Ryan34 said:
ATM9000 said:
I'm disappointed in the trade and was hoping they'd get a better player than Oladipo in return.
I know the big thing right now is to gawk and large pick lists and yell 'oooo assets!' Like people do with OKC or New Orleans. But annually there are only like 10 guys who can credibly play best talent for a contender and it seems like increasingly they all like pairing up. In other words, getting one of those guys is rare.
Now, take all of that and realize that all indicators we saw these last 2-3 years is Brooklyn appears to be one of the places that talent is attracted to. Unlike the picks and swaps we sent to OKC, I predict these turn out to all be fairly middling to low.
The picks in the coming years will almost assuredly be pretty poor, barring a complete meltdown in Brooklyn. The picks towards the latter end of the deal have a lot of potential. Harden and Durant will both be upper 30s (if they're still there), and who knows what the hell will happen with Kyrie.
Oladipo gives this roster the chance to compete, but if it doesn't look good, we can still flip him at the trade deadline.
Boston built their team on a similar trade with Brooklyn. Probably won't work that way for Houston due to the Westbrook trade, but all things considered, I think it's a very good haul for a guy who looks like he showed up 30+ pounds overweight.
This trade is substantially different than Boston in that the stars in that equation central to the team were like 5 or 6 years older than Harden, Durant and Kyrie are now. Draft picks of teams that appear to be 'destination' teams like Brooklyn appears to becoming are way overrated.
Sort of like the Anthony Davis trade. Everybody got all frothy over the 'draft capital' Nola got. But really... the Lakers are really good historically pretty much every year. Lebron will age, but he will get replaced by somebody else rly good to go with Davis and they'll continue to win 50+ games annually. The draft picks probably look more like magic beans than they do really valuable building blocks.
I'm not saying the picks aren't interesting but let's not pretend like they are certain to be dumpy picks. The fact Brooklyn effectively just attracted a big 3 should make everybody question how the league looks in the foreseen future.
And it's clear the Rockets just wanted to make sure they got the biggest 'list' ever for Harden. I mean the pick swap this year? Lol.
Will agree Oladipo is an interesting add.