Interesting.
I still think Kawhi was able to play last year and should have been with the team, but at least now there's a little more context for why he's doing what he's doing.
The main plus I get out of all that is that at least there are two teams in the mix, the Clippers might even be his favorite, and the Spurs won't give him up cheap. His perspective on West+Rivers being better than Magic+Walton is dead on.
It's not much of a market but it's better than the Lakers knowing they can coast for a year and get him for free. Apparently the Spurs wanted Ingram, Kuzma, Hart, and 2 picks and the Lakers were trying to get him for Deng and picks. The Lakers offer is actually worse than nothing while the Spurs offer probably looks fair to most people who aren't fans of either team.
Of course, now the Lakers might have made it impossible to get Kawhi. Lebron's 37, 18 for Deng, about 28 for Rondo, McGee, KCP, and Stephenson, 13 for Ingram and Ball, another 10 for the bottom of the roster and cap holds. The Lakers are right at the cap already, which means they'd have to move Deng, Rondo, or KCP as part of the deal just to get enough cap space to do an Ingram/Kuzma/Hart deal.
The problem is that the Spurs already have 28mm in bad value contracts, so if they take Deng for two years that rockets up to 46mm. Since Deng apparently isn't an NBA player anymore, they would effectively be paying nearly half the cap for two niche role players for two more years. One year rentals of Rondo or KCP just aren't that attractive at the price.
There would almost have to be a third team to accept some salary.
The Clippers have a lot more assets who are reasonable or even good value. Harris for 15, Gortat for 14, Lou Williams for 8... again they mostly only have a year left on their deals, but they are the kind of players the Spurs could easily end up re-signing for reasonable multi-year deals.
The Spurs don't currently have a playoff-caliber starting PG, SF, or C. Current roster w/o Kawhi:
Murray / Mills / White
Green / Beli / Walker
Anderson
Gay
Aldridge / Gasol
Would the Clippers do SGA, Gortat, and Harris for Kawhi? Even though Gortat and Harris only have a year left on their deals, you get a starting SF who can rain threes to give the starters some outside scoring capability and a starting C to let LA shift to his more natural PF. At least they are upper-middle tier guys that we might be able to resign for reasonable deals next year and still have a very nice chunk of money to play with by renouncing Gasol.
SGA / Murray / White
Green / Beli / Walker
Harris / Anderson
Aldridge / Gay
Gortat / Gasol
I still don't love our guard situation, but there is shooting, upside, experience, defense, and hustle just not always all in the same player. They are also all between 6'4 and 6'6 and most of them have very long arms. That is a huge team from top to bottom. Starters 6'6, 6'6, 6'9, 6'11, and 6'11. Bench 6'5, 6'5, 6'9, 6'8, and 7'0. Everyone but Gasol is mobile.
