’Antoni’s ability to use people to their offensive max, or Harden’s ability to make teammates better. My best hope is he becomes some sg version of Marion, and I CAN envision a pattern of touchdown outlet passes when Harden collects and RW streaks to the other end, or even on occasion with reversed roles, though imo Harden is a better passer and RW a much better streaker. 

It is encouraging to hear Harden and Westbrook were pushing for this...that should at least give us a year or 2 breathing room before the next episode of superstars-can’t-get-along.

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On 7/12/2019 at 7:12 PM, Calibandar said:

I see this differently Maith. I'll concede that, as everyone observes, they seem like a bad fit. That is the one potential downside of this trade.

However:

  • I don't think there was a realistic path to an NBA title for this Houston team with a 34 year old Paul and Harden, given how other teams are loading up. They would be contenders again, and that's it, and Houston is clearly well aware of this.
  • I do think a Westbrook/Harden team that still has Gordon and Capela mind you, is a strong contender. Its a feeling.
  • Chemistry between these two guys might be excellent, and that can count for a lot. It will never be an ideal fit but apparently they both think it will work and they might surprise us.
  • Above all this deal makes huge sense from a Rockets POV. They needed to upgrade. There was no one better available than Westbrook. They had been left out in the cold when LeBron passed on them last year, and now Kahwi and Butler again. They needed to offload Paul and upgrade and could that in one fell sweep. They've gone from a team with one superstar and a great no. 2 in Paul to having two superstars.

It's possible that I'm underestimating the degree to which Paul is declining.  Yes, he wasn't good last year, but it seems possible that he has a bounce back year this year (lots of veterans have at least one such year during thier declining years).  And if that happened, then yes, I could see a scenario where the Rockets are champions. 

Chemistry off the court might be good, and that is worth something.  But play styles fitting together on the court seems a lot more important, and Paul/Harden is a better fit than Westbrook/Harden.

The Rockets may or may not have needed an upgrade.  I'd put them on the list of long shot (but real) contenders, alongside Denver and Milwaukee.  But I don't really care for the idea that "we have to do something, and this is a big name guy", which is sorta the argument you're making.  Trading away several first round picks and trading a bad contract for a worse one is bad.  For giving up that kind of capital, I expect a clear and unambiguous upgrade.  But instead, I'm left unsure if the Rockets are better or worse.  The ceiling is higher with Westbrook/Harden, but now even more things have to go right in order to win a championship.  It feels to me like a high risk play that is more likely than not to not only fail, but quite possibly fail miserably. 

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I think they felt they needed to act now when everyone else was loading up, that Harden's prime isn't going to last forever, on a team which has now narrowly missed out time and again. Standing pat was not an option. The fact that Harden loves this trade and arghued for it suggests there might be something to the rumors about him and Paul.

So certainly, Westbrook is not an ideal fit. But there is a chance this team is better with him than last years, it gives Harden a running mate while in his prime and perhaps it's even a move that helps keep Harden in Houston, cause really, missing out again and again leads to players asking for trades. 

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14 hours ago, DMC said:

So looks like OKC can't unload Paul without giving up picks and may have to keep him.  Heh, yeah, Presti's a genius alright.

Quite a blow. Guess maybe OKC will have to try for the playoffs this year (538 is projecting them at 41 wins). This sounds terrible. 

How did he not foresee that he was adding one of the 5 worst contracts in the league? I mean sure he also gave up one of the other 5 worst contracts in the trade....and added 4 first round picks in the process...but ugh, now he might be stuck with a terrible contract during the couple years OKC is in limbo. He could've kept Westbrook and won 45 games this year instead. WHAT WAS HE THINKING.

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5 hours ago, Jaime L said:

Quite a blow. Guess maybe OKC will have to try for the playoffs this year (538 is projecting them at 41 wins). This sounds terrible. 

How did he not foresee that he was adding one of the 5 worst contracts in the league? I mean sure he also gave up one of the other 5 worst contracts in the trade....and added 4 first round picks in the process...but ugh, now he might be stuck with a terrible contract during the couple years OKC is in limbo. He could've kept Westbrook and won 45 games this year instead. WHAT WAS HE THINKING.

Sarcasm levels at 9000.

 

Imho, TBD after the trade deadline. Till then its unwise to judge this trade. Russ wanted out and they accomplished that while gaining a few picks. They might be able to move off of CP down the line and make this swap even more appealing. 

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1 hour ago, Relic said:

Sarcasm levels at 9000.

 

Imho, TBD after the trade deadline. Till then its unwise to judge this trade. Russ wanted out and they accomplished that while gaining a few picks. They might be able to move off of CP down the line and make this swap even more appealing. 

I'd keep an eye on Miami and Minnesota. Both teams have expiring or about to expire contracts, and that could be enough for the Thunder to keep their picks. 

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Not sure if it's relevant to something you may have read about siblings but Rodman also had adoptive/fostering family in Oklahoma so it's possible he counts quite a few extended siblings.

I'm lmao at Harden doing a preemptive P.R. campaign, lobbying to be allowed to travel next year and not get whistled for it.  He wants "Harden" rules?

 

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I know the FIBA World Cup doesn't really matter to us in the states, but good god I just saw the roster. We legit might get bounced out early. Kemba is our best player, being the only All-NBA player on the team, and only a handful of the other players have been All-Stars in the past. I mean, P.J, Tucker is on our national team. P.J. Tucker. P.J. TUCKER!!!!

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