Around the League: The Off-season

[JCSunsfan]

Yes, the 2016 & 2017 draft were just disasters.

But look at some of the their lottery picks in last 10 years -

2011 - 13 - M******f M****s - Passed on Kawhi Leonard (15), Nikola Vucevic (16)
2012 - 13 - Kendall Marshall - Victim of a bad draft overall
2013 - 05 - Alex Len - Victim of a bad draft overall
2014 - 14 - T.J. Warren - Good pick
2015 - 13 - Devin Booker - Good pick
2016 - 04 - Dragan Bender - Passed on Buddy Hield (6) and Jamal Murray (7)
2016 - 08 - Marquise Chriss (from SAC) - Passed on Jakol Poltl (9) and Domantas Sabonis (11)
2017 - 04 - Josh Jackson - Passed on De'Aaron Fox (5) and Laurie Markkanen (7)
2018 - 01 - Deandre Ayton - Good pick
2018 - 10 - Mikal Bridges (From PHI in draft night trade) - Good pick?
2019 - 11 - Cameron Johnson (from MIN in draft night trade) - ?

The players I wanted
2011--Faried
2012--Royce White
2013--Ben McLemore
2014--TJ Warren (I was thrilled with this pick)
2015--Booker (liked the pick, though frustrated Turner did not fall to us)
2016--Loved Hield, but wanted to trade down for Sabonis. I REALLY wanted Sabonis.
2017--Very happy we got Jackson. I might have taken him #1 if we had that pick.
2018--Ayton
2019--Oh, I wanted Ja so bad. Of course, Zion too. After that, I really did not care much. Kinda liked Clarke.

[Split T]

Well, let's see if T.J. can play more than 50 games before we pass judgement.

This is where I'm at, but you know that won't stop the NBA media from s*** all over James Jones every time Warren scores 30 in a Pacers win.

This is mostly what I meant. TJ is a nice player, he’ll have his moments, but the media will think he’s better because he’s playing on a better team and in a better role for him. Here we needed him to be a cornerstone. In Indy he can just be a borderline starter or 6th man.

We know what TJ is and he didn’t make sense here. I still think Indy got the better end of this deal, but the media will portray this wrong. They’ll portray it as Indy seeing value in Warren that we didn’t see and that they stole him from us. When we knew what he brought to the table and knew that it wasn’t what we wanted on our team. It sucks that we had to give up an asset to move him, but trading a contract into cap space is especially hard to do right before free agency. Premium pricing comes into play.

[Ring_Wanted]

Well, let's see if T.J. can play more than 50 games before we pass judgement.

This is where I'm at, but you know that won't stop the NBA media from s*** all over James Jones every time Warren scores 30 in a Pacers win.

...but trading a contract into cap space is especially hard to do right before free agency. Premium pricing comes into play.

Warren is not just 'a contract'. Chandler, Rivers or Monroe were 'a contract'. As imperfect as Warren might be (injury prone -although how many games did he miss because we were tanking-, no defense, no passing, no defensive rebounding), he is a proven scorer and still young and improving, on a more than reasonable contract in 2019. The Suns are in the bottom of league, need all the talent they can get and, perhaps most importantly, need to manage their assets right, so what they do? Not only giving away an useful player, but also paying the other team for the favor. Come on. This is why others will judge this move as another "Suns doing Suns things". And they are right.

[Split T]

Well, let's see if T.J. can play more than 50 games before we pass judgement.

This is where I'm at, but you know that won't stop the NBA media from s*** all over James Jones every time Warren scores 30 in a Pacers win.

...but trading a contract into cap space is especially hard to do right before free agency. Premium pricing comes into play.

Warren is not just 'a contract'. Chandler, Rivers or Monroe were 'a contract'. As imperfect as Warren might be (injury prone -although how many games did he miss because we were tanking-, no defense, no passing, no defensive rebounding), he is a proven scorer and still young and improving, on a more than reasonable contract in 2019. The Suns are in the bottom of league, need all the talent they can get and, perhaps most importantly, need to manage their assets right, so what they do? Not only giving away an useful player, but also paying the other team for the favor. Come on. This is why others will judge this move as another "Suns doing Suns things". And they are right.

I never said he was just a contract. He’s a good player, but a bad fit for us. My intention wasn’t to justify the trade, I think we both agree that Indy won the trade. I was just trying to explain it. He was a bad fit that needed to go and we felt rushed to move him before the draft to ensure we had the cap space to complete the rest of our moves. Indy took advantage of our situation and got an additional asset. It looks incredible from their perspective. From our perspective, We cleared 33 million in space in a player who didn’t want to be here, was always hurt, had been passed by 2 players at the only position he was good at, and who’s biggest weakness(defense) he shared with our two biggest cornerstones. The value aspect of the deal sucked, but he needed to go. Hence my original comment in this thread that I’m not sad he’s gone, but that the trade will look pretty dumb on our part.

[Indy]

What a freaking disaster the double-whammy of the 2016 and 2017 drafts was. Yeesh. To have 3 top-8 picks and come away with 3 players who are all hanging on to pro hoops for dear life is almost hard to do if you had a dude off the street picking players based on online mock drafts.

Not to mention giving away an actual, decent NBA player for the opportunity to move up and grab Chriss.

[Split T]

Saw that Draymond had some positive things to say about Chriss with the warriors. He had a solid preseason game, though he did foul out in like 15ish minutes.

[Split T]

What a freaking disaster the double-whammy of the 2016 and 2017 drafts was. Yeesh. To have 3 top-8 picks and come away with 3 players who are all hanging on to pro hoops for dear life is almost hard to do if you had a dude off the street picking players based on online mock drafts.

Not to mention giving away an actual, decent NBA player for the opportunity to move up and grab Chriss.

Well in their defense, Bogdon was not an actual, decent nba player at the time.

[Superbone]

What a freaking disaster the double-whammy of the 2016 and 2017 drafts was. Yeesh. To have 3 top-8 picks and come away with 3 players who are all hanging on to pro hoops for dear life is almost hard to do if you had a dude off the street picking players based on online mock drafts.

Not to mention giving away an actual, decent NBA player for the opportunity to move up and grab Chriss.

Well in their defense, Bogdon was not an actual, decent nba player at the time.

I don't know that you can defend them. I was excited at what I had seen from Bogdan up until that point. He was much more of a known quantity than Chriss was.

[Indy]

What a freaking disaster the double-whammy of the 2016 and 2017 drafts was. Yeesh. To have 3 top-8 picks and come away with 3 players who are all hanging on to pro hoops for dear life is almost hard to do if you had a dude off the street picking players based on online mock drafts.

Not to mention giving away an actual, decent NBA player for the opportunity to move up and grab Chriss.

Well in their defense, Bogdon was not an actual, decent nba player at the time.

I don't know that you can defend them. I was excited at what I had seen from Bogdan up until that point. He was much more of a known quantity than Chriss was.

Yeah, if you want to mince words, we can change it to "an actual, good professional basketball player with a skill set we needed."

[Shabazz]

What a freaking disaster the double-whammy of the 2016 and 2017 drafts was. Yeesh. To have 3 top-8 picks and come away with 3 players who are all hanging on to pro hoops for dear life is almost hard to do if you had a dude off the street picking players based on online mock drafts.

Not to mention giving away an actual, decent NBA player for the opportunity to move up and grab Chriss.

Well in their defense, Bogdon was not an actual, decent nba player at the time.

I don't know that you can defend them. I was excited at what I had seen from Bogdan up until that point. He was much more of a known quantity than Chriss was.

Yeah, if you want to mince words, we can change it to "an actual, good professional basketball player with a skill set we needed."

..That skill set being “good at basketball.”

[Superbone]

This just hurts the Chinese fans:

[Superbone]

[Superbone]

Marcus Morris doing the usual Morris brothers stuff:

[Superbone]

And he's ejected from his first preseason game in a Knicks jersey:

[ShelC]

Morris Bros are punks. Knicks fans will eat that up tho.

Are those measurements without shoes?

[The Bobster]

Anderson was sent out to take him out of his game - and viola!

[Split T]

What a freaking disaster the double-whammy of the 2016 and 2017 drafts was. Yeesh. To have 3 top-8 picks and come away with 3 players who are all hanging on to pro hoops for dear life is almost hard to do if you had a dude off the street picking players based on online mock drafts.

Not to mention giving away an actual, decent NBA player for the opportunity to move up and grab Chriss.

Well in their defense, Bogdon was not an actual, decent nba player at the time.

I don't know that you can defend them. I was excited at what I had seen from Bogdan up until that point. He was much more of a known quantity than Chriss was.

I don’t really remember it that way. He had done some nice things, but I don’t actually remember that big of an outcry here when we gave him up. People were upset we made the trade, but mostly because we picked Chriss and not Sabonis.

I could be wrong, but that’s how I remember it.

I’m hindsight, the trade looks bad, but even with hindsight I think it was worth it. Chriss had a chance to be good, he’s very talented and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him still develop in a more stable environment. Bogdon has overachieved and he played the same position as our best player when we made the trade.

[The Bobster]

This just hurts the Chinese fans:

Well, the league doesn't want to see a very lucrative market dry up, so you can bet they're doing whatever they can to appease the Chinese government.

And Morey's freedom of speech doesn't mean shit to the Chinese.

[The Bobster]

According to The Athletic - "The giant Chinese Internet company Tencent, which is paying the NBA $1.5 billion to stream its games online over the next five years, said it wouldn’t show Rockets games or news on its network."

[Cap]

So, NBA fans in China are going to lose their games because Morey said something in support of protestors? Whom are they going to blame for that?